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The student chosen to respond to this toast was the pick of the western men. His name cannot be recalled, but the impression he made is vivid. His response to the toast was a credit to himself and the vast, fertile territory he represented. The other toast was:

Of the entire territory known as the East, there is one long, narrow district that stands forth beyond all others as being the one that has produced a purer type of the Nation's MEN than any other. The river which has given this territory its name starts on its course far up in the rugged wilderness of New Hampshire and, flowing southward between dense forests, precipitous cliffs, and fertile meadows of vast acreage, finally loses itself in the waters of the Sound between the shores of the beautiful and venerable Towns of Old Saybrook and Old Lyme. In the picturesque language of the Indians, it is " The Smile of God "; to civilized men, it is The Connecticut Valley.

THE CONNECTICUT VALLEY
BEFORE ITS SETTLEMENT.

The rugged hills which compose the western, and, in lesser degree, the eastern areas, are formed of rocks resembling in many respects the group to which granite belongs — rocks which are very ancient, dating far back into the early history of the world. The rivers which flow among these hills have open valleys, showing that the portion of the land above the sea-level has been practically unchanged for ages. But in the central portion of the State these ancient highlands sink down into a broad trough running from Long Island Sound far up in to Massachusetts, and this trough is filled with rocks of much later date — whose history is one of the most interesting to be found in the great book of nature.

Long ago, before man lived upon the earth,— when huge reptile forms, long since utterly passed away, clambered over the hills or roamed along the muddy shores,— the trough was filled by a great lake or arm of the sea. Into its quiet waters ran streams from the surrounding hills, bringing down into the lake mud and sand from the land over which they flowed. These sank to the bottom and formed there beds of sand and clay.

Then a strange thing happened. Somewhere in this region, which is now so peaceful, a volcano burst forth and rolled floods of molten lava over the whole area. This lava turned much of the water in the lake to steam, and, spreading itself over the beds of land-waste at the bottom, there cooled and hardened into rock. Three times and more has the lake

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lain in the trough, its bottom covered by beds of clay and sand, and three times has the lava overflowed the region, for we find now in central Connecticut three great sheets of volcanic " trap "— as the rock is called, lying one above another, each one resting on beds of clay, sand or pebbles, now hardened into rocks "known respectively as " shale", " sandstone" and " conglomerate ".

Now, how can we see these three layers of lava, if they lie one above another? How is it that we can see more than the top of one, even if we should find that there is no land-waste on top of that? It is in some such way as this: Long after the last lava had hardened, the region was greatly disturbed and everything was tilted, so that the sheets of lava and the rocks lying between them, instead of lying horizontal, sloped strongly to the east. Since then there has been great wearing away of the land by the weathering of the rocks, and the streams have carried away the land-waste to the sea. But. the trap is much harder than the sandstone and shale, so that it stands up above the country in high ridges running north and south. At the time the rocks were tilted, they were also greatly broken, so that vast fragments — miles in length — have been separated from each other in different parts of central Connecticut. But for all this, the geologist finds plainly, that these fragments belong to three different sheets of lava, which mark three different periods of volcanic action.

The second volcanic eruption was apparently the greatest, for it left a sheet of lava which is in some places 500 feet thick. It is the up-turned edge of this great sheet which forms the various " mountains " of central Connecticut Good examples of these are Newgate Mountain, Talcott Mountain, Farniington Mountain, the "Hanging Hills" of Meriden; Lamentation Mountain, north-east of Meriden; Durham range, including Higby and Beseck Mountains, and " Three Notches "; Toket Mountain, in North Guilford, and Pond Rock * * * at Lake Saltonstall. East and West Rocks, at New Haven, cannot be reckoned among these, as their history seems to be somewhat different from that of any of the mountains mentioned.

But perhaps the most remarkable remains of life, those which are certainly the most famous, are the so called " Connecticut River Bird Tracks ". These are foot-marks left in the mud of the ancient shores by the creatures that roamed over them long ago. The mud has long since hardened into shale, but the foot-marks remain intact to the present time. They are found in various places, but probably the most famous localities are Turner's Falls, in Massachusetts, and the great sandstone quarries at Portland, Connecticut.

On Shepherd's Island, in the Connecticut, at Northampton, a mile above Hockanum ferry and nearly opposite the mouth of Fort River, some excellent specimens of these foot-marks have been found. There was for many years and probably still is, a flagstone in the sidewalk, not far from the Mansion House, in Northampton, with a foot-mark measuring eighteen inches.'

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The tracks in many cases resemble those of turkeys, but 'are often as much as a foot in length. Careful study, however, shows that they belonged, not to birds, but to huge reptile forms. Some of these appear to have walked almost entirely upon their hind legs, since the prints left by the small fore feet are only occasionally found.

There is one special locality in the vicinity of Meriden which should not be left unmentioned. It is well known that in the early stages of a great volcanic eruption vast quantities of ashes, or, rather fine dust, are thrown into the air from the crator. These again to the earth, sometimes at great distances, but they fall thickest in the neighborhood of the volcano. * * * Sometimes, also, blocks of half-molten rock are cast into the air, falling to earth again among the ashes. The overflow of lava is normally one of the later phenomena of an eruption. At a place in a low ridge in front of Lamentation Mountain, now known far and wide as the Ash Bed, this whole story of an eruption may be seen written in the rocks. At this place is a great bed of volcanic ashes, now hardened into gray rock, and among them may be seen the masses of rock which were cast out, red-hot and smoking, by the forgotten volcano of long ago, while above lies the lava sheet that was spread over the whole when the first fury of the eruption had subsided. The weathering and the changes of the rocks have laid bare the whole record, and it may be read plainly in the low cliff which lies on the east of the New Haven turnpike, about two and a half miles north of Meriden.

Thus, it almost seems as if the sublime tragedies and struggles through which Nature passed, to produce the exquisite beauties and peacefulness of the Connecticut Valley, were but forerunners of those tragedies and struggles through which the first settlers passed, in a lesser degree, to produce an almost perfect type of American manhood.

After these great forces of Nature had subsided — how long only the most profound students of such subjects can guess — the tender and beautiful side of the Grand Dame began to show itself and, in time, one of the most beautiful valleys of the Earth resulted. While there is little doubt that the Rhine and the Hudson, with their immediate scenery, are far more romantic, there is absolutely no doubt that the Connecticut Valley, as a valley (with its forests and mountains in the far north; its vast fertile meadows; broken by occasional ranges and individual mountains of rock, with precipitous faces; and lovely tumbled up hills in the midst of its length; and at the far south, near the Sound, bits of dainty scenery here and there, little known, perhaps, but nevertheless worth a journey to see), is much more lovely. When Nature produced New England she was a philanthropist for she was

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bountiful in her beneficence. When she produced the valley through which the Connecticut flows for three hundred and fifty miles, she was an artist — The Artist — and gave to man almost every conceivable variety of valley scenery from the salt water, at its southern extremity, to the sparkling sweet water of Connecticut Lake, at its northern extremity. So, with all these beauties of scene: the great fertility of the meadows and the unlimited supply of fish in the river and game on its shores, it was eminently proper that the Indian, who lived close to Nature, should have chosen the most charming portion of this valley for his home. And when the white men came to Massachusetts the Indians told them of this wonderful valley, given by Kiehtan as a mark of his especial favor toward men. And when the white men saw it they loved it and made it what it is to-day, the center of all that is best, in men and women; in homes; in morals; and in cultivation. And so, from the first awful birth-agony, of which Professor Pynchon has told, was born from Mother Nature, The Connecticut Valley.

NEW ENGLAND INDIANS.

Directly north of the Pequots was the Mohegan Tribe, closely allied to, and probably a portion of, the Pequots. On the Connecticut River were the Nehantic Tribe, at Lyme; the Machi-moodus Tribe, in East Haddam, then called by the name of the tribe; the Wongung Tribe, in Chatham; the Mattabesett Tribe, at Middletown; the Podunk Tribe, at East Hartford; the Quinni-piacks extended from New Haven along the shore to Milford, Derby, Stratford, Norwalk, Stamford, and Greenwich. There were, in addition, numerous other smaller tribes located all over the southern portion of Connecticut, which were probably nothing more than a collection of a few families of one or another of the great Tribes, which had settled in favorable spots within the limits of the great Tribe's bounds.

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Of the five principal Indian Nations, the Pequots were the most powerful, because the most savage and cruel. There was a tradition among the other Indians, that the Pequots came down from somewhere in the interior, not so very long before the arrival of white men, and conquered all tribes with which they came in contact and finally settled upon the south-western portion of Connecticut. When the English arrived they found the Great Sachem Sassacus strongly fortified upon a hill in Groton, which he made his headquarters, whence he made raids upon his enemies — and all other Indian Tribes were his enemies except the Mohawks of New York — and to which he returned on such rare occasions as when the enemy were too numerous for him and his band. It is rather odd, that while the Mohawks, the dominating tribe of the Five Nations, or Iroquois, claimed and collected tribute from all tribes within four or five hundred miles of their principal castle in New York State, the Pequots were exempt from paying tribute to them. This fact causes some persons, who have made a study of the subject, to believe that the Pequots were either a branch of the Mohawks, or were closely allied to them, before they came into Connecticut.

The number of Indians in New England, at the time of the first white settlements, has been variously estimated at from five to twenty thousand (Trumbull estimated that there were, in Connecticut alone, twenty thousand) but it is doubtful if there was, at any one time since the formation of the North American Continent, as many as twenty thousand Indians in the territory east of the Hudson river. Bancroft estimated the entire Algonquin race at but ninety thousand. When it is remembered that the Algonquins extended from Maine south to Virginia and northwest to Great Slave Lake, it is even less probable that New England had as many as twenty thousand at one time. Vermont was without aboriginal inhabitants and so were portions of Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Maine. In fact the Indians inhabited only the sea-coast regions and the shores of the great rivers, not many miles from their mouths. All that vast territory east of the Hudson River, from the St. Lawrence down to the northern boundary of Connecticut, was uninhabited by natives because of their dread of the Mohawks.

The politics of the New England Indians was simple and

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primitive. A hereditary sachemdom was the only authority recognized by them. The power of the sachem was absolute, but when a matter of more than ordinary importance arose, he consulted with the Pansies, who were braves chosen for their prominence in war, cunning and speechmaking. The real power of the sachem depended much upon his personal character and magnetism.

Their religion gave them many gods but they believed in one great spirit, called Kiehtan, the creator of the world and the spirit into whose presence the souls of good Indians went after death. He was the spirit of the " happy hunting ground ". Hobbamock, their devil, was the source of all evil. As fear was more powerful with them than love, Hobbamock received the majority of their prayers and offerings. Besides these two chief gods, there were many of a local nature, that is, whose powers or dominion were local, who were known by the collective name of Manitou. The spirits known as Manitou controlled thought, the sentiments of love and hate and the different functions of the body; they were spirits of the woods and fields, of the hunt. In fact, whenever anything took place which they could not understand they would say, " Manitou ", meaning- it is a god. Especially fine qualities of character or of personal appearance in men, beasts, birds and fish they regarded as a god. The ships, clothing, arms, agricultural implements, books and writing of the first white men they called Manitouwock, meaning they are gods. The worship of the good-god, Kiehtan, was by thanksgiving for favors received; the worship of the devil, Hobbamock, was of a flattering nature in the hope that the evil he could do would not be done, so it was to him that all their prayers and sacrifices were offered. In their sacrifices to the god, the Indians differed strikingly from many Christians; who drop a nickel into the contribution plate so that it will have the rattle of a silver quarter; for they gave their most valued and cherished belongings and gave them cheerfully. They believed that when thieves, liars and murderers applied to Kiehtan for admission he would turn them away as there was no room for them and so they were obliged to wander forever in misery, hunger and poverty. This was the Indian's hell.

The New England Indians placed their heaven — the abode of Kiehtan — in the south-west, and what could have been more natural? They knew that the bitter wind and the freezing cold

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came from the north; the damp, chilly, piercing wind from the east, but from the south-west came a sweet-scented, warm, life-giving breeze that could only originate in a blessed country. That there were earnest, faithful Indians as honestly devoted to the only religion of which they had any knowledge as were the Puritans to the religion of Christ, the early white settlers knew. Old Mamoosun, of the Mattabesetts, was a striking example of the just Indian. He surely deserved to journey to that fair country in the south-west, where all that was perfect for Indian happiness existed.

As a rule the " River Indians " as they were called by the settlers, and the settlers lived in peace and neighborliness. It was not unusual for an Indian and a settler to hunt together, nor for the Indian to share his food and shelter with the white man who had neither. And on their part, the settlers of the Connecticut Valley dealt honestly with the Indians. Their lands were bought and paid for. If the religion of the English did not appeal to the Indian, the lives and example of the former had their influence upon him. One thing the people of the Connecticut Valley and in fact, all New England, can boast of is, that their ancestors, the early settlers, did not deliberately debase the Indians to a lower level than that upon which Nature placed them, by forcing rum upon them in trade for pelts so that the half drunken savage would sell his stock for more rum, at an infinitesimal portion of its real value, as did the Dutch of the Hudson and Mohawk Valleys.

INDIAN CHARACTER.

The first settlers, as a class, regarded the Indians as heathen;

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barbarians, without the germ of virtue. That there were very many of them who were devout and faithful followers of the only religion of which they possessed any knowledge, did not appeal to the early settlers. They were not Christians and above all, they cared nothing for Congregationalism and would have none of it. Forgetting that they, themselves, had been more than thirteen hundred years in arriving at the somewhat primitive ideas of the simple principles taught by the founder of Christianity, they regarded the Indians as hopeless heathen because they refused to give up, at command, the picturesque, symbolical religion they had inherited for more centuries than Christianity was centuries old. Their tenacity in regard to their ancient faith; their unwillingness to resign it, the moment that one or another Congregational minister told them they should; did not seem to the early settlers an admirable quality.

They had left Great Britain and had come to a wilderness because they would not submit to being told by men how they should or should not worship God. They were proud of their courage and determination in this respect and the world is even more proud of them and that which they accomplished, but they condemned the Indians to walk for eternity through the streets of that hell which Jonathan Edwards paved with infants' skulls, because they would not submit to being told by men how they should or should not worship Kiehtan, " The Great Spirit ". So the Indian was damned by the early religious writers.

If the early writer, who gave an opinion of the Indians, was a hunter and trapper, he had no use for them, for they were skilful rivals; if he happened to be a military man, he had no use for them, because of the trouble they caused and because they presumed to fight for what they believed to be their rights; for their hunting grounds; their children and their wigwams. If the writer happened to be an official of the colony, or a man of law, he had no use for the Indians, because they refused to acknowledge any man-made regulation which interfered with their inherent rights. So, when the poor Indian died he found himself so thoroughly damned by all classes and conditions of his white Christian brothers, that even Kiehtan was powerless to guide his weary feet off from that pavement made of the smooth, polished skulls of his white, Christian brothers' infants.

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About two hundred years after the first settlements were made, a small class of champions of the Red-man came into existence, whose mawkish sentimentality was great. Their writings were as far from the truth as were the unjust, general condemnation of the earlier writers. The result is, that not only has the Indian been robbed of his home and his very existence, by civilization, but of his character — good or bad — as well, by his would-be civilizers.

Two examples are given. One by a writer who condemns and the other by one who makes a saint of the Indian. The individual must decide for himself whether the souls of dead Indians are treading for eternity on white infants' skulls, or if they are walking through the lovely valleys and over the beautiful hills, in the abode of Kiehtan: that fair country in the " South-West", where all that is perfect for Indian happiness exists; where the Red infants, with their skulls where Kiehtan placed them, wander about in joyous, delightful abandon, to add to the unspeakable happiness of their parents and be but another evidence of the Great Spirit's love for man.

A point of special interest, connected with our early annals and the incipient fortunes of the settlement, is the character and conduct of the natives of the soil. Most of the recent historical writers push us to the unwelcome opinion that, after all, our high notions about the New England Indians must be a good deal lowered and many of our admirations sacrificed. I is hard for hero worshippers to hear the blows of the iconoclast's hammer upon their idol, and it is hard for everybody to see an ideal vision of honor, courage or genius dispelled. With a pain of this sort we are shown too many reasons to believe that these wild children of the forest, instead of being magnanimous, intrepid, enterprising, intellectual, and reverential, were, to a miserable degree, mean, cowardly, cruel, lazy, filthy, and easily sunk in some disgusting forms of sensuality. Their braves very often turn out to have no other courage than a brutal and revengeful ferocity. The men tyrannized over the women, which is always one of the surest signs of a low nature. Their intelligence was little else than a small species of cunning. The propensities to thieving, treachery and falsehood were a continual disappointment to those who trusted them. Philip himself was wily and cautious rather than heroic, and was not often seen in bold engagements. Instances of cannibalism occurred, at least among the Mohawks (Mohawk means man-eater), for twenty-seven Frenchmen appear to have been roasted and devoured.

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This suggests the query; are the tens of thousands of white Christians who fill the prisons of the world, for wife-beating, theft, treachery, lying, perjury, cruelty and lust, really Indians? It would seem that they must be, or else that the Indians did not have a patent right on the characteristics attributed to them.

Time has shown that the longer their residence in the vicinity of the white man continued, the more vicious and corrupt they became, and that they almost invariably were the object, or subjects of his fraud and imposition. From the first settlement of the whites among them, they have constantly been dwindling in numbers; they continue to be driven farther and still farther toward the setting sun, by the restless flow of emigration and the cupidity of white men; their habits are unsocial and altogether averse to civilized life. An Indian wants no splended mansion, nor elegant furniture, nor bed of down; he will not learn to manufacture a button or a jewsharp, or to drive a team; he wants no workshop, he can "catch no beaver there ". The forest is his home and his delight is in the chase and by the riverside. Nature has so taught him, and before he became contaminated by proximity to, and dealing with the white man, he lived according to his dictates. * * * the besom of destruction is fast sweeping him away from the home of his youth and the grave of his fathers. The white man wants his land, and will have it. Our ancestors denounced the natives as savage barbarians. They committed no offences without provocation, and in the long black catalogue of crimes committed in Christian nations, but few, comparatively, are found to occur among this uncivilized race. Is ingratitude among the number of their sins? The most eminent and glorious examples of the opposite are upon record. Was an Indian ever guilty of suicide, seduction, fraud, scandal, and innumerable other sins ? Did an Indian ever sell wooden nutmegs, cucumber seeds, horn and flints, or powder, under pretence that by planting it would produce its like? While he may take your life in war or torture you as his victim, he would disdain to persecute you for opposing his favorite opinions, to take away your reputation for revenge, to defraud you of your property, which you might value equally with life. The civilized man will exert all the power over you which the law will give him, oftentimes more; and if you stand in his way or incur his resentment, his tender mercies are often cruel compared with the tomahawk, which destroys at a blow and all is over. Subjected as many are to obloquy and the persecutions of society, their death is slow and lingering, while the Indian tortures the body only. There can be little doubt that more acts of cruelty have been committed on this continent by French, Spanish and English or by their instigation, than by the natives. In war or peace; in the midst of change and revolution, near or remote, they have remained, like the Jews, a distinct people and it requires wiser heads than ours to see the justice

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of that policy, which, while it offers home and protection to foreigners of all nations, seems to pursue a system any other than protective of the natives, the rightful inhabitants of the soil. The weak, the defenceless and the poor have ever suffered from the encroachments of the strong, the powerful and the rich, and always will, as poverty is taken as presumptive evidence of want of merit; almost of actual guilt.

The obverse was by the Rev. Dr. F. D. Huntington, professor at Harvard, in 1859. The reverse was by David Willard, the historian of Greenfield, Massachusetts, in 1838. It is as difficult to answer the question, which is the truer picture, as it was to guess, was it the lady or the tiger.

HE Rev. Dr. A. B. Chapin gives the following interesting and valuable information in regard to Indian names of persons and places, in and near the Connecticut Valley, in his history of Glastenbury.

The Indians living on the river were called Quinitikoock, or Qunihtitukqut, signifying those who lived on the Great or Long-river. The word Connecticut, is generally translated Long-river and is derived from Quinih, long; took, or tuk, water, and ut, ock, on, upon, place of. The usage of the Indians in this vicinity, however, seems to imply that they supposed the first part of the compound to be, Quiniqui, great, the name by which it is described in all of our early records. " Great river ", therefore, is simply a translation of the Indian word Connecticut. The original Indian word was spelled in several different ways but all of them giving the same general sound.

The Tribe of Indians called Nipmucks, were those living away from the river. Nip, meaning water or river, and muck, away from.

The Mohegans were the Wolf-tribe. The Rev. Dr. Edwards, who spoke their language with as great fluency as he did English, spelled the word Muhhekaneew, and the name was also spelled, Mohicans and Mahingans.

The Mohawks were Men-eaters, the proper spelling of the word being Mohowaug, moho meaning to eat.

The Pequttoog, or Pequots were the Gray-fox tribe, Pequawus

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meaning Gray-fox. The name of the Indian Wopigwoot, and of his father, Woipeguana, as given by Uncas, in 1679, are evidently from the same root. The Woi seems to be an Indian prefix equivalent to the article the, and Pequana and Pigwoot, are simply different spellings of Pequot. So the name signifies The Gray Fox, or the chief who bore the Gray-fox totem.

The Wonggum Indians, or Wonggunks, were those Indians who lived at the bend of the river, wonkun, meaning to bend and referring to the bend just below Glastenbury, in Portland.

A very common Indian word along the Connecticut River is Hoccanum and a variation of it, Higganurn, the latter being a different way of spelling the word, which means the fishing-place. Higganum is in the north-western corner of Haddam, and Hoccanum ferry crosses the river from the foot of Mount Holyoke to the Northampton meadows.

The meaning of Pyquag, the Indian name for Wethersfield, is uncertain, but it is supposed to mean the place where the Indians held their public games, or possibly the dancing-place. Other ways of spelling the word are found at different places. At Hadley it is, Paquayyag; near Hudson, Paquayag or Paqtiiag. Pauochauog, means, they are playing, or dancing.

The Mattabesick, or Mattabesetts, or Black-hill Indians inhabited Middletown and neighborhood. This word, which was written by Roger Williams, Metewemesick, is derived from Mete-wis, meaning black earth. It is generally supposed that the great chief of the Mattabesetts was named Sowheag, but in fact, this was the name of the sachemdom and not of the sachem, Sowheag meaning, South-country, or kingdom. This great Sachem, whom the white settlers feared, was named Sequasson (or lengthened to Sunckquasson and sometimes shortened to Sequin, or Sequeen) and Dr. Chapin thought this word might be a modification of Sachem. Sequasson means, hard-stone, Sunckquasson, cold-stone, from siokke, hard, and hussum, stone. Giving Sachem its English equivalent, the Indian's full title—Sequasson-Sequin-Sowheag, means, Hard-stone, King-of-the-South-country. Sequasson's son took the name of Manittowese, or Mantowese (from which Montowese, near New Haven, is probably derived) meaning Little-god and his totem was a large bow with arrow, its nock fitted to the string ready for shooting.

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According to Barber, the Indian name for Hartford was Sue- kiag, meaning black-earth, but Dr. Chapin gives other spelling and another name and meaning and says, that there is no positive knowledge as to what the Indian name was. According to this other definition of Dr. Chapin's, the Siccaog Indians lived on a river called Siccanum, but in the absence of all history it is impossible to say what the meaning of the word is. Siccanum may be but a variation of Higganum. Or it may have been made from the compound Siokke, hard, and Namas, fish, meaning hard-fish or clams, the word for clams being Sickissoug. It may have been compounded from Sequi, black, and ake, earth and hence Se-qui-ak, black or rich earth and so Suckiag would be but another way of spelling this latter word given by Dr. Chapin.

The Tunxis Indians were the Crane Indians and they lived on Tunxis Sepus, or Little-Crane-river; Taunck meaning crane, and Sepeose, little-river.

The Poquonnuc, Peconnuc, Pughquonnuc and Pocatonnttc, were those who lived at a battle-field and each of these names is seemingly derived from Pauqua, meaning to destroy, kill, slaughter. The Podunks, were those Indians who lived at the place of fire, or burning; Potaw, meaning fire, and unck, place of. Hence, Potaunck, Potunk, or Podunk.

The word Scantic describes a low, watery country.

Up in the north-east corner of Portland is Mesomersic Mountain, sometimes called, locally, Somersic. This word is from Mishom, meaning great, and sesek and assek, meaning rattlesnake, hence, Mesomersic Mountain is a mountain that is the home of great numbers of rattlesnakes, as indeed it is.

In the eastern portion of Glastenbury, near Diamond Lake, is a hill locally known as Skunkscut, but in early records it was known as Kongscut and was probably derived from Honcksit meaning goose-country, from Honck, meaning a goose (which is the word for the call the wild goose makes while in flight, from which is the old saying, when matters are going well, "everything is lovely and the goose honcks high", not hangs high) and ausit or sit, place or country.

North and west of Diamond Lake is Minnechaug Mountain,

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which means the berry-land, from Minne, berry, and uk, or awk, place. The Pool at Neipseic, as Barber calls it, or Nipsic, near the center of Glastenbury, sometimes locally called " Red-spring", means the place of water, from Nip, water, and sic, place.

The meaning of Uncas in English is Bold, and of Aramamet, who was a son of Uncas', is Dog's-tongue.

The Indians did not have individual names for fixed places. If there were a dozen fishing-places, on as many different rivers, there were a dozen Hoccanums. All places, or natural features, that could be designated by a word or words in their descriptive language, were called by that word or those words. As an instance : the sites of the cities of Albany and Schenectady, New York, were called by the Mohawks, Schenectady. In the days of the Indians the sixteen miles between those cities was a vast pine-plain covered with pine trees. An Indian trail crossed these great pine-plains and the first opening at the east and west ends of the trail was Schenectady which meant " Beyond the Pine-plains ". Thus it is seen, that the Mohawks called two places, but sixteen miles apart, by the same name, as the one word described them both.

AFTER THE SETTLEMENT.

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scarce. The trading posts of New Amsterdam and Fort Orange became permanent settlements when the British superceded the Dutch, and the names of those posts were changed to New York and Albany.

The first white settlement in the Connecticut Valley was made in Wethersfield in 1634, for, when Captain William Holmes, when he sailed up the Connecticut, past the dumb Dutch cannon at Hartford, to Windsor and set up his frame trading house, he did no more than to establish a trading post which, however, became a settlement later.

The Dutch purchased their right to the land from the chiefs of the Pequot Indians. It was but a small area immediately about Dutch Point. The English purchased their right to the land from the Sachems of the Indians who were generally spoken of by the settlers as the River Indians. It was a vast territory. The English claimed the stronger title from the fact that they had purchased from the original owners of the land while the Dutch had purchased from a usurping nation.

The Pequots were a powerful, savage and cruel tribe which had come to the Connecticut from the north-west, in the neighborhood of the Mohawks, of New York, to which tribe it is not improbable that they were related, or at least allied, in times long past. The Pequots became the terror of the southern New England Indians and were regarded as their conquerors. They drove the River Indians from their long-time homes in the valley.

The law-loving, law-making, and law-abiding English, wishing to base their claim to the land upon a deed that would be sustained in law, sent with Captain William Holmes, in his little vessel, to Windsor the Sachems who had been driven out by the Pequots. The English restored the River Indians to their ancient birth-right and then purchased it from them. There was probably no wish to be just in this transaction. It was a matter of shrewd business on the part of the English. The superficial friendship of the River Indians for the English was almost as good business since, without the support of the irresistible wills of the English and their straight shooting firearms, the River Indians would soon again have been reduced to their former abject, homeless state. On the part of the settlers, their intense desire to save the souls of the heathen was gratified to a certain extent

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by the closeness of the Indian village to the white settlement. They felt, that although the Indians generally refused Christianity, some good was accomplished through the example of the whites. And besides this, so long as they maintained a nominal friendship for the settlers, the number of Indian enemies, against whom they must be constantly on the watch, was lessened. But the people were greatly annoyed by these same friendly Indians for they were habitual thieves and once in a while would-be murderers.

OLD SAYBROOK.

The Earl of Warwick, having obtained title to the lands from the Plymouth Company in 1631, granted the same territory, extending from the Narragansett river to the Pacific Ocean (including the lower valley of the Connecticut river and consequently the site of Saybrook), to Lord Say-and-Sele, Lord Brooke, Lord Rich, Sir Richard Saltonstall, John Pym, John Hampden and several other men of birth and position.

This is the generally accepted historical fact as given in the school histories. Professor Alexander Johnston, of Princeton, in his " Connecticut ", one of the American Commonwealth Series, questions the grant from the Plymouth Company to the Earl of Warwick, on the ground that Warwick never exhibited or referred to such grant. He regards it as nothing more than " a quitclaim deed which warrants nothing and does not even assert title to the soil transferred." The actual area of Saybrook was ten miles east and west and about eight north and south.

However that may be, John Winthrop, son of Governor Winthrop, of Massachusetts, was appointed Governor of the Connecticut River and the harbor and places adjoining by the company composed of the noblemen to whom Warwick made his grant, on July 7, 1635. His appointment was for one year from the time he arrived there. On his part, Winthrop agreed to build

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a fort and effect a settlement; to build a fort within the bounds of which should be houses for " men of quality." He was directed to reserve 1,000 or 1,500 acres of fertile land for the maintenance of the fort and its garrison.

Winthrop arrived in Boston in October, 1635, and sent a vessel with twenty men to the mouth of the Connecticut River, where they arrived on November 24, of the same year. The Dutch already had possession, up the river on the site of Hartford,, and were intending to take possession of the month of the river, but the arrival of Winthrop's ship and men prevented it. The territory was taken possession of in the name of Lord Say-and-Sele and the other members of the company, to whom the Earl of Warwick had made the grant. John Winthrop, the Governor, arrived not long after the ship. That the titled proprietors intended their American possessions should be in keeping with their high estate, is shown by the employment of Lion Gardiner, a skilled English engineer, to take charge of the building of the fort and the laying out of the town. And then, later in the year, 300 men were to go to Saybrook from the Old Country; 200 to garrison the fortifications; 50 to make the soil produce food for the community; and 50 to build houses.

That was a bitter winter with intense cold and deep snow, and in the midst of it, in the first week of December, 1635, a number of families; including in all seventy men, women and children; arrived from up the river in the hope of finding at its mouth the long expected and greatly needed provisions that were to come for them from Boston. The provision ship did not arrive, so the needy families were taken on board a vessel, called " Rebecca ", which managed to work its way out of the ice, and carry them back to Boston.

George Fenwick, an English gentleman who was one of the men composing the company and the agent of the company of noblemen to whom the Earl of Warwick granted the property, was the only member of the company to see Saybrook. Lion Gardiner's son David, born 011 November 6, 1636, was the first white child born in the territory now the State of Connecticut. Gardiner was discouraged with the conditions, so, in 1639, he moved to an island at the eastern end of Long Island — which he called Isle of Wight — since known as Gardiner's Island.

The idea in the building of Saybrook seems to have been, a

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considerable area inclosed by fortifications which should contain the residences of the titled proprietors, and that the settlement should be outside of the fortifications. This plan was probably as much to draw the line between " gentle " and " simple ", as for the greater safety of the proprietors. Before the twenty men composing the garrison of the fort had been there a year the Pequot war was upon them. Some of them were killed instantly and others were tortured to death by the Indians. The fort was in charge of Lieutenant Lion Gardiner.

Fenwick, the agent of the company, had returned to England

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only resident member of the Company, Fenwick took upon himself the rights and authority of governor. Saybrook remained alone and independent till December, 1644, when Mr. Fenwick sold to the Hartford Colony the fort at Saybrook, by agreement in December, 1644, with the General Court. Fenwick was elected a magistrate. Lady Fenwick died in 1646, after the birth of their daughter Dorothy. Fenwick became discouraged and disheartened in regard to the Colony and believing that assistance was needed from home, he sailed for England. There he was commissioned a colonel in the army of Parliament; was elected a member of that body but was excluded, as Cromwell was not satisfied with him. George Fenwick's death occurred in 1657.

The fort was destroyed by fire in 1647, and the new one was built nearer the river. How Andross came to this fort, which was in command of Captain Thomas Bull, with a demand that it be delivered to him, and how Captain Bull prevented it, diplomatically and without violence, are matters of Colonial politics which really have no place here.

The founding of Yale College was not an afterthought to the original colonists, since it may be traced back with a certain degree of confidence to the leaders of the New Haven Colony, among whom John Davenport was conspicuous * * *. It is true in fact that a little before the beginning of the last century (before 1700) there was a movement in Connecticut toward the establishment of a college, in which were conspicuous five clergymen whose parishes were all on the coast from New Haven to Stratford. These clergymen counseled freely with certain Massachusetts gentlemen, probably for the purpose of ascertaining what was the best method to secure a trustworthy act of incorporation or organization. Very soon after, as we know, there was a meeting of seven clergymen, as it is supposed, in Branford, each of whom, as the tradition goes, and we trust the tradition in this case, made a gift of books saying: " With these books I lay the foundation of a college in this colony ". By their deed of gift these persons invested something in the enterprise, and thereby qualified themselves to appear as petitioners for the assurance of certain corporate rights. In response to their petition a charter was obtained, sometimes called the old charter of Yale College, and on the 9nth of

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November, 1701, seven of the trustees who were constituted by this act a corporate body, met at Saybrook and the organization took place at Say-brook on the 22d of November, 1701. The fact cannot be questioned that Yale College was founded under its charter in Saybrook * * *. Now, why was Saybrook selected? I think it was in part accidental; and can be, perhaps, more or less satisfactorily explained. In the first place it may be supposed that possibly the pastor of the church in Saybrook may have had some influence in locating the college here. Perhaps it was because the place was thought to be very easy of access, by the river from the north and by the shore from the east and west. Perhaps it was owing to the fact that the future rector had probably been fixed on, who lived near

this place * * *. It may be, also, that some who were active behind the scenes thought that it would not do to designate New Haven as the place lest they might awaken the somewhat sensitive feelings of the people at Weathersfield and Hartford. As between the claims of all these rivals, it is not surprising that Saybrook was selected. At the time of the founding the college owned no property and had no endowment, but Nathaniel Lynde, of Saybrook, gave to the institution the use of a house and land, so long as the col-

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lege remained In Saybrook. After its removal to New Haven the property reverted to him. The Rev. Abraham Pierson, of Killingworth, was chosen as the rector of the new institution.

The first work of the new college was the granting of degrees and although the college had no students, the first commencement was held in 1702, and degrees were conferred upon five graduates of Harvard College. Thus, Yale at the beginning was an examining body, with right and power to confer degrees in very much the same way the universities of the " Old Country "were doing. Daniel Hooker, son of the Rev. Samuel Hooker, of Farmington, was the first tutor appointed and the first graduate was John Hart, also of Farmington, who became the minister of the Church in East Guilford. He entered, at what corresponded to the beginning of the junior year, and received his degree in 1703.

In 1714, there were large contributions of books sent to Say-

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brook and Jeremiah Dummer, the agent of the Colony in England, secured 700 volumes in England from eminent writers there. The last commencement held in Saybrook was that of 1716, as a result of a desire on the part of the trustees to move the college further west, to be nearer the center of the much larger population in that direction, which included the settlements, towns and cities in New York and New Jersey. The trustees voted in the proportion of five to two, that if the college was moved at all, it should be located in New Haven, but before any definite steps were taken the trustees decided to ascertain which of the three places, wishing to be the home of the college, would give the largest sum of money to it. New Haven raised £2,000; Say-brook, £1,400 and Hartford, notwithstanding its wealth, gave little or nothing. The trustees met in adjourned session in New Haven, on October 17, and argued the matter for a week. The arguments in favor of New Haven were, that it had promised

the greatest sum of money; that its location was such that it would attract more students and that it was nearer the more populous districts in the west. The final vote resulted in the residents of Wethersfield and Hartford voting against New Haven and the five other trustees voting for New Haven.

Two years were then spent in wire-pulling by representatives of other places which wanted the college, but the trustees remained steadfast to their decision. The matter was finally determined by the approval of the people at large, a small appro priation from the State and by the holding of a commencement in New Haven. The trustees then fixed the matter by proceeding to the erection of a building.

The Hon. Elihu Yale, the patron and friend of the University bearing his name, was born in New Haven Colony on April 5, 1648. He was descended from an ancient and wealthy Welsh family, which possessed for many generations the Manor of Plas Grannow and considerable other real estate near the city of Wrexham. His father, Thomas Yale, Esq., came to America with the first settlers of the New Haven Colony, in 1638.

At the age of ten, Elihu was sent back to England to be educated in one of the great public schools (Eaton?) and Oxford University. At the age of thirty he went to the East Indies, where he accumulated a great estate. He was appointed Governor of St. George and married the wealthy widow 'of his predecessor, Governor Hinmers. They had three daughters. Katherine married Dudley North, commonly called Lord North; Ann married Lord Jarnes Cavendish, uncle of the Duke of Devonshire; Ursula died a spinster. After his return to London he was made Governor of the powerful East India Company, when he began his donations to the College, or the Collegiate School, as it was then called.

His particular interest in the Collegiate School was brought about by the son of a cousin. The paternal estate in Wales being entailed by the law of primo geniture, he, having only daughters, sent a request to his counsin John Yale, of New Haven, that he send one of his sons that he, Elihu, might make him his heir. John sent his son David to London and later, when David returned to New Haven, he entered Yale and was graduated in the class of 1724. This occasioned a correspondence

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between Governor Yale, Governor Saltonstall and the Rev. James Pierpont, of New Haven.

Forty of the volumes obtained in England by Mr. Dummer in 1714 were the gift of Governor Yale. This was two years before the School was moved from Saybrook. Forty books do not seem like a very valuable gift in these days, but it must be remembered that in those days, books were very expensive; that books were what the School was greatly in need of and had not the money to purchase. The next donation was of three hundred volumes, which, with the forty, were valued by President Clapp at £100 Sterling. Then followed a gift of goods valued at £200, and the King's picture and arms and three years later more goods were sent, which, with the previous lot, were sold by the College authorities for L400. To quote from President Clapp's history of Yale, published in 1766:

On September 12, 1718, there was a splendid commencement (that important event in undergraduate life being held in the autumn then) held at New Haven, where were present, besides the trustees, the Honorable Gurdon Saltonstall, Esq., Governor of the Colony of Connecticut, the Honorable William Taylor, Esq., representing Governor Yale, the Honorable Nathan Gold, Esq., Deputy Governor, sundry of the worshipful assistants, the Judges of the Circuit, a great number of reverend ministers, and a great concourse of spectators. The trustees, in commemoration of Governor Yale's great generosity, called the collegiate school after his name, Yale College; and entered a memorial thereof upon record, which was as follows:

The trustees of the Collegiate School, constituted in the splendid town of New Haven, in Connecticut, being enabled by the most generous donation of the Honorable Elihu Yale, Esq., to finish the college house already begun arid erected, gratefully considering the honor due to such and so great a benefactor and patron, and being desirous, in the best manner, to perpetuate to all ages the memory of so great a benefit, conferred chiefly on this colony: We, the trustees, having the honor of being entrusted with an affair of so great importance to the common good of the people, especially of this province, do with one consent agree, determine and ordain, that our college house shall be called by the name of its munificent patron, and shall be named Yale College; that this province may keep and preserve a lasting monument of such a generous gentleman, who by so great a benevolence and generosity, has provided for their greatest good, and the peculiar advantage of the inhabitants, both in the present and future.

(It is a matter for congratulation that this "college house", Yale's first building, was not standing when the twentieth cen-

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tury began for, had it been, there would have been Vandals who would have torn it down to make room for another architectural excrescence, similar to the one which deprived old Yale-men of one of their happiest memories, by crowding the " Fence " off the face of the earth.)

It does not require an unusually vivid imagination to produce a mental picture of the joyousness of that famous Commencement Day of 187 years ago, which was the birthday of " Old Eli," nor of the devout thankfulness to the Giver of all Good, on the part of the earnest, self-sacrificing trustees and friends of the College, that at last their " college house " could be finished and the College placed upon a firm financial foundation.

The memorial quoted above was read in Latin and then in English and then the procession left college hall and marched to the meeting-house where the public exercises of the day were to take place. The Rev. John Davenport delivered an oration, which became a panegyric, with Governor Elihu Yale as its subject. He was followed by Governor Saltonstall who delivered an oration in Latin, or, as President Clapp floridly and quaintly said:

And the Honorable Governor Saltonstall was pleased to grace and crown the whole solemnity with an elegant Latin oration, wherein he congratulated the present happy state of the College, in being fixed at New Haven, and enriched with so many noble benefactions; and particularly celebrated the great generosity of Governor Yale, with much respect and honor.

It was understood that Governor Yale had drawn a will leaving another donation of £500 to the College; that he finally decided it would be better to give that sum rather than leave it by will, so he packed goods to the value of £500 to be sent to New Haven, but his death occurring before they were shipped the College was the loser. Although Governor Saltonstall tried all means to have the will probated he was unsuccessful.

Elihu Yale died on July 8, 1721, and was buried in the church yard in Wrexham. The epitaph on his tombstone is as follows:

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Under this tomb lyes interred Elihu Yale, of Plas Gronow, Esq.: born 5th of April, 1648, and dyed the 8th of July, 1721, aged 73 years.

Up to 1708, the system of Church government in Connecticut was based upon the Cambridge Platform, which was adopted by the Churches of New England at the start, but later the Connecticut Churches adopted a system of government at Saybrook, known as the Saybrook Platform.

In 1668, the General Court authorized the Revs. James Fitch, of Norwich; Gershom Bulkley, of Wethersfield; Jared Eliot, of Guilford; and Samuel Wakeman, of Fairfield, each of them representing the four counties of the Colony respectively, to meet in Saybrook to fix upon a general plan of church government and discipline for the Churches of Connecticut. In 1703, the Collegiate School authorities issued a circular requesting the Churches and their ministers to meet. They did so and gave consent to the Westminster and Savoy Confessions and also formulated rules for ecclesiastical union and discipline.

For the third time, on September 20, 1708, a solemn meeting of twelve of the foremost Congregational ministers and four of the most prominent laymen, was held in Saybrook to take action in regard to Church government and other church matters. This meeting was held at a commencement of the Collegiate School, as Yale was then called, at least half of the delegates being- trustees of that institution. These delegates were:

From New Haven County — the Rev. Samuel Andrew, minister of the Milford Church; the Rev. James Pierpoint, minister of the First Church of New Haven; and the Rev. Samuel Russell, minister of the Branford Church.

From Hartford County — the Rev. Timothy Woodbridge, minister of the First Church in Hartford; the Rev. Noadiah Russell,

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minister of the First Church in Middletown; the Rev. Stephen Mix, minister of the Wethersfield Church; and John Haynes, of Hartford, messenger.

From New London County — the Rev. James Noyes, minister of the Stonington Church; the Rev. Thomas Buckingham, minister of the Saybrook Church; the Rev. Moses Noyes, minister of the First Church of Lyme; the Rev. John Woodward, minister of the First Church of Norwich; Robert Chapman and Deacon William Parker, of Saybrook, messengers.

In 1708, there were no wheeled vehicles for traveling — that was all done on horseback — and these men made the long journey from their homes to Saybrook on horseback through the wilder

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ness, or by canoe from Hartford, Wethersfield and Middletown. Neither this Council, nor the Saybrook Platform, had anything to do with settling points of doctrine, but both had to do with devising a general plan of Church government and discipline. That, in fact, was the Saybrook Platform. There were, in 1708, forty-one Congregational Churches in the Colony of Connecticut, with but two Churches of any other denomination — a Baptist Church in Groton and an Episcopal Church in Stratford, both of which came into existence in 1707. The next denomination to have a Church was the Presbyterian, in 1723, and the next was the Methodist, in 1789, after the formation of the State. Therefore, the Council represented the sentiment of almost the entire population of the Colony of Connecticut.

That the Congregational Church in Connecticut was in perfect doctrinal harmony with the reformed Churches of Great Britain and the Continent, was shown in the eighth article of agreement. This is:

As to what appertains to soundness of judgment in matters of faith, we esteem it sufficient that a Church acknowledge the Scriptures to be the Word of God, the perfect and only rule of faith and practice, and we own either the doctrinal part of those commonly called the Articles of the Church of England, or the Confession or Catechism, shorter or larger, compiled by the Assembly at Westminster, or the Confession agreed on at Savoy, to be agreeable to this rule.

Each of the four counties represented in the convention drew up a model for the articles of discipline. The model, principally draughted by the Rev. James Pierpoint, of New Haven, was amended and passed. The articles provided for one or more consociations of Churches in each county, which were tribunals with appellate and final jurisdiction. To these individual Churches referred matters considered to be too serious for one Church to decide; also for associations in each county, composed of teaching elders or ministers, who had the general welfare of the Churches in mind; examined candidates for the ministry; investigated charges of scandal or heresy; recommended ministers to Churches without them. The associations met at least twice a year.

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A General association composed of one or more delegates from each county association; this was an advisory body, whose duties were not fixed by the Platform.

The result of the deliberations of the Convention was reported to the General Court and that body made the Congregational Church, the Established Church of the Colony of Connecticut, all other denominations being considered as dissenters. It is a significant fact of great interest, that the first book ever printed in Connecticut was The Saybrook Platform. This was printed in 1710, in New London, by Thomas Short, on a printing press given to the Colony by Governor Saltonstall. It was significant in that it showed how closely the first literature of the Colony, as well as the Colonial Government, was interwoven with Congregationalism.

While the Government of the Colony, through its Established Church, did not attempt to dictate to the people of the Colony in what manner they should worship — the law being the same in the New England Colony of Connecticut, as it was in Old England, in regard to Dissenters, under the act of William and Mary in 1689 — it did require all citizens to help support the Established Congregational Church. There was no other punishment for not being a Congregationalist than this. In 1727, Episcopalians and in 1729, Baptists, were exempted from being taxed for the support of the Congregational Churches, provided they attended a Church of their own denomination.

The way in which individuals could avoid the Established Church tax was accomplished by what was called, " signing off ".

According to tradition, an influential citizen becoming somewhat tired of paying the tax to the Church, went to the proper official to sign the required paper which would release him from further paying the Church tax, but the clerk refused to draw the paper on account of the prominence of the citizen and his value to the Church. So he drew the document himself and being somewhat heated by the refusal, mixed a bit of biting sarcasm in his declaration that:

I hereby renounce the Christian religion that I may join the Episcopal Church.

But even this " signing off " was not permitted to Congrega-

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tionalists and Presbyterians. If members of those churches wished to withdraw and worship by themselves, they were still required to pay the tax for the support.of the Church from which they withdrew. Freedom of worship for the Strict Congregationalists, or " Separatists ", as they were also called, was a rather expensive luxury for they were obliged by law to continue to pay the Church tax and, of course, they were obliged to help support their own Churches. Many of the Strict Congregationalists became Baptists as a result of the law.

While the New World was settled by those who desired " Freedom-of-Worship ", the weakness of human nature was frequently shown in those early days, by the persecution of individuals whose freedom of worship was outside of the Congregational Church. A particular case illustrates this.

Two students at Yale College, in 1744, John Cleveland and his brother Ebenezer Cleveland, were charged with the heinous offence of attending another Church than the Congregational, while at home in vacation time. When they returned to College they were suspended till they had confessed. As they refused to do so, they were expelled and their fellow students were forbidden from associating with them, or even speaking to them, for fear they too should become corrupted.

In the Revolution, Saybrook did its full share with the other towns of the Colony. But more than this, Saybrook will go down to the end of time, historically, as being the place where the first attempt to produce a submarine torpedo boat was made. Although the attempt was not an entire success, the fact still remains, that the Adam of the successful submarine war vessels of the twentieth century was the turtle-like torpedo boat invented by David Bushnell, of Saybrook.

In the autumn of 1776, the ship " Oliver Cromwell " was built in Saybrook and successfully launched and ably commanded by Azariah Whittlesey. In that year Captain Seth Warner, who stood second in command to that other grand patriot, Ethan Alien, the commander of the feared Green Mountain Boys, was authorized to raise no men for duty on the northern lakes, and was provided with money and given a commission.

In April, 1777, David Bushnell, who was born in the Parish,

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now the Town of Westbrook, informed the Governor and Council that he had a plan for blowing the entire British Navy on the American coast, out of water. The Governor and Council provided every necessity for the construction and trial of the great invention. Building operations were begun at the " Ferry ", Mr. Bushnell having first proved that gun powder could be exploded under water.

The Connecticut coast was more or less troubled with Tories, who gave comfort and assistance to the British ships on Long Island Sound, by furnishing- them with supplies. This was particularly true of the settlements and villages on the lower Connecticut and especially at its mouth, where the Tories tried to run contraband out to the ships in the sound. But Saybrook slept with one eye open and the other eye on the watch. The Rev. John Edward Bushnell, minister of the Fairfield Congregational Church — but a native of Old Saybrook — gave so delightfully

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humorous an account of, " Saybrook's only sanguinary battle of the Revolution ", in his address at the Quadrimillenial celebration of Saybrook, that it is quoted here:

A mass of contraband articles, had been taken from the Tories, and a young man —William Tully —was set to watch it, in the house formerly owned by Captain John Whittelsey, still standing at the Point. On a certain night, eight Tories came to the house and demanded entrance. Tully begged to be excused from opening the door. They broke in without further parley and rushed forward. Tully's flint was faithful to the trip of the hammer and struck fire. The musket ball passed through the first man, and to Tully's surprise he still advanced, but the man directly back of him dropped dead. Tully then surrounded the other six men and would have incontinently put them all to the bayonet (and did wound one of them) had they not contrived to escape by the windows. The first man whom Tully shot finally found that the ball had passed through him, for he dropped dead, with one hand on the window and the other grasping a chest of tea. The retreating forces left a quarter of their number dead on the field — or floor — and a quarter of the remaining were carried

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away wounded in their friends' arms. It is, perhaps, noteworthy that the continental army did not lose a man.

The Tories were at another time routed by one man, this time Charles Williams. He was on the watch for Tories at the Point. One night he heard the grating of boats on the beach and suspecting them to be filled with Tories, he ran out and in a loud voice, ordered the guards to turn out. The Tories, not knowing that the guard consisted of but one man, pushed off and escaped from " that wretched Rebel ".

Of the many somewhat visionary, or entirely imaginative accounts of treasure possessed by Kidd, the famous, or infamous pirate, the following is reliable for its accuracy. It was told to John W. Barber, author of Connecticut Historical Collections, by John G. Gardiner, of Gardiner's Island, about 1837. Mr. Gar-diner obtained his information from a letter belonging to Mrs. Wetmore, who was the mother-in-law of Captain Mather, of New London, commander of a revenue cutter. Mrs. Wetmore says in her letter:

I remember when very young, hearing my mother say that her grandmother was wife to Lord Gardiner when the pirate came to Gardiner's Island. The Captain wanted Mrs. Gardiner to roast him a pig; she being afraid to refuse him, cooked it very nice, and he was much pleased with it; he then made her a present of this silk (cloth of gold) which she gave to her two daughters. The following is an extract from an account of property belonging to Kidd and captured from him in 1699, by order of the Earl of Bellmont, captain general and governor in chief over the province of Massachusetts Bay:

Gold dust . ................................................. 145 ozs.
Gold bars . . ................................................ 591.75 ozs.
Gold coin . . ............................................... 11.75 ozs.
Silver, broken . ............................................. 173.75 ozs.
Silver coin . ................................................ 124 ozs.
Silver bars . ................................................ 309 ozs.
Silver lamps and buttons, silver rings and a bag of gems. Mrs. Wet-more's letter continues:

Captain William Kidd was commander of the sloop Antonio; received a commission to cruise as a privateer, turned pirate, was guilty of murder — was taken, and carried into Boston; was tried, condemned and exe-

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cuted —not as a privateer — but as a murderer. He was here with his accomplices a short time before he was taken; how long he remained on this Island I know not. While here, he told Mr. Ga.rdiner where he had deposited the iron chests, which contained the treasure above described and left it in his care, with the injunction, that he must answer for it with his head. The chests were buried in a swamp on the west side of the island. There has been much digging here upon this island for Kidd's money, all along the coast. But I think it is doubtful whether there was ever any buried except that which was buried here.

NTIL its incorporation in 1840, Westbrook was a parish in the Town of Saybrook. It was incorporated as a distinct parish in 1724. From the great quantity of clam and oyster shells as well as stone implements, it is evident that the neighborhood of the village was for centuries a permanent village of Indians. The large number of half finished, and fragments, of arrow and spear heads that are still being found, to the east of the river near what is locally known as Round Hill, causes the belief that it was an Indian village for centuries. These fragments and partially finished specimens suggest, that they were made there and it is thought by some authorities on Indian archaeology, that arrow heads were made only at permanent settlements. The operation was of a semi-religious nature and the arrow head makers were nearly equal to the medicineman in the estimation of the tribe. The Indians who lived on the shore at Westbrook, when the first settlements by the English were made, were subject to, or a part of the Pequot Tribe. After the extermination of that tribe by the settlers, in 1637, they disappeared from West-brook. The Indians living at Westbrook, after that place was settled, were a small branch of the Nehantic Tribe, from Rhode Island. They disappeared some time during King Philip's War, in 1675 or '76. The Indian names for the territory now included in Westbrook were Menunketeset (a word that was spelled in every conceivable way in the old records) and Pochoug, which are still retained in Patchogue River and Menunketesuck Point and River.

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According to Barber, Westbrook was settled in 1664. Among the earlier settlers of Saybrook who had received grants of land, or had made purchases in Westbrook, where the Chapmans, Fitches, Bulls, Jacksons, Duncks and Chalkers. Olin Chalker and two brothers built three houses on the little hill at the foot of which is a brook crossing the road, which is the dividing line between Saybrook and Westbrook. The oldest of three houses Is on the south side of the road, but it has been so modernized that it has no appearance of age. Directly opposite, is another house that has been abandoned for many years, and it is in a most picturesque state of ruin. It is almost impossible to look at it without regret for it suggests " home " and happiness and hospitality, surrounded as it is with a wild, tangled growth of old-time flowers, shrubs and trees, and its well-sweep going to decay, while the other two are simply commonplace farmhouse of the present-time.

In 1648, Saybrook divided the out-lying lands into quarters and that designated in the records as Oyster River Quarter included nearly all of Westbrook (and much more), so the record of this division of the wild lands is the first definite reference to the territory that is now Westbrook.

Mr. James A. Pratt, in his history of Westbrook, says that a few individual pioneers settled on the flats along the shore as early as 1650.

In the distribution of the land to the original proprietors, there were nooks and corners having no value then, because of lack of fertility or remoteness. That there was no particular claim to them, or dispute as to ownership, resulted eventually in their being regarded as a sort of no-man's-land. But as time passed and these pieces of land were occupied by outsiders, they beeran to have a value in the estimation of their actual owners. The first and second school-houses, and the first church and the parsonage, were built upon such land. This appropriation of their land alarmed the proprietors. The result was, that a Proprietors' Committee came into existence in 1723, and the General Court passed an act that common or undivided land, not disposed of by the free consent of the original proprietors, could be claimed by them as a part of their estate. The same act

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authorized the proprietors to appoint a committee and clerk to act as their agents, with power to dispose of common or undivided land. This committee continued till 1838, when Jonathan Lay was the last surviving member and Jared Platt the last clerk.

Like the other shore and river towns, Westbrook had its active and prosperous ship-building days, which continued for many years after the industry had ceased in the river towns.

The first grist-mill was built by Lieutenant Samuel Jones sometime before 1690. A few years later the Grinells put up a windmill, not far from where the Congregational Church now stands. It was moved to the hill behind the church, where it could get more wind, and it remained there till 1800. There was a sawmill, in 1748, on Falls River on Samuel Wright's land. It was jointly owned by Wright, Benjamin Jones, Thomas Bushnell, and Nathaniel Chapman, who took turns in using it for their own sawing, three days in each year. Before 1700, there was an ironworks at Pond Meadow, where ore obtained in Mine Swamp was smelted and made into about everything necessary to the settlers, from anchors down to nails.

For sixty years the earnest, noble men and women traveled on foot, on horseback and later, in rude carts, all the way to Old Saybrook to worship and hear the Divine commands and promises explained by their minister. In summer the journey was hard enough, but in winter, through deep snows, with an all-day service in a cold church, it was a very different matter.

In 1724, Westbrook had a population of 225 persons divided among 38 families. Their number and the distance necessary to go to attend Church, determined them to apply for permission to separate themselves from the Saybrook society. A public meeting was held on April 13, 1724, when the people of Old Saybrook agreed, not to oppose the desire of the Westbrook portion of the society, for a separation, with a society of their own. It was agreed, that until the Westbrook people had a minister of their own, they should continue to pay their portion of the expense in maintaining a minister over the Old Saybrook society.

On May 13, 1724, a petition was sent to the Legislature, in Hartford, asking that Westbrook be made a separate society.

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This petition was signed by Samuel Chapman, James Post, and William Stannard. The petition was granted, and on May 28, 1724, the First Society of Westbrook was formed with Captain Samuel Chapman, as moderator.

Immediate action was taken to secure a minister and in August, of the same year, the Rev. William Worthington was engaged at a salary of £50 and fire wood. In December, of the same year, the society voted to build a parsonage, but the minister was required to provide the glass and nails. The little community had already been at considerable expense, so the proposal to build a church seemed beyond their means. In order that money for this purpose might be obtained, they asked the Legislature to free them from paying the Colony tax for a period of three or four years. This was in the spring of 1725. Their request was refused and a similar request, made in October of that year, was also refused, but the Legislature granted them permission to form a Church and to settle an orthodox minister, with the consent of the neighboring Churches. On June 29, 1726, the Church was organized with the following members; Captain Samuel Chapman, Abraham, James and John Post; Jared and Thomas Spencer ; Margaret Chapman, Lydia Grenil, Sarah Spencer, Mary Lay, Mary Denison, Sarah P>rooker, and Mary Waterhouse.

Captain Chapman was a grandson of the settler, Robert Chapman, and the son of Robert, Junior, who was one of the messengers from New London County to the convention which drew and adopted the Saybrook Platform. Abraham Post was a grandson of Stephen Post the settler, and Lydia (Peabody) Grenil was a granddaughter of John Alden and the charming Priscilla, whom he courted for another man and won for himself.

In January, 1726, the people voted to build a meeting-house, but it was several years before the church was completed. This delay was, seemingly, not the result of indifference or procrastination, but of lack of money. The slow progress of the steps taken toward the building show this. On Christmas, 1727, a committee was appointed to secure sleepers and underpinning; in May, 1728, another committee was appointed to place the sleepers, and still another for procuring glass and lead, and so on for a year or two longer. In 1730, the pulpit was built and

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the lower seats put in place; in 1733, the pulpit was provided with cushions; the plastering was finished; steps were made and placed in front of the door and the doors were hung on hinges and provided with means of fastening. In 1738, the galleries were finished and nothing more, in the way of work, was done till 1763, when one side and two ends were covered with oak clapboards, which were painted a sky-blue, and window frames, with sashes furnished with glass, were put in. In 1794, the queer old square pews, with seats around the four sides, were replaced with straight pews. This church, begun in 1727, and standing for so much sacrifice, hope and determination, was taken down one hundred years later, in 1828, and a new church was built -upon its site. In 1860, the second church was removed and the third built on the same site and being burnt in 1892, a fourth church was built upon the same site around which were so many precious memories.

The great number of years in which the first two ministers were in charge was quite typical of early New England. The Rev. William Worthington was born in Colchester, was graduated from Yale in the class of 1716, and was minister of the Westbrook Church for thirty-two years. The Rev. John Devotion was a graduate of Yale in the class of 1754, and minister of the Church for forty-five years.

Westbrook was the home of the inventor of that most feared naval weapon of the twentieth century, the sub-marine torpedo boat and the fact that David Bushnell, the inventor, was born in Westbrook, will make that town notable for all time.

It is an odd fact that that notorious appropriator of other men's ideas, Robert Fulton, who robbed John Fitch of the credit which he earned and deserved, also appropriated the ideas of David

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Bushnell, but did not succeed in robbing him of the credit and honor due him and his memory.

David Bushnell was born in 1742, on his father's farm which was located away from the more thickly settled portion of West-brook. At the age of twenty-seven, David's father died and while his loss was great, the death of his father proved to be a great gain to the world, for David's sense of duty was such that had his father lived, he probably never would have left the farm where his services were needed, to obtain the education he so much craved and so, doubtless, would not have thought out sub-marine navigation.

After his father's death, David disposed of the farm. At a time when boys of but fourteen were entering Yale, David, at the age of twenty-seven, prepared for Yale under the instruction of the Rev. John Devotion, the minister of Westbrook, in two years. It is probable that the idea of sub-marine explosions occurred to him while an undergraduate for, when he was graduated in 1775, he began his experiments.

The first step was to prove that gunpowder would explode under water. This was demonstrated with a wooden receptacle filled with powder. The bottle-like receptacle was submerged, with a heavy plank on top and on the plank a hogshead filled with stones, till its top was just above water. The explosion threw stones and bits of wood into the air and demonstrated just what Bushnell believed that it would. He continued his experiments till all possibility of doubt of their success was eliminated, and then began to work out plans for the "American Turtle", as the Adam of sub-marine torpedo boats was called by him.

In April, 1777, Mr. Bushnell informed the Governor and Council that he had a plan by which the entire British navy in American waters could be blown out of water. Governor Trum-bull — Washington's " Brother Jonathan ", who is to-day depicted, with a coat of stars and " pants " of stripes, as the human emblem of Yankee Land — and General Israel Putnam, immediately appreciated, that if Mr. Bushnell's ideas would work the war would soon be a matter of history. They gave him every necessary encouragement and assistance. The construction of the "American Turtle " was begun at the Ferry. The hull was

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in the form of two upper shells of a turtle, one above and the other below inverted. It was seven and a half feet long and probably about the same width and was only large enough to contain the courageous man who was to work it. The supply of air for the " crew " was sufficient to last thirty minutes. The greater portion of the ballast was under the keel and was so arranged that it could be lowered to act as an anchor. The motor was the man inside the boat, who worked the paddles with his feet. It was equipped with a compass, light and barometer, the latter for determining the depth below the surface. The kind of light to be used was a most troublesome matter to determine. With but a limited supply of air a flame could not be considered, for the air would soon be burnt up and the man would be suffocated. Mr. Bushnell's first experiment was with a kind of luminous wood which was satisfactory only if the atmospheric conditions were favorable. As a last resort he wrote to Benjamin Franklin for advice and for information in regard to the use of phosphorus. This was finally decided upon and used with success. In the bottom of the boat was a valve to admit water when it desired to descend below the surface. For returning to the surface, two brass force-pumps were provided for expelling the water. There were windows of heavy glass and ventilators with air pipes reaching to the surface of the water. At the stern, above the rudder, was the magazine. It consisted of two pieces of oak, hollowed, in which were 150 pounds of powder. This magazine was lighter than water so that it would rise against the bottom of the ship to which it was to be fixed. Inside the magazine was a mechanism, arranged to be set to run for any period of time up to twelve hours. When it stopped, a lock resembling a gun lock was sprung and the 150 pounds of powder was exploded.

A brother of David Bushnell was to make the first experiment, but illness prevented, so a sergeant of one of the line regiments was given the hazardous honor. The " Eagle ", one of Lord Howe's ships, of 64 guns, was chosen for the first trial, where she was lying in New York harbor, and General Putnam was on the wharf to witness the attempt. The sergeant tried to fix the screw to the bottom of the ship but did not succeed, as the screw

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came in contact with some iron. The sergeant's lack of experience was the cause of failure. When returning to land he thought he had been sighted by the British, so he cast off the magazine, which was timed to explode in an hour. The mechanism worked and the explosion filled the British with consternation and fear and the atmosphere with flying water. In 1777, Mr. Bushnell, himself, tried to blow up the " Cerberus ", at anchor off New London. The attempt was made from a whale boat and although he did not blow up the man o'war he did destroy a schooner, just astern, that the British had captured. The sailors on the schooner seeing the line attached to the magazine, drew it inboard thinking it was a fishing line. When they

drew on board the contrivance at the end of the line their interest was great, but before they could satisfy their curiosity it exploded and killed three men besides destroying the schooner. It seems that Mr. Bushnell had provided for just such an occurrence by placing wheels with iron points, on the outside of the magazine which would be revolved when the magazine was raised from the sea up the side to the deck of the vessel. The revolution of these wheels set the mechanism so that the explosion would take place in five minutes after they began to revolve. Just why the " Turtle " was abandoned, after demonstrating that it would destroy vessels, is uncertain. It had accomplished a great good for the Colonies for the British were terrified. They feared that every object seen floating on the surface was one of those Yankee infernal-machines and, as a

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result, they were not so bold in their naval operations near the coast. Nearly every one is familiar with the historic " Battle of the Kegs " on the Delaware River, and how those same kegs filled the hearts of the bravest Britons with dread; dread of the unknown, which unmans the bravest; dread of what those wretched Yankees might do next by means of BushneH's devilish-inventive genius.

The kegs were arranged with an interior mechanism similar to .that in the magazine of the " Turtle " only, instead of exploding at the end of a fixed time, they were exploded upon coming in contact with a hard object. These kegs were set afloat on the Delaware at night, that they might float down to the British ships and blow them up. It so happened that they first came in contact with the ice floating on the river and were exploded with great violence and noise, blowing up the ice and one British schooner. The explosion sent the British, like hens seeking shelter from hail, wild with terror to every place of safety to be found. They imagined every impossible thing. One of their wildest ideas being that each keg was occupied by a Yankee and that the Rebels were attempting an aqueous version of the Wooden Horse of Troy.

The British were so greatly mortified by their fright, that they offered a reward for David Bushnell, and they did not care whether he should be presented to them in the form of a man or a cadaver. The British did actually obtain possession of Mr. Bushnell without paying the reward, but the same genius which produced the "American Turtle ", helped him to make his escape. After the " Battle of the Kegs ", he joined the Patriot army as a private and was captured in an engagment with the British, and placed on board one of the British frigates, in Boston Harbor. Mr. Bushnell acted the part of a person of weak mind. He was seen, one day, hacking at the rigging with a hatchet and when an officer asked what he was doing, Bushnell replied that he always had to cut the brush and clear the land in the spring. When this was reported to the commander of the ship, he directed that " the fool" should be put ashore. Bushnell and the officer who had him in charge stopped at a

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tavern. While the officer had a drink. Busline!! wrote a note to the commander of the ship telling- him who " the fool " was. The pitiful remnants of the " Turtle " are now in a barn on the Bushnell farm in Westbrook, in possession of one of his descendants. It was all there not so long ago, but parts of it have been stolen or lost.

Tradition gives Jonah Dibble, of Haddam, the credit of being the first settler of Chester, just before 1692, then followed Andrew Warner, of Hadley, in 1696. In the succeeding fifty years families of the names of Parker, Shipman, Waterhouse, Webb, Willard and Southworth, from Saybrook, settled there as did the Canfields and Eetts, from Durham.

Chester was much concerned in the boundary dispute between Saybrook and Haddam, which is mentioned under the caption of Haddam. The Indians too, were much concerned for by the adjustment of the boundary their forty-acre reservation was found to be in Saybrook, instead of Haddam, and the inhabitants of Saybrook were not willing to recognize their rights.

The first record of a transfer of property, within the present bounds of Chester, was a deed given by John and Elizabeth Cullick to John Leverett of Boston, dated 1660. Mrs. Cullick received the property by will from her brother, George Fenwick, the proprietor of Saybrook. The land disposed of by this deed was a part of the Twelve-mile Island Farm. Grants, or sales of land, including 700 acres, were recorded in 1672, to a number of persons, but there is no evidence that any of them settled upon their property.

The gift of Cedar Swamp and its fine water-power to Governor Winthrop, for the benefit of the Colony, in 1663, was the cause

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of more trouble within the bounds of Chester, for Saybrook denied the right of the proprietors to make the grant. John Chapman and John Clark represented Saybrook in the negotiations with Governor Winthrop regarding the property. The Governor relinquished the property to Saybrook, in 1688, with the stipulation, that the timber and land should be sold only to inhabitants of Saybrook. The swamp was divided into lots, running east and west through the swamp, that were from one and a half to twelve rods wide. These were disposed of by sale or gift to inhabitants of Saybrook.

In 1734, the individuals who owned property about Cedar Swamp Pond gave a deed of a narrow strip of land, surrounding the pond, for a nominal sum to Samuel Willard, in appreciation of his services as a surveyor. Mr. Willard already owned considerable land there, which included the outlet of the pond and so, of course, the valuable water-power. His son, George Willard, built the first saw and grist-mills of Chester, on this site. The property was owned by the Willard family for a great many years.

Up to 1729, the inhabitants of Chester attended Church, and paid their portion for the support of the minister of the Church, near Centerbrook, in the present Town of Essex, but in October of that year, they obtained permission to worship at home in the winter months, for four years. This was known as " winter privilege". Two years after the parish was incorporated, on September 15, 1742, the Church was organized, with a membership of twenty-two men and forty-one women and the Rev. Jared Harrison its first minister. The first meeting-house was built in 1743, but it was not finished till 1750 (although it was worshipped in) and even then, the church was never ceiled or plastered, the timbers being left exposed to view. Under the church was an open space where sheep congregated and made such a racket with their bleating that the service was frequently interrupted, till one of the men drove the woolly disturbers away. At different times, beginning with 1773, there was a lack of harmony in the congregation because of a presence of harmony in the choir that was objectionable. This was a " newfangled " style of singing that had been introduced by the

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younger members of the congregation, and was disapproved by the older members. This contest over the harmony of sound, which had caused a discord in the harmony of interests, was anally arranged by permitting the young people to have charge of the singing at one service, each Sunday, for a brief period of time.

The first permanent school was started in 1755. It was under the control of the Church till the school-system was established.

The building of vessels and trade with the West Indies occupied the time of many individuals profitably for a period of about sixty years, which began some twenty years before the Revolution. The principal builders of boats and ships were members of the Leet, Colt, Buck, Stevens, Lord, and Denison families. In the West India trade were Gideon Leet, Jonathan Warner and William Mitchell, they being the merchants doing the greater part of the trade with those islands.

HAT portion of Saybrook which became Essex was called by the Indians Potapaug. It was a very old Indian settlement that occupied the point, that juts into the Connecticut just north of Thatchbed Island, and like all Indian villages it was delightfully situated, in the midst of charming scenery, as well in the midst of a district where game and other animals, valuable for their pelts, were plentiful and where the high nobility of the finny tribe— salmon and shad — could be had almost without effort.

It was on the Potapaug Point where the first English settlers built their houses, and where the business of the place was transacted for many generations. As Essex grew in population the village crept up the steep hill, to the west of the lowland, and the homes that were built upon the face and top of the hill are approached by gently sloping, terraced streets. A walk along these streets more than compensates for the effort, for the view is constantly changing and each new view of the river, the coves, the islands and the Lyme shore, to the east of the river, seems more charming than those just enjoyed. The natural beauties of Essex and neighborhood are great, and the native refinment and hospitality of the people are in keeping.

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Some of the early settlers of Potapaug, between 1690, and 1710, were John Denison, of Stonington; John Starkey, of New London; Charles Williams, of Rhode Island; the Lay and Pratt families from the mouth of the river; the Hayden family, from Dorchester; and the Ay res family, which settled at Ayre's Point about 1710. In 1702, the Rev. Thomas Buckingham settled at Beaver Pond. Fie was one of the incorporators of Yale, and was reputed to be a successful trapper of the valuable beaver, which were found in great numbers on the shores of the pond.

The growth in population of Essex was slow till just before the Revolution, when its ship yards and ropewalk were very busy as were the few merchants, whose storehouses were filled to the eaves. John Tucker began the ship building industry about 1720. From this small beginning there grew up a business so great, that there was a time when thirty vessels of various kinds and tonnage were on the stocks at once in the different yards. One of the ship and schooner builders, who did the most business, was Nehemiah Hayden, in 1742. Uriah Hayden, in 1750.

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was the builder of some of the most famous ships of the Connecticut River, among them being the " Oliver Cromwell ", which is said to be the first man o'war ever owned by the United States. She carried 24 guns and was launched in 1775, for the Colony of Connecticut, but was soon after transferred to the National Government. Richard Tucker and Ebenezer Hayden, also in 1750; Samuel Williams just before the year 1800; Ashabel Pratt, Judea Pratt, Captain Noah Scovill, Amasa Hayden, just after the year 1800; Noah Starkey, Austin Starkey, and David Williams, 1815; Charles Tiley, 1825; R. P. Williams, and David Mack, 1830; and Captain Frank West, and Nehemiah Hayden, 1835. The last named builder launched the " Middlesex ", 1,400 tons, in 1851, the largest ship built at Essex. The Elizabeth Denison, 1,000, was launched by Noah Starkey in 1839. The embargo of 1812 to '14 caused a falling- off in the business, but it increased again and was at the height of its prosperity about 1840. About 1800, the rope walk began operations and did a

large business in making cables, and material for rigging the vessels built in Essex. The old warehouse, shown in the picture, was built by Abner Parker in 1753, but soon after was owned by the Haydens and is still owned by Mr. James Hayden, the grandson of Uriah Hayden. Trade with the West Indies began at about the same time as ship building and continued for more than a century. When the West India trade was the greatest this old warehouse was never empty. It was frequently filled from ground to roof with rum, sugar, molasses and tobacco, to be shipped in small boats up the river, or transported inland in carts. The products of the river settlements and large towns were stored in this building till loaded upon ships and schooners outward bound. Just south of this warehouse is Hayden's wharf, upon which stands an old sail-loft, in which smaller boats were

The Hayden residence is just behind the sail-loft. It is on a slightly lower part of the bluff upon which the Lay house is situated, and directly across the street from it. The front yard of the Hayden house abuts upon Hayden's wharf. This charmingly situated, old-time residence was built by Uriah Hayden in 1766, and is now occupied by his grandson, James Hayden. The interior of the house is quaint and eminently home-like and contains many rooms, some of them of unusual size. The house is filled with fine specimens of Colonial furniture, which have come down through succeeding generations of Haydens,

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and of many rare and costly articles that were picked up in Europe by the different members of the family, who not only built ships, but commanded them, or sailed in them for recreation and travel. The Hayden residence was a tavern from the year it was built down to about 1800. The old sign, painted in England, bears the letters and numerals " U. and A. 1766 ", the U, standing for Uriah Hayden and the A, for Ann his wife. A very long, low room on the south side of the house has a door with an elaborately carved George the Third brass knocker, and hanging on the walls are pictures of George the Third and his Queen, which have hung there since 1766. Mr. James Hayden has a flint-lock pistol of great size, bearing the date of 1730, and a flint-lock musket, of 1756. Both weapons are in perfect condition and the present Mr. Hayden has shot ducks with the musket many times in his youth. The musket has a barrel five feet and four inches long. It was originally four inches longer, and was bell-mouthed. This four inches was cut off many years ago, as the wide muzzle caused the shot to scatter too much. That the boat-building art has been inherited by the family is evidenced by a fine sloop yacht, and one or two smaller pleasure boats, that were built by Mr. James Hayden, in the lower portion of the old sail-loft.

Other taverns in the old days were the present Griswold House, an excellent country hotel, that has been a hotel for more than a hundred years. It was first kept by Ethan Bushnell. At Centerbrook, a village near the center of the Town of Essex, was a tavern kept by Dan forth Clark, about 1800. It was on the site of the home where Chapman Gladding lived in 1883. Clark was a popular proprietor and his tavern was notable in its day for its hospitality and good living.

The first saw-mill of Essex was built in 1705, by Ensign William Pratt and Sergeant Nathaniel Pratt, on Falls River. In 1715, Charles Williams and John Clark, Jr., built a grist-mill on the same stream. The first machine in the United States for cutting the teeth of combs, was invented by Phineas Pratt and Abel Pratt, father and son, and the making of combs was first

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begun by them in Essex, just before the year 1800. In 1802, William's ivory-comb works was started at the mouth of Falls River, but little business was done by them till five years later, in 1807, when it increased greatly and was profitable. In 1816, this works was united with a comb works at Deep River, in Saybrook.

HARMING old Lyme, mother of lawyers, judges, statesmen, diplomats, and multi-millionaire-financiers; separated from Saybrook only by the width of the Connecticut River, but how differently situated! On higher and more fertile soil; shut in from the storms of the north and the piercing winds of the east; exposed only on the south-west (that mysterious quarter in which the Indians placed their " happy hunting grounds ", because only from heaven could come the sweet, life-giving south-west breeze) and settled by men and women of gentle-birth who, with their descendants, have helped to make America notable in the world! Never disturbed by the noise and turmoil of factories, nor hampered (and prospered) by commercialism. Unattractive to the emigrating refuse of Europe, it remains an old-fashioned gem in an old-fashioned setting.

It is, perhaps, the only river town in the State of Connecticut, that has remained a place of residence, where mental wealth and breeding are more highly regarded than dollars and cents. Its only occupation in the old days was the building, and sailing of ships to the great markets of the world. An occupation at once dignified and broadening.

When Old Lyme was settled in 1664, it was known as East Saybrook, it being a part of that town. The original township covered an area of about eighty square miles. Lyme was incorporated in 1667.

Matthew Griswold was the first settler. He received a grant of land from George Fenwick in 1645, and moved from Say-brook to Lyme, calling his place Black Hall. He was soon followed by the DeWolf, Champion, Noyes, Lay, Ely, Lord, and Lee families, who took up the greater part of the town. Up to 1667, the place was known as East Saybrook, but in that year it was set off and incorporated as the town of Lyme.

---

The Rev. Moses Noyes, of Newbury, Massachusetts, a graduate of Harvard, was the first minister. His pastorate of sixty-three years began in 1666, and ended in 1729. The Rev. Samuel Pierpoint, of New Haven, a graduate of Yale in the class of 1718, became assistant to Mr. Noyes in 1722. His wife was a daughter of the Rev. Thomas Hooker. Mr. Noyes was accidentally drowned in the Connecticut in 1733. The third minister, the Rev. Jonathan Parsons, of Springfield, a graduate of Yale, was ordained in 1731. The fourth, was the Rev. Stephen Johnson, of Newark, New Jersey, a graduate of Yale in the class of 1743, who was in charge of the church for forty years. The fifth, was Rev. Edward Porter of Farmington. The sixth, was the Rev. Lathrop Rockwell, of Lebanon, a graduate of Dartmouth. He was pastor from 1794 to 1828. He had a successful school of youths. Judge Matthew Griswold had a law school that turned out many notable lawyers.

John MacCurdy, a gentleman of Ireland with Scottish blood in his veins, purchased the residence known as the MacCurdy house in 1750. Instinctively opposed to the British government, he became a strong partisan of the Colonists in their opposition to British injustice. Tradition has it, that he and his friend, the Rev. Stephen Johnson, minister of the Lyme Church, spent many hours together in the MacCurdy home discussing the Stamp Act and other equally offensive acts, and that the first published article definitely suggesting resistance of the enforcement of the Stamp Act, even to actual rebellion, was written by Mr. Johnson in this house. The article was printed in the Connecticut Gazette, through the influence of Mr. MacCurdy. Other articles and pamphlets followed, undoubtedly from the same pen, but no one seemed to know their source.

The Sons of Liberty in New York had manuscripts of a treasonable nature, but no one was willing, or possessed of enough courage to print them. John MacCurdy, of Lyme, being in New York heard of them and Anally obtained permission to copy them. He took them back to New England with him where they were printed and sent out over the country. This was in 1765. Nearly every able-bodied man of Lyme joined the 500 who went en horseback to Wethersfield to demand the resignation of the much hated Ingersoll, the Stamp Commissioner. And so mat-

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ters progressed in Lyme to the beginning of the Revolution, the patriotism of the people keeping pace with the times always, and frequently running ahead of the times, through the aggressive patriotism of the people. In 1774, a peddler entered Lyme with his saddle-bags filled with the delicious and longed-for but obnoxious tea. It was taken from him and burnt while the mouths of the patriotic matrons and maids watered at the thought of the comforting beverage it would have made. The home of the Griswolds was at Black Hall where the fine

Governor Matthew Griswold is described as being grave, shy and some what awkward. His first love affair took him to Durham—on horseback and a long journey it was—where the young woman lived. She had two strings to her bow — Matthew Gris-

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wold and a certain physician whom she preferred of the two — but she was unwilling to loose the first string till she was sure of the other. This kept Matthew busy riding the long distance between his home in Lyme to her home in Durham. As he had a suspicion that he was being kept for a " forlorne hope " he, one day, brought matters to a head by demanding an immediate reply to his oft repeated proposal, only to be again told that she would like a little more time, to which he replied : " Madam, I will give you a lifetime ". The physician did not declare the love she hoped he had for her, so she lived and died a spinster.

Finally, his charming cousin, Ursula Wolcott, was a guest at Black Hall. Matthew was smitten with her, but his experience had made him shy of her sex. But Miss Wolcott had a mind as well as beauty. She loved Matthew and suspected that he loved her, although he failed to declare it. One day when they met on the stairs, Miss Wolcott asked:

" What did you say, Cousin Matthew ".

" I did not say anything ", was his reply.

The question and reply were repeated at other meetings several times till, meeting on the beach, Miss Wolcott asked her question for the last time, for she added after his answer:

" It is time that you did ".

So, Miss Ursula Wolcott became Mrs. Matthew Griswold. Her family was notable for the number of governors it contained. Besides her husband who became governor, there were her father, Governor Roger Wolcott, her brother, Governor Oliver Wolcott, her nephew, the second Governor Oliver, and her son became the second Governor Roger Griswold.

Black Hall was famous for its fine hospitality and other attractions, not the least of them being, in the days of " What did you say, Cousin Matthew," Cousin Matthew's eight handsome sisters who were known as " the Black Hall Boys " because of their high spirits, their success in athletic sports and exercise, and their good fellowship with the world. New England has just such girls in this century, but in that century, when the people were rather strait-laced, such joyous, healthy, spirited girls were more noticeable than they are now.

Phcebe married the Rev. Jonathan Parsons and so became the mother of that daring and successful Revolutionary soldier,

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General Samuel Holden Parsons. The Rev. Jonathan Parsons was a good man and a dandy. He had a passion for ornament, jewels and fine clothing and was very particular about his personal appearance. This was something of a shock to his parishoners, and a source of fun for his fun-loving wife Phoebe, who was one of " the Black Hall Boys". One night, just as Mr. Parsons was starting for prayer-meeting, after looking in the mirror to see that his hair was right and his neck-cloth well arranged, Mrs. Phoebe hugged him,

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About 1671, there was a territorial dispute between Lyme and New London, of a nature similar to that between Saybrook and Haddam, but it was very differently settled. A strip of land four miles wide was in dispute, both towns claiming it. Both towns proposed to let the other have one mile of the strip and, of course, both refused. As the land was not considered to be of sufficient value for a long and expensive law-suit, the people of the two towns decided " to leave it to the Lord ". As they expressed it, their pious determination was misleading, for their method of leaving it to the Lord was a bare-knuckle fight, between two champions from each town. The champions of Lyme were William Ely and Matthew Griswold, not " What-did-you-say-cousin-Matthew," but a Matthew of two generations earlier than his day. The result was most satisfactory. The fight went to the Lord and the land in dispute to Lyme.

Roger Lake, about four miles north of Lyme Village, was a favorite resort for Indians and for many years they had a permanent village on its shore. It is tradition, that the cave, near Lion Rock, was a hiding place for Kidd and other pirates and that they buried treasure on the shores of the lake.

General Samuel Holden Parsons was born in Lyme. With the intention of becoming a lawyer, Samuel Parsons prepared for Llarvard College, entered and was graduated from that institution with the class of 1756. He then entered the law office of his uncle, the Hon. Matthew Griswold, who was Governor of Connecticut, and applied himself diligently to the study of his chosen profession.

He began to practice for himself in Lyme and almost immediately took an active part in the affairs of the community, as the representative of Lyme in the Legislature, where he was continuously for twelve years. In 1774, he received an appointment as King's Attorney for New London County. He attained an eminent place in the legal fraternity of the Colony and his law practice was a very profitable, but neither ambition nor wealth caused him to hesitate a moment when his country needed every patriot it could obtain. At the breaking out of the Revolution he resigned the King's Attorneyship.

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In April, 1775, he was one of the few daring men who planned the surprise and capture of Ticonderoga. For this purpose the patriots took £810 from the treasury of the Colony, without the knowledge of the Assembly, for which they gave their personal notes and receipts (presumably with the agreement, that should the enterprise fail, they would return the money to the treasury from their own pockets) which were later cancelled by the Assembly. This affair did more toward giving the people of Connecticut the moral courage which they needed, in their contest with Great

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one of the judges who tried that fine gentleman and brilliant soldier, Major Andre, whose necessary death as a British spy caused the great-hearted Washington such keen sorrow. General Parsons' brilliant and successful attack, in 1781, upon the British at Morrisania, caused Congress to direct Washington to express the thanks of that body to General Parsons. Toward the end of 1781, the Governor, and Council of Safety, turned the command of the state troops and the Coast-guards over to General Parsons, with full power to do with them as he thought necessary in protecting the people of Connecticut against attack by the British.

When peace was declared, General Parsons opened a law office in Middletown. He represented Middletown in the Legislature and was the life of the bill for the formation of Middlesex County, in 1785. That same year he went to Ohio and in January, 1786, he, with General George R. Clark and General Richard Butler, represented the Government in a treaty with the Indians, near the mouth of the Great Miami river, that resulted in the ceding of a large tract of territory by the Indians to the United States. General Parsons returned to his home early in 1787, and in October of that year, Congress appointed him Governor of the North West Territory, but he delayed his going so that he could take part in the State Convention for the endorsement and adoption of a National Constitution, in January, 1788. In 1789, he served with Oliver Wolcott, of Litchfield, (who was later Governor of Connecticut) and James Davenport, Jr., of Stamford, on a committee for a treaty with the Indians who claimed lands in Ohio. While returning to his home in Marietta, Ohio, he was drowned in the Rapids of Great Beaver Creek, on November 17, 1789, in the fifty-third year of his age.

CLINTON

They shall settle an able, orthodox, godly minister free from scandal etc. etc.

There is a suggestiveness about the last three words which is somewhat misleading, since it implies that ministers were frequently— not free from scandal. It is more than probable that the word scandal, does not refer in any way to the personal, private lives of those heroic priests of God, who did even more than their full share to make New England what it is, but to their faithfulness to the Congregational Church, or to the Say-brook platform. Too great liberality, or too little strenuousness in adhering to the platform, being considered scandalous.

The other of the two prominent provisions was, that the plantation on the east side of the Hammonassett River, still so called, should consist of at least thirty families. The plantation began its existence with but twenty planters, or heads of families, and not long after their settlement, ten of the twenty left for other parts. So the plantation continued to exist with but ten families, till two years later, in December, 1665, when the required number was actually present as settlers.

To the Yankee of 250 years ago, the same as it is to the Yankee of to-day, the next most important matter to the Church and worship was the School and education. As early as November 15, 1703, the little Town voted to build a schoolhouse to be sixteen feet square —"with room for a chimnie "— and to be situated upon meeting-house hill. The school was in session for one half of the time in the winter and the other half in the summer as required by law. Atenry Crane, Sr., was chosen for the schoolmaster for one year, at a salary of eleven shillings weekly.

The early history of religious worship in Clinton is meagre

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and indefinite. According to the Rev. J. D. Moore's Historical Sketches, John Colton preached to the people before the Church was organized, but where John Colton came from or where he went, seems not to be known.

As was frequently the case in those very early days, the people were called to worship by the drum. In 1666, the Town agreed with Nathan Parmlee to beat the drum on Sundays for the sum of forty shillings a year, and he was to maintain the drum at his own expense. Two years later, Samuel Griswold was the Sunday-drummer, with a salary increased to one pound and ten shillings a year, and eight months later the Town voted to buy

The little settlement was known as Hammonassett till May, 1667, when it was called after the famous Warwickshire town, Kenilworth, whence a number of the settlers came to the Colony. Through a lack of education, or carelessness, or both, the spelling was changed to Kenelwort and Kenelmeworth to Killingworth, as a portion of the town is still called.

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The Rev. John Woodbridge, the first of that fine family to be born in America, was called as the first pastor of the Church, in his twenty-third year, in 1667. This young divine's grandfather, the Rev. John Woodbridge, was a distinguished dissenting minister in England, and his grandmother was the daughter of the Rev. Robert Parker, a writer of note on religious subjects and a friend of non-conformity. His father, also John Wood-bridge, was born in Stanton, Wiltshire in 1613. He went to-Oxford University but when the oath of conformity was required of him, he refused and so had to obtain his education elsewhere. Being a strong and consistent dissenter, he came to the Colonies, with his uncle, the Rev. Thomas Parker, in 1634, and in 1641, he married a daughter of the Hon. Thomas Dudley. Mr. Wood-bridge was ordained and became the first minister of the Church, in Andover, Massachusetts. It was in Andover that the John Woodbridge who became the first minister of the Killingworth Church, was born, in 1644. He was graduated from Harvard at the age of twentv, in 1664, andspent the following three years in the study of theology and, in 1667, became the minister of the Killingworth Church. His home lot, of eight acres, was on Main and South streets. Early in the second year of his pastorate he was given, by vote of the Town, £60 toward the building of a parsonage. His salary, the usual combination salary, was £60 and fifty loads of fire wood. The Rev. John Wood-bridge's first home was near the Elias Wellman place and later he lived on the corner known as the " Stanton place ".. Mr. Woodbridge resigned after twelve years of faithful service, much against the wishes of his parish, and went to the Church in Wethersfield, where he remained as minister till his death, in 1690, in the forty-sixth year of his age. Woodbridge, the charming hill town a few miles northwest of New Haven, was named in honor of the Rev. Benjamin Woodbridge, of the same

family, the first minister of the Church in that place, where his faithful service extended over forty-three years. The Rev. Benjamin was a grandson of the Rev. John of Killingworth.

After Mr. Woodbridge left Killingworth for Wethersfield, the Church in Killingworth was in a state of discord and disagreement for fifteen years, and no successor to Mr. Woodbridge was secured till 1694, when the Rev. Abraham Pierson, who will be famous in America for all time as being one of the original founding-trustees of Yale and its first Rector, was called as the second minister. He was a son of the Rev. Abraham and was born, some authorities say, in Southampton, Long Island, and others in Lynn, Massachusetts, in 1646, and was graduated from Harvard in the class of 1668. Mr. Pierson succeeded in restoring the old harmony and peace that obtained under the pastorate of Mr. Woodbridge.

It was at about the time Mr. Pierson became minister of the Killingworth Church, that the people of Connecticut recognized the need of a college in which the youth of the Colony could be educated for the Church and for public office in the Colony. In 1700, Mr. Pierson was one of the several ministers chosen by the people to found the Collegiate School at Saybrook, by giving a number of books with the statement:

With these books I lay the foundation of a college in this Colony.

Had nothing further taken place in Mr. Pierson's life than this act, he would still be famous among the educators of this country, and especially among Yale men, but a greater privilege was in store for him, for the people selected him for the first Rector of this noble institution, which began its long life of usefulness with a faculty of one and an undergraduate membership of one.

The choice was well made, after careful consideration, for Mr. Pierson was a man of scholarly attainments and was greatly interested in educational matters. He had already written a work on Natural Philosophy, which was used as a text book in the School for many years. When the people in Saybrook became desirous that the School and its Rector should be removed to that town, Mr. Pierson's parishioners strongly objected to permitting their loved minister to leave them, and before the

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matter had been finally decided, Mr. Pierson died at the age of 61, in 1707.

Although the good people of those early days were intensely earnest in their desire for schools and for the liberal education of their children, there is nothing which so strongly emphasizes the primitive simplicity of that which they considered a liberal education, as the Town records. There being no politics in those days, as we understand it, public officers were chosen for their prominence and ability, so it would be but natural to suppose that the Town clerk was chosen for his education, as well as for his prominence in the Church. The Town records show that the men who wrote them were often entirely unable to express themselves in a simple, straightforward manner. Some of the records, not only of Clinton, but of many other towns, require long and careful study before any accurate idea of the meaning which they wished to convey can be arrived at.

Mr. Woodbridge's successor was the Rev. Jared Eliot, D. D., M. D., a combination of professions which made the man practicing both an unusual blessing to the community. It was not an unusual thing for the minister, of the earliest days, to be a healer of sick bodies, as well as a healer of sick souls.

Dr. Eliot was the son of the Rev. Joseph Eliot, of Guilford, in which place Dr. Eliot was born on November 7, 1685. His grandfather was that famous man known as "Apostle" Eliot. Dr. Eliot was one of the early graduates of Yale, his class being 1706. He married Elizabeth Smithson, of Guilford, on October 26, 1710. The Rev. Thomas Ruggles described Dr. Eliot as follows:

His person was well proportioned; he was favored with an excellent bodily constitution. Idleness was his abhorrence, every moment of his time was filled with, action; perhaps no man slept so little, in his day, and did so much in so great a variety. Always active, bright and pleasant; his mind was especially adapted for conversation and happily accommodated to the pleasures of social life. He abhorred narrowness and the mean contractedness of party spirit. As he claimed the right to think and act for himself, so was he more than free to accord the same privilege to others. As a physician, he was quick to determine the nature of the disease and to apply the proper remedy.

The Rev. Dr. Eliot's medical reputation became so great that he was called to attend patients whose homes were many miles

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distant from his. That no moment of his life might be lost or wasted Dr. Eliot was accustomed to read on horseback, as he was going to the home of one or another of his people who needed his skill as a physician. So absorbed would he become in the book he was reading or studying, that his wise old horse would take advantage of the fact to crop the grass along the path, or on more than one occasion, to wander into a field for a more hearty meal, before the good frien\d on his back would discover that little progress was being made toward his destination. An amusing anecdote, illustrative of his disregard for small matters, is to the effect, that one Sunday morning, just as he was setting out for the church, he discovered a rip in his black silk stocking. This he mended with his quill pen, by applying ink to the white skin which the rent exposed. The idea of asking his wife to mend the rip properly, with needle and thread, never occurring to him.

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black sand could be made into iron." Dr. Eliot was liberal with the contents of his purse and with his profession, a large portion of his practice being given, but at the same time he possessed excellent business qualities and so left his family well off in this world's goods. He was a member of the Corporation of Yale for thirty-two years. His death occurred in his seventy-eighth year, on April 22, 1763.

A writer who evidently regretted the change in the spelling of the original English name of the town from Kenilworth to Killingworth, has made an ingenious, if highly imaginary, attempt to prove that Kenilworth and Clinton are the same. He says:

There are two interesting facts connected with the original and the present names of this place. One is, that Killingworth is a corruption of the first true name; the other is, that Clinton is the same name slightly varied. When the south part of the original Killingworth was constituted into a new town, the name Clinton was chosen in honor of Governor DeWitt Clinton. It is unfortunate that the original name, Kenilworth, had not been selected, but as it was not, the name Clinton is the next best that could possibly have been adopted. It is, In fact, the same name.

This enthusiast then shows (?) that Clin is but a slight change of the first corruption of Kenilworth to Kelinworth, that is, that Clin and Kelin are the same. Granting that there is anyone with sufficient imagination to hear a similarity of sound when Clin and Kelin are pronounced, it is difficult to see the connection, for he says that Kelin is a corruption of Kenil. He then shows that the old Saxon endings ton and worth signify an in-closure, so it is but reasonable to suppose that he would say Clinworth and Kelinton look and sound alike to him and that they are exactly the same words, " slightly varied." This enthusiastic gentleman then goes on with his proof as follows:

Nor does the identity of the names rest only upon etymology. It is also proved by historic fact. Kenilworth, England, was the barony of Sir Goeffrey de Clinton. * * * It is most probable, therefore, that the name of the place was Clinton, or Kenilton, as these barons took title from the name of their barony.

Just where Governor De Witt Clinton comes in requires even more imagination.

HADDAM.

In October, 1668, the Town was formed and given the name of Haddam. In those clays township lines were loosely granted and carelessly laid out. Disputes were therefore natural and not infrequent. Such a dispute arose between the Town of Haddam and the Towns of Saybrook and Lyme. The north boundary of Saybrook, on the west side of the Connecticut River, was fixed at.eight miles north from the Sound, and the north boundary of Lyme on the east side of the Connecticut, was six miles from the Sound. Sometime later, an additional grant was made to Saybrook and Lyme of four miles further north, and a part of this four miles encroached upon the land obtained by the people of Haddam from the Indians. A heated dispute arose, but it was finally settled by a proposal from Saybrook, that the four-mile grant should be divided into a half and two quarters; one half going to Haddam and a quarter each to Lyme and Saybrook. This plan was approved by the General Court in 1669. In 1734? Haddam Township was divided into two parts, the dividing lines being the Connecticut and Salmon Rivers. The town on the west remained Haddam; that on the east became East Haddam.

For the first thirty years the principal settlement in this town

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was just back from the western bank of the Connecticut River, at the edge of the long, narrow strip of meadow land. Then, individual families began to move back farther from the river, toward the western portion of the town, among them being the Dickinsons, Hubbards, and Rays, who settled there in 1700, or soon after that year. Later, they were joined by the Lewises, Hazeltons, Tylers, Higginses, Thomases, Knowleses, and Burrs. In 1712, that portion of Haddam called Haddam Neck was settled by Thomas Selden, of Lyme, formerly of Hadley, Massachusetts; and two families of Brainards.

When the Indians sold the land comprising Haddam to the English, they reserved Thirty-mile-Island (now Haddam Island) and forty acres at Pattaquoenk, where they lived for many years, fishing and hunting where they pleased so long as they did not interfere with the settlers. A favorite resort of theirs was a deep ravine, or hollow, on Haddam Neck, in the north-eastern portion, which was for many years known as Indian Hollow, and the small stream running through it was called Indian Brook. The Indians had no name for the whole territory comprising the Town of Haddam, but different parts of the town were given different names. The little settlement in the center of the town called Ponset, by the settlers, was called Cockaponset by the Indians; Higganum, in the northern part of the town on the Connecticut, was Higganumpus, the fishing-place.

As early as 1762, a granite quarry was opened by Deacon Ezera Brainard on Haddam Neck. This was followed by other openings in the same neighborhood and in 1794, a quarry was started on the west side of the river. All of the quarries did a large business, chiefly in curbing and flagstones. The principal market was New York, but Boston, Albany and Baltimore also bought considerable quantities. Early in 1800, wood was a profitable article of commerce in Haddam, three thousand cords being shipped in 1807, of which 2000 were shipped from Higganum Landing. In 1813, Haddam had a " ginnery " in which 250 hogsheads of gin were distilled yearly.

For the first eleven years the people worshipped in the different homes of the settlement. In 1673, they built a little meetinghouse, twenty-four by twenty-eight feet on the ground, in which they " feared the Lord " every Sunday and all day Sunday, till

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1721, when a new and larger building was erected. As there are no Church records earlier than 1756, it is not possible to give the date of the organization of the Church, but it was probably in 1700. The first minister mentioned in the old records was the Rev. Jonathan Willaube, who was in charge of the Church but a short time.

In 1668, Nicholas Noyes, " an improved candidate", preached to the people for thirteen or fourteen years, but there is reason to believe that he was not ordained. The Noyes family came to the Colonies from Wiltshire, England, and was a family of ministers. An uncle of Nicholas, the Rev. James Noyes, was the first minister of Newbury, Massachusetts; and his cousins, the Revs. Moses Noyes and James Noyes were the first ministers of Lyme and Stonington, Connecticut, respectively.

The Rev. Nicholas Noyes was a graduate of Harvard in the class of 1667. After he left Haddam he was ordained as the minister at Salem, Massachusetts, on November 16, 1683. This was the time of the persecutions for witchcraft, in which gentle pastime Mr. Noyes took an active and prominent part. He was honest enough later to acknowledge his error and to repent of it. An obituary of him was published in a Boston newspaper of I707-Many people complain that the newspapers of the twentieth century go to unreasonable excesses in praising the dead; that a twentieth century obituary is made up of adjectives, adverbs and superlatives, but journalism in that respect, is not different to-day from what it was then, as will be seen from the following quotation from that Boston newspaper of 1707.

Salem, Dec. 13, 1707, died the very reverend and famous Mr. Nicholas Noyes near 70 years of age, and in the 35th of his ordained ministry at Salem. He was extraordinarily accomplished for the work of the ministry whereunto he was called, and wherein he found mercy to be faithful, and was made a rich, extensive and long continued blessing. Considering his superior genius, his pregnant wit, strong memory, solid judgment, his great acquaintance in human learning and knowledge; his conversation among his friends, so very entertaining and profitable; his uncommon attainments in the study of divinity, his eminent sanctity, gravity and virtue, his serious, learned and pious performances in the pulpit, his more than ordinary skill in the prophetical parts of scripture, his wisdom and usefulness in human affairs, and his constant solicitude for the public good; it is no wonder that Salem, and adjacent parts of the country, as also the churches, university and people of New England, justly esteem

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him as a principal part of their glory. He was born at Newbury, December 22d, 1647 and died a bachelor.

There may be a possible significance in the last four words, as the witches of Salem were nearly all women.

Sometime between 1682, and 1690, the Rev. John James preached in Haddam, but just when and how long is not known. He was a good man and an excellent preacher, but was notable for his eccentricities.

In August, 1691, the Rev. Jeremiah Hobart became the minister, but he was never regularly installed. Later, there was a misunderstanding between him and the parish which was settled amicably in June, 1700, when he was formally installed as the minister, in the seventieth year of his age. On November 6, 1715, he attended service, received the sacrament and in the intermission died in his chair.

The next minister was the Rev. Phineas Fiske, son of Dr. John Fiske, of Milford. He studied at Yale, under Rector Pierson, in Killingworth. The year before Rector Pierson's death, Mr. Fiske became a tutor in the College. After his death, the senior class was removed to Milford, in 1707, and Mr. Fiske took charge of the other classes in Saybrook, till Commencement. For several years thereafter, Mr. Fiske and another tutor instructed all the classes in Saybrook. Mr. Fiske was thoughtful and scholarly and was regarded as a great success as an instructor. At that time Connecticut was looking to Yale, or the Collegiate School, as it was then called, for its ministers and many of the most notable were instructed there under the direction and personal attention of Mr. Fiske. As a preacher, Mr. Fiske was a man who appealed to the minds of his auditors rather than to their emotions.

Then followed in the pulpit of the Haddam Church, the Rev. Aaron Cleveland, from 1739 to 1746. Mr. Cleveland died in the home of his friend Benjamin Franklin, in Philadelphia; the Rev. Joshua Elderkin, from 1749, to 1753; the Rev. Eleazer May was minister for forty-seven years, from 1756, to 1803; the Rev. David Dudley Field, from 1804, to 1818.

The first record of a school in Haddam was in 1705, and for seventy years it was the only school in the town.

The Rev. David Brainard, a descendant of the early settler, was one of Haddam's notable sons. He was famous and greatly

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beloved in ail of the British Colonies for his grand work as a missionary among the Indians. He began his work among them in 1743, at a place known as Kaunaumeek, near Kinderhook, New York, and from there he went to the Forks of the Delaware, not far from the line dividing New York and Pennsylvania. It was among the Crosweeksung Indians, near Freehold, New Jersey, that he experienced his greatest success. The hardness of his life and his devotion to his work so far broke his health that he returned to New England in the hope of recovering it. His health was too far gone, however, and he died in the home of the Rev. Jonathan Edwards, in Northampton, Massachusetts, in October, 1747, at the age of thirty. An early writer described Mr. Brainard and his work as follows:

If the greatness of a character is to be estimated by the object it per-sues, in the danger it braves, the difficulties it encounters, and the purity and energy of its motives, David Brainard is one of the greatest characters that ever appeared in the world. Compared with this standard of greatness, what little things are the Alexanders and Caesars, the conquerors of the whole earth? A nobler object no human * * * mind could ever propose to itself, than to promote the glory of the great Governor of the Universe, in studying and laboring to diffuse purity and happiness among His unholy and miserable creatures. His life among the Indians exhibits a perfect pattern of the qualities which should distinguish the instruction of the rude and barbarous tribes; the most invincible patience and self denial, the profoundest humility, exquisite prudence, indefatigable industry, and such a devotedness to God, or rather, such an absorption of the whole soul in zeal for the Divine glory and the salvation of men, as is scarce paralleled since the age of the Apostiles.

HE first house built in East Haddam was that of Robert Chapman, situated north of Creek Row. The records of the Colony prove that this Chapman house was standing in 1674, and Barber thinks that Chapman began his clearing about 1670.

In 1685, a number of families moved across the river from Haddam to East Haddam and settled at Creek Row, the supposition being that they joined the pioneer, Chapman, as would be entirely natural. Their names were, Gates, Bates, Brainard and Cone.

At about this time, other settlers arrived in East Haddam and

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established themselves to the east of the Creek Row people. They were, the Ackleys and Spencers, from Haddam, who soon were joined by the Annable, Booge, Fuller and Percival families, from Plymouth Colony; the Olmsteds, from Hartford; Samuel Emmons, from Cambridge, Massachusetts; John Chapman, from Saybrook; James Green, Elijah Atwood, Nathaniel Goodspeed, and Isaac Taylor, later arrived from Plymouth; Henry Champion and Matthew Smith, from Lyme; Robert Kurd, from Killing-worth; John Warner, from Sunderland, and John Church, from Hatfield, Massachusetts. These families and individuals arrived at different times during a considerable period of time, reckoned from the first settlement made by Chapman in 1670.

Millington, in the middle of the town near the eastern boundary/ was settled by Jonathan Beebe, from New London, about 1704. He made his pitch near the southern end of Long Pond (now Shaw Lake) and was soon after joined by other settlers. With the exception of the tiny settlement near the foot of the lake, there was no other in that district of East Haddam known as Millington, till sometime between the years 1732, and 1734, when a settlement was started near the river by the Arnold, Barnes, Brainard, Chapman, Church, Cone, Emmons, Fuller, Gates, Olmsted, and Spencer families, from the East Haddam Parish; Harvey and Hungerford, from Hadlyme; Graves, from Colchester; and Stewart, from Voluntown; Daniel Smith, from Plymouth Colony ; Lemuel Griffin, from Lyme; and Thomas Fox, from Colchester, joined the families named, a little later.

By 1740, the settlement of East Haddam was general, but the population of the town did not increase much, in fact there were migrations to Litchfield County and Berkshire County, Massachusetts ; and to Vermont and New York, from it.

Long Pond (Shaw Lake) where Beebe settled in 1704, is a pretty body of water about a mile and a half long and half a mile in the widest part. It covers the top of a hill 400 feet above the Sound. Its only inlet is a tiny brook, less than 1,500 feet long. The Lake is probably fed by underground and surface springs, which have their rise on the hills to the north, east and west, and which lie close to the hill, the top of which the pond covers, and are about one hundred feet higher. The outlet is from

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the south end of the pond and forms Eight-mile River, or one of its branches.

Leesville (originally Lord's Mills) in the extreme north-west corner of East Haddam, on Salmon River, four miles from its mouth, was settled about the middle of the eighteenth century, Captain Jonathan Kilburn being one of the earliest, if not the first of the settlers. The tide flows up to Leesville and in the early days sloops of sixty tons were built and launched there. About 1765, the first oilmill in the State was built there. In 1814, there was a woolen and cotton factory started, and in 1816 it contained 500 spindles.In 1743, the first house in East Haddam Landing was built and a produce market was opened and a storehouse built. The business of the pretty little village is still at the Landing and back of it, on the abruptly rising hills is the residential portion of the village. This portion of the place contains fine, home-like appearing houses, surrounded by large yards and shaded by splendid great trees. Sometime before the Revolution, East Haddam Landing began to be famous for its ship and boat yards, which were situated a little to the south of the Landing, at what was then called Chapman's ferry.

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Country. This separation took place in April, 1791. Deacon Solomon Blakesley presided over the Parish till he took full orders, in 1793. The Rev. Solomon Blakesley was rector of this Parish for more than twenty years. The bell of St. Stephen's Church is probably unique in the United States, for its great age. The inscription on the bell is in Spanish. The translation is:

" The Prior, being the most Rev. Father Miguel Villa Mueva, The Procurator, the most Rev. Father Jose F. Estavan-Corvalis, has made me. Made in the year A. D. 815." This bell formerly hung in a Spanish Monastery.

East Haddam Society was made a separate society from that of Haddam, in 1700. In 1704, the people began to transact their own society business and to keep records of their proceedings. As there was doubt in regard to the legality of their acts, the two Societies of Haddam and East Haddam entered into an agreement, which was authorized by the Legislature, in 1710. Among other things, this agreement provided that each society could transact its own business and elect its own representatives to the Legislature. This agreement continued till May, 1734, when the Town of Haddam was divided and East Haddam was incorporated.

One of East Haddam's sons, who became prominent in the Colony and later as a soldier, was the Hon. Joseph Spencer. The first American ancestor of this family was Jared Spencer, ,who came to America and settled in Newtown (Cambridge), Massachusetts, and a few years later moved to Lynn. Still later, he became one of the first settlers of Haddam and was made an ensign there by the General Court at Hartford, in September, 1675. His great-grandson, the lion. Joseph Spencer, married Martha Brainard, daughter of the Hon. Hezekiah Brainard, in August, 1738. His public service began as judge of probate in 1753, and he filled this office till his death. In 1758, he was a major in the northern army against the French. In 1775, a short time before the signing of the Declaration of Independence, he was appointed a brigadier-general, and in 1776, he was made a major-general in the army of the United States. He served till 1778, when he resigned. He was in the State Council from 1766, to 1779, in which year he was Judge of the Hartford County Court. In 1779, he was sent to Congress and the following year was again

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elected to the State Council and was re-elected each year till his death, in 1789.

Let Edwards have the praise which his talents, piety, diligence, faithfulness, and usefulness deserve; let Hopkins have the praise which is due to his self-denial, honesty, diligence, watchfulness, boldness, patience and faith; yet who, that has had a personal acquaintance with Emmons. or that knows the wisdom with which he constantly taught the people knowledge, can refuse, either before God or man, to place him first in respect to the purity, simplicity, consistency, transparency, amiableness, humility, energy, dignity, and beauty of his character and the knowledge, goodness,, and wisdom of his conduct in the constant instruction of his people.

As a son and brother, as a husband and father, a neighbor, a Christian and friend, a companion and gentleman, a scholar and author, a member

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and ruler of a Christian church, a parishioner, an attendant at public worship and a hearer of divine instruction, a citizen, a patriot and philanthropist, he was eminent and exemplary, as consistant and amiable, [in all, these] as he was in the office of a teacher and preacher of divine truth.

This was not a panegyric; a mere collection of words of praise, but an honest, simply expressed truth in regard to a man whose life was a blessing to all with whom he came in contact, and an honor to the Power that created it.

The Rev. Nathaniel Emmons, D.D., was born in East Haddam, on May 1, 1745. His passionate desire for knowledge showed itself in his childhood and continued through the ninety-five years of his useful life. At the age of nineteen he entered Yale College, under the presidency of the Rev. Thomas Clap, whose influence for good was frequently referred to in after years by Dr. Emmons. As an under-graduate he must have taken a high stand for he was chosen by his class for the Cliosophic Oration, in 1767. This oration was delivered by a member of the senior class, about eight weeks before Commencement. The honor of being chosen for this oration was greatly coveted, and that Dr. Emmons was chosen for it, fixes his scholarship as being high, for among his class mates were John Tread-well, Samuel Wales, John Trumbull and Joseph Lyman. After being graduated, Dr. Emmons studied for the ministry under the Rev. Nathan Strong, of Coventry, and the Rev. John Smalley,

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D.D., of Berlin. Dr. Smalley was regarded as one of the great pulpit orators and teachers of New England. In 1769, Mr. Emmons made a public profession of faith in Christianity and joined the Church in Millington, in the Town of East Haddam, under the pastorate of the Rev. Diodate Johnson.

On April 21, 1773, he was ordained as minister of the Church in Franklin, the ordination sermon being preached by the Rev. Levi Hart, D.D., of Preston. The services were held out-of-doors, the congregation sitting on raised seats above the pastor and ordaining council. This fact appealed to Dr. Emmons' strong sense of humor. He used to say, that he was ordained under his church and people instead of over them. While still a young man, Dr. Emmons' Christian fortitude was severely tried through the death of his wife and two sons, his wife's death occurring on June 22, 1778, and his sons' two months later. Dr. Emmons' congregation was not large, but it was notable. Each member bore the sterling-mark stamped upon his character by the teaching, influence and example of his pastor. While the Revs. Timothy and Jonathan Edwards were employing their profound intellects to elevate themselves and increase their power, Dr. Emmons employed his to elevate mankind and increase the power of good.

As a minister and teacher Dr. Emmons had the faculty of not only pointing out the true path, but also of inspiring a life-long desire in the hearts of his parishioners to keep in that path. He died on September 23, 1840, in the ninety-sixth year of his age and the sixty-eighth of his ministry. It is interesting and most unusual, that he officiated at the funeral of every person who was a member of his parish at the time of his ordination.

The village of Moodus takes its name from an Indian word, Machirnoodus, meaning in English place of noises. The Indians occupying the territory now East Haddam, were given over to superstition, even more so than the majority of Indians in other parts of the Connecticut Valley. There was a fierce savagery in their superstition, resembling that of the African savage more than that of the New England savage, whose superstition was of a gentler, more poetic nature. As a result, the Moodus Indians

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were fierce, cruel and war-like. As early as 1729, the Rev. Stephen Hosmer wrote to a friend in Boston describing these strange noises, from which Moodus takes its name:

As to earthquakes, I nave something considerable and awful to tell you. Earthquakes have been here, as has been observed for more than thirty years. I have been informed that in this place, before the English settlements, there were great numbers of Indian inhabitants, and that it was a place of extraordinary pawaws, or in short, that it was a place where the Indians drove a prodigious trade in worshipping the devil. Also I was informed, that many years past, an old Indian was asked the reason of the noises in this place, to which he replied, that " the Indians' God was very angry that the Englishman's God was come there." Now, whether there be anything diabolical in these things, I know not; but this I know, that God Almighty is to be seen and trembled at, in what has been often heard among us. Whether it be fire or air distressed in the caverns of the earth, cannot be known ; for there is no eruption, no explosion perceptable, but by sounds and tremors, which sometimes are very fearful and dreadful. I have myself, heard eight or ten sounds successively, and imitating small arms, in the space of five minutes. I have, I suppose, heard several hundred of them within twenty years; some more, some less terrible. Sometimes we have heard them almost every clay, and great numbers of them in the space of a year. Oftentimes I have observed them to be coming down from the north, imitating slow thunder, until the sound came near, or right under, and then there seemed to be a breaking, like the noise of a cannon shot, or severe thunder, wrhich shakes the houses and all that is in them. They have in a manner ceased since the great earthquake. As I remember, there have been but two heard since that time and these but moderate.

In the year 1831, or '32, about one hundred years after Mr. Hosmer's, the following account was given by a gentleman who had heard the noises.

The awful noises about which Mr. Hosmer gave an account * * * continue to the present time. The effects they produce are various as the intermediate degrees between the roar of a cannon and the noise of a pistol. The concussions of the earth, made at the same time, are as much diversified as the sounds in the air. The shock they give to a dwelling house, is the same as the falling of logs on the floor. * * * But when they are so violent as to be felt in the adjacent towns, they are called earthquakes. During my residence here, which has been almost thirty-six years, I have invariably observed that an account has been published in the newspapers, of a small shock of earthquake, in New London and Hartford. Nor do I believe, in all that period, there has been any account published of an earthquake in Connecticut, which has not been far more violent here than in any other place.

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On the night of May 18, 1791, about ten o'clock, there was an earthquake so violent that it was felt in New York and Boston. The first shock was followed by another in a few minutes that was felt at a distance of seventy miles. In Moodus and the neighboring places, the roaring noises and shaking of the earth were great. Walls were thrown down and the tops of chimneys were thrown to the ground. And while but two shocks were felt at a distance, there were in Moodus and the surrounding country between twenty and thirty shocks felt. It was found the next day that the earth was cracked in several places and that great boulders weighing many tons had been moved.

This Dr. Steele told the people that the noises and disturbances were caused by a great carbuncle that was confined in a large rock in the bowels of the earth and that he, by his magic, could remove the carbuncle and so stop the noises. Dr. Steele, being a man of " much book-learning " the people absorbed his words and entered into some kind of agreement with him. The doctor then secured a blacksmith's shop, plugged the windows, cracks,

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holes and doorways so that no light could enter, nor the prying gaze of the awe-inspired people discover his secret. He worked at night, as all such mysterious persons do, and when the people saw the vast cloud of smoke, lighted by flame and thousands of sparks, they felt sure that Dr. Steele and Satan were raising Hell, and that the great carbuncle would come up with it.

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poem of thirteen verses (fatal number) on the subject of Dr. Steele and the great carbuncle, from which the following are quoted:

MIDDLETOWN

Another, and very potent reason was, that the Great Sachem Sequasson, of the Mattabesett Tribe, was all-powerful over a considerable area, which included what later became Middletown. This Sachem was friendly to the Pequot Indians, whom the settlers and their Indian allies had exterminated, soon after the settlements were made. Several years before a settlement was made, Sequasson sold to Governor Haynes, of Connecticut, a vast territory which comprised nearly all of the township of Middle-town.

Mattabesett was settled in 1650 by families chiefly from Hartford and partly from Wethersfield. The settlement was known by its Indian name till November, 1653, when the General Court changed it to Middletown. This name was given on account of its location, about midway from Saybrook to Hartford. The township included territory that later became the Towns of Middlefield, Chatham, Portland, Cromwell and a portion of Berlin.

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The families during the first decade of the settlement were those of, Thomas Alien, Nathaniel Bacon, William Bloomfield, Nathaniel Brown, John Cockran, William Cornwall, William Cheney, Henry Cole, Samuel Eggleston, George Graves, John Hall, father and son; Richard and Samuel Hall, Thomas Hope-well, Giles Hamlin, Daniel and William Harris, George Hubbard, John Kirby, John Martin, Thomas Miller, William Markham, Thomas Ranney, John Savage, William Smith, Samuel Stocking, the Rev. Samuel Stow, Joseph Smith, Matthias Treat, Robert Wrebster, Thomas Whitmore, Nathaniel White, William Ward, John Wilcox, and Robert Warner.

The public worship of the Creator was the first thought of those fine men who made New England famous for its fervent religious spirit, and tradition has it, that the first Sunday services were held under the shade of the wide spreading limbs of a gigantic elm. The settlement had not been in existence a year, when the people voted to build a meeting-house. The meeting at which this important event in the tiny community was decided upon, was held at the home of John Hall. The meeting-house was twenty feet square and was located near the great elm which stood near the entrance to Riverside Cemetery. The building was most primitive and was not long in the building. It was surrounded by a stockade, so that, in case of attack by Indians, it could be used as a temporary refuge. There was, however, little annoyance from the Indians, who were well disposed toward the white settlers, the more so because they had been the means of ridding the country of the fierce and cruel Pequots.

The records of the town for the first two years were lost or perhaps there were no records kept. However that may be, records of the town from 1652, are complete and the first recorded vote was for the meeting-house built near the great elm tree. The settlers were energetic and hard workers, who obtained their living from the soil or from their ingenuity and the skill of their hands in making articles necessary for the little community. In this respect they differed most strikingly from the Dutch settlers of the Hudson and Mohawk Valleys, who lived chiefly by trade with the Indians. The population increased slowly, but steadily. In 1703, the portion of the settlement known as the

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Upper Houses (now the Town of Cromwell) was set off and incorporated as a separate parish.

In time, Middletown became, not only the largest town in Connecticut, but also the most important port. Vessels of a high grade were built there and a large and profitable trade with foreign countries was established. The first vessel owned in the town was a schooner of seventy tons. In fact there were but two vessels owned in Connecticut in that year, the other being a ninety-ton schooner owned in Hartford. For half a century this seventy-ton schooner carried the entire trade of Middletown, with but very rare occasions when ships arrived from Boston. In 1730, Middletown owned two schooners of a combined tonnage of 105.

In 1680, there was but one merchant in Middletown and half a century later, in 1730, there were but two. One of these, James Brown, a Scotchman, rode on horseback all the way to Boston, once or twice a year, over Indian trails, the only highways, to purchase his goods. They were sent around by water or, more probably, brought around by one of the two schooners. By the time 1760 had arrived, there was a considerable trade with the West Indies, which increased year by year. The shipping finally included many home ports as well as a considerable trade with ports across the Atlantic. By the time the actual break was made between the Colonies and the Old Country, that is, in 1776, seventeen families out of fifty, which resided on Main street, were directly connected with the sea, either as ship builders, owners, merchants or rope makers. The building of vessels began as early as 1700, in a small way. The vessels built in Middletown and other neighboring settlements of the river, were famous for their seaworthiness and speed. In 1776, the population of Middletown was 5,000. To us of today, accustomed as we are to reckon populations by the hundred thousands, just what so large a population meant is hard to realize. Perhaps a comparison will help. In 1776, New York city had 23,000 inhabitants, so that Middletown was then a little more than one fifth the size of New York. In 1900, Boston was but one sixth as large as New York. So in 1776, Middletown bore about the same relation to New York that Boston does now. It was not only the greatest ship-building and commercial center between the

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two greatest cities of the nation, New York and Boston, but it was the wealthiest and most cultivated town in New England. The commerce built up the farming interests so that the agriculturists were prosperous and could indulge in those home and educational luxuries that have ever been dear to the hearts of the Connecticut farmer. The intercourse of the merchants of the town with those of foreign countries had the effect of founding off corners and smoothing rough places, thus making Middletown noted for refinement and cultivation.

The chief of those early merchants was Richard Alsop. He was a son of John Alsop, of Long Island, a well known lawyer, who later settled and practiced his profession in Esopus, on the Hudson. Richard Alsop, in accord with an old English custom, which still obtains in the Old Country, was regularly trained for the occupation of merchant, in Philip Livingston's store in New York city. He arrived in Middletown in 1750, where he was attracted by the growing importance of the place, about the year in which Middletown's commercial supremacy began. His store was on the ground floor of the Town House on Main street, near Washington street. His business was really great, so much so, that he on occasions insured vessels for others. Besides his prominence as a merchant and man of wealth, he was prominent in the affairs of the Colony and was in the Legislature for several terms. He left a great fortune at his death. Besides his book accounts; a large sum of money in safe keeping in Jamaica and interest in two partnerships; he left $174,000.

Another of the successful men of that day was Philip Mortimer, who manufactured rope. His house was a marvel of grandeur. The grounds surrounding it, on the bank of the river, were extensive and ornate. But the prosperity of Middletown, especially the shipping interests, was suspended while the Revolutionary War was being fought, to be revived later to a certain extent, if not fully. Some of the other merchants and traders of the ante-Revolutionary period were; General Comfort Sage, Colonel Lemuel Stors, Elijah and Nehemiah Hubbard, George and Thompson Philips.

The news of the closing of the port of Boston by General Gage, who arrived there in 1774, stirred up the people of Middletown as no other New England town was, or could be stirred, for

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besides the spirit of patriotism which they shared equally with all New England, there was the serious financial blow to the commercial interests of the principal shipping port between Boston and New York. This loss of trade did not reduce the disinterested patriotism of the people; there was no faint-hearted policy shown in the hope of retaining trade at the expense of the community or the Colonies as a whole. On the contrary, their patriotism was intensified. The resolutions passed by the Legislature at Hartford condemning the " unrighteous " act of the British Government, was endorsed by more than five hundred of the citizens of Middletown, who met on June 15, 1774, for that purpose and to pledge their wealth and their lives for the support of the people at large and the defense of their rights.

The resolutions adopted at that historical meeting of the people of Middletown, were typical of the spirit of New England, just previous to and during the Revolutionary period. They were :

That we heartily concur in any salutary measures that may or shall be devised and come into, or recommended by a General Congress, from all or most of the Colonies, or by the Greater places of trade or commerce on the continent, or by the inhabitants of this Colony for the preservation of the rights of the British Americans.

That Messrs. Matthew Talcott, Richard Alsop, and Titus Hosmer be our committee of correspondence, whose duty it shall be to collect all such intelligence as may enable vis to act our part presently and to good effect, in the system of America; to communicate such intelligence to others as may be useful to them and the common cause, and in our own behalf to cooperate with the Committees of other towns, in concerting or executing any general plan of proceeding for the good of the whole.

These two resolutions are an expression of unselfish patriotism which the present generation should regard as one of its most valued inheritances. These men even went so far as to assure the Massachusetts delegates, who stopped in Middletown on their way to the first Continental Congress, that they would support whatever course the Congress should decide upon, even to the total abolition of trade with the West Indies and Europe. And these were the men whose luxurious homes, whose wealth and position, were made possible by the foreign commerce they were so ready to have entirely cut off for the good of the Colonies.

When that far sounding shot was fired at Lexington, Captain

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Return Jonathan Meigs, and Captain Comfort Sage and his company of light horse, both of Middletown, and Captain Silas Dunham, of Chatham, immediately marched to Boston, Captain Sage and Captain Dunham being there a little in advance of Captain Meigs, whose company was ununiformed and without equipment, except the equipment of brave spirits and determined minds.

Middletown's officers and privates in the Revolution were many and distinguished for their unwavering patriotism and for their

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skill in the profession of arms. One of them, Colonel Joseph Blague, who was a captain in the battle of Saratoga, was so highly esteemed by General Lafayette for his bravery, and skill as an officer, that he took occasion, when General Washington was present, to present Colonel Blague with a very handsome sword. This sword was highly esteemed by Colonel Blague's descendants and was for many years in the possession of the Covil family, Colonel Covil having married a daughter of Colonel Blague.

The war spirit which aimed at Independence so entirely possessed the people of Middletown, that the men, whose age placed them beyond military duty, formed themselves into a company that they might drill and become proficient in the use of arms. Their example acted as a stimulus to those other patriots whose youth kept them from fighting. In case of neces-:sity the company of old men acted as a home guard. The boys and youths soon followed the example of their elders and organized a company. And the women (those glorious Yankee mothers, wives, sisters and sweethearts, whose fiery patriotism was such a stimulus to the men; who worked in the homes weaving, making and knitting for the men and boys in the field) when they found the men too few at home, actually went to work in the fields to plant, cultivate and harvest the crops. And what the women of Middletown did, was done by the women of all New England.

The Meigs family originated in Guilford, in that part of it which is now the town of Madison, but Captain Return Jonathan Meigs was a native of Middletown. His ready response to the call sent out from Lexington, has already been mentioned. As a major, he was with Arnold on his expedition up the Kenebeck, through Maine to Quebec, and he not only showed himself to be a soldier of the highest grade, but an author of equal merit for his account of the hardship, the misery and suffering of that undertaking is the best that was written of it. Major Meigs entered the walls of the city with his battalion, and was made a prisoner with Captain Morgan and Captain Dearborn, who later became general officers. Major Meigs' exchange was effected in 1777, and he was immediately commissioned a lieutenant-colonel and was authorized to raise a regiment. This he accomplished in part, and was then assigned by General Parsons to

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surprise and capture Sag Harbor, near the eastern end of Long Island. While this successful undertaking is really outside of the subject of Middletown, it will be given briefly as eminently illustrative of the ability, dash and determination of one of Middletown's sons.

Major Meigs and 230 men in thirteen whale-boats started (this time a very lucky number) from New Haven and hugged the Connecticut shore as far as Sachem's Head, in the town of Guilford, in order that they might more easily cross the sound, its width being considerably less at that point. There he took into his boats 170 more of his men and at one o'clock in the afternoon of May 23, left for Sag Harbor, where they arrived twelve hours later. They advanced with secrecy and in silence to within two hundred yards of the enemy and made their attack, with fixed bayonets, from five points. A 12-gun British schooner lying near the wharves opened fire, but so rapid were their movements that the place was captured before the shot from the guns could do any damage. Twelve British vessels were destroyed, together with a great quantity of provisions and forage; six of the enemy were killed and ninety were taken prisoners. All this was accomplished, with a boat journey of ninety miles, in twenty-five hours from the time the start was made, without the loss of a single man. In recognition of this dashing and successful exploit, Congress presented Colonel Meigs with an elegant sword.

When General Wayne captured Stony Point, in 1779, Colonel Meigs was in command of a regiment there and John Stone, a private from Middle Haddam, helped pull down the British standard. After the war Colonel Meigs spent a brief time at his home in Middletown and, in 1787, he went with the earliest settlers to Marietta, Ohio. The governor and judges of the Northwest Territory had not then arrived so the settlers were without law or authority. Colonel Meigs, however, drew up a system of regulations, which the settlers frequently consulted and lived under till the arrival of the government. A portion of the bark of a great oak was cut away and these regulations were nailed in the space thus made, where all could see them.

A white man may with comparative ease win the confidence and regard of other white men, but when he wins the con-

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fidence, trust and affection of his red brothers he has indeed accomplished something that only a true man could accomplish. In his old age, Colonel Meigs was appointed Indian agent to the Cherokees. It was not long before they discovered the kind of man whom the government had sent to them and, in their poetically figurative language, wishing to give him a name that would express what he was to them and the trust they had in him, they named him " The White Path ". Colonel Meigs died in his eighty-third year, in 1823, still the faithful friend of the Cherokees. At his funeral, Divine Providence was petitioned, that his successors at the Chero-kee station might walk in the " White Path " Colonel Meigs' three brothers, Giles, John and Josiah, were honorable representatives of an honored family. Giles lived and died in Middletown. He was a captain of militia in the Revolution. John volunteered in the beginning of the war and served till peace was declared. He was an adjutant in Colonel Webb's regiment and served for a time as brigade major. He was commissioned a lieutenant and was later promoted to a captaincy. He died in New Hartford, in 1826, at the age of seventy-three. Josiah, after being graduated from Yale, remained as a tutor and later studied law and practiced in Bermuda. After returning to Connecticut he was for many years professor of mathematics and natural philosophy in Yale, and later president of the University of Georgia, at Athens in that state; he was Surveyor General of the United States and finally was appointed the head of the

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Government Land Office, in Washington, where he died in His sixty-fifth year, in 1822.

Nehemiah Hubbard was born in Middletown, in April, 1752. He was a descendant of George Hubbard, one of the earliest settlers. When fourteen years old, Nehemiah was " bound out" to Colonel Matthew Talcot, as a clerk in his store, where he remained till he was of age, in the meantime acquiring a thorough business education and a knowledge of commerce. Upon obtaining his majority, he went to the West Indies as supercargo, later as captain of the vessel and finally as merchant. He entered the Continental Army in 1/76, before the Declaration of Independence had been signed, and in May of that year was appointed by Governor Trumbull regimental paymaster of the regiment commanded by Colonel Burrill. His first act under this appointment was to journey to Fort Schuyler (which was the former British Fort Stanwix) and Herkimer, on the Mohawk River, to pay the troops stationed at those forts. He then joined his regiment at Ticonderoga, where it was stationed for a considerable time. Major General Green, Quarter-master of the United States, appointed him his deputy for the State of Connecticut, in May, 1777. Mr. Hubbard acted as deputy until the resignation of General Green. Colonel Pickering, Acting Quarter-master General, appointed him to the position of deputy, but Mr. Hubbard declined. He then associated himself with Carter and Wadsworth in the service, for furnishing supplies to the French army. On the frequent occasions when the Continental army was suffering for supplies, Connecticut often saved the soldiers from great distress by supplying the needed food and clothing. That this was possible, was due to the energy, promptness and business ability of Paymaster Hubbard.

A striking instance of the confidence reposed in Mr. Hubbard by the great men of the nation, in Revolutionary days, was the unsuccessful effort of Alexander Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury, to induce Mr. Hubbard to take the management of a department he intended to organize, for promoting the manufacturing interests of the young nation. At the close of the Revolution he returned to Middletown, and became one of the foremost merchants and bankers of the place. The secret of Mr. Hub-bard's success was a prompt attention to the business in hand

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and of being methodical in all he undertook to do. He was an active, generous citizen, and was regarded as one of Middletown's most honorable sons. Mr. Hubbard died at the age of eighty-five in February, 1837.

Titus Hosmer was one of the Committee of Correspondence that was appointed by Middletown at the breaking1 out of the war with Great Britain. Mr. Hosmer was one of the most liberally educated and highly cultivated men of his time, not only in Middletown, but in the Colony of Connecticut. Noah Webster, the American lexicographer, regarded him as one of the greatest men Connecticut ever produced, and placed him on one of the three pedestals of his " mighties ". They were: William Samuel Johnson, L.L.D., of Stratford; Oliver Ellsworth, of Windsor, Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court; and the Hon. Titus Hosmer.

He was a graduate of Yale, in the class of 1757, and while an undergraduate was notable for his knowledge of science and languages, and for his cleverness as a writer. After leaving Yale, he studied law and became one of the foremost lawyers of the Colony. He was frequently elected to office in his town and was a representative from Middletown to the Legislature from 1773 to 1778, and assistant from the latter date to 1780. It was in 1777, as speaker of the House of Representatives, that his influence did much to urge that body to adopt vigorous measures against Great Britain. In 1778, besides being an assistant in the Legislature, he was a member of the Continental Congress and of the Council of Safety. So it is plainly seen, that besides being a writer of fine thoughts in verse and prose, he was also a hard and untiring worker for the cause of the Colonies.

When Congress, in 1780, found the creation of a Federal Court of Appeals necessary, the names of seven of the most prominent lawyers of the entire country were placed in nomination, from which number three were to be elected. Titus Hosmer was one, William Paca, of Maryland, and George Wythe, of Virginia, were the other members. Mr. Hosmer's death occurred suddenly in August, 1780, at the age of forty-four.

It is rather unusual for a conspicuous father to be succeeded by sons who, in all respects, wear the garments of their father's

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greatness with naturalness and honor. The two sons of Titus Hosmer conferred additional honor upon the honored name, and they lived close to the high standard of their father. They were; Stephen Titus, and Hezekiah Lord Hosmer. Stephen entered Yale and applied himself closely to his academic duties until the routine of college life was interrupted by the Revolution. He completed his collegiate course under Dr. Dwight and his name was enrolled as a member of the class that was graduated in 1782. In the choice of a profession he followed his father's footsteps and studied law under his guardian, the Hon. Oliver Ellsworth, and under the Hon. William S. Johnson, and in 1785 was admitted to practice. His father had left little or no estate, so he was obliged to depend entirely upon his own ability from the start. Writers of his clay say, that he had the largest practice of any lawyer in Middlesex County. He continued to practice his profession till he was appointed a judge of the Superior Court, in 1815. As a judge, he continued the study of law and so marvellous was his memory that it was seldom necessary for him to refer to the Reports when citing cases or points of law. He later became Chief Justice of the Superior Court and continued in that office until his seventy-first year, the extreme age limit allowed by the Constitution. He died in Middletown, in August, 1834.

Hezekiah Lord Hosmer was a graduate of Yale in 1785, a lawyer of note and a member of Congress, but as he settled in Hudson, New York, he passes out of this narrative.

As has been previously mentioned, the first public worship in Middletown, was under the shade of a grand old elm tree. There the hardy settlers held their services for about two years. In 1652, two years after the settlement was effected, the people built a rude little log church, close to the great elm, which stood near the site of the Parochial School of St. John's Church.

The Rev. Samuel Stow, a Harvard graduate of 1645, was the leader of public worship for the first seven years, although not the permanently settled minister of the Church. At this time the people were divided in opinion in regard to what is known

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historically, as the " Half-way Covenant". This produced a difference of opinion as to the wisdom of installing Mr. Stow as minister. The matter was of so great importance that the General Court took it up in 1661, and ordered that the people of Middletown should have entire liberty to choose their own minister. Eventually, Mr. Stow gave up the ministry and lived as a private citizen in Middletown.

The earnest desire of the people, in regard to their spiritual lives was realized in 1668, when the Church had a settled pastor, and had made Covenant with God and with each other. On November 4, 1668, the Rev. Nathaniel Collins was called and was ordained by the Revs. Messrs. Mather and Whiting. The Church stood upon the Cambridge Platform.

The Strict Congregationalists had a society and church in Middletown, in 1754, but there were members of that denomination before that year. They were the outgrowth of the great and general revival in religious matters, in the British Colonies in North America, in 1741 and '42, when a few persons joined themselves to that faith in Middletown.

The Rev. Ebenezer Frothingham, a native of Cambridge, Massachusetts, the first minister of the Strict Church of Middle-town, had been in charge of the Strict Church of Wethersfield. The Church in Middletown grew from tiny proportions to sufficient strength for two Churches, in 1788, under Mr. Frothing-ham's pastorate, the second being in Westfield.

At the time of the formation of the Second Church, Mr. Frothingham was dismissed from the Middletown Church and the Rev. Stephen Parsons became minister of the Westfield Church. He was dismissed in 1795, as his sentiments on the subject and mode of baptism had undergone a change. Soon after 1812, the Church had dwindled greatly and was therefore voluntarily dissolved, but in 1816, four men and nine women formed a new Church and from then on the denomination grew in numbers and strength. Among its later ministers were the Rev. William H. Beecher — a son of the famous Congregationalist and Christian — the Rev. Lyman Beecher — who was installed minister in 1833; and the Rev. Andrew L. Stone, a graduate of Yale, in the class of 1837, who was installed in 1844, and later became the minister of the old Park Street Church, in Boston.

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The Congregational spirit was strong in Connecticut; even more, it was dominant, but it was not so intense as it was in eastern Massachusetts, so the establishment of a Church of the Anglican Communion was not unnatural at an early date, especially in Middletown, where the mental cultivation of the people and the broadening effects of their foreign commerce had, from the earliest times, produced a degree of catholicity that welcomed all sects of Christians.

There was not an Episcopal Parish organized in Middletown before 1749, but that service was held in the homes of the few Churchmen is quite probable. The Rev. James Wetmore, a native of Middletown, who was the first Congregational minister of North Haven, had a strong inclination toward the Episcopal Church and finally, in 1724, he joined that body and became a priest. It is probable that he held service and administered the Sacraments at periods between 1724, and 1749. It is also quite probable, that the Rev. Jeremiah Learning, who was born in Middletown, held service previous to 1749.

In 1749, there were sixteen Episcopal families in Middletown which were desirous for a building in which to worship, to which end Mr. Wetmore had urged them. On April 29, 1749, the Town of Middletown voted " that the professors of the Church of England have liberty to erect their church in the highway, between Jaffries' corner, John Foster's comer and the dwelling of Mr. Ephraim Doane (on the east side of South Park), and the selectmen, or any three of them, are hereby empowered to stake out the place for the said building." But the parish was not organized till Easter Monday, which occurred in 1750, on April 16. In 1752, a church was built in the site set apart by the town. It was fifty by thirty-six feet and had " a towering steeple " but it was not finished till 1754, or '55. This church building was used eighty years, when the congregation had increased so greatly that a larger building became a necessity. The second church building was erected in 1734 and was built of the famous Portland sandstone. It was seventy-eight by sixty feet and cost $14,000. The church had a bell in 1759, and in 1785, John Alsop, a wealthy merchant of New York and a brother of Richard Alsop, " the merchant-prince " of Middletown, gave the Church a new bell.

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The first rector was the Rev. Ichabod Camp. He was born in Durham and was graduated from Yale in the class of 1743. He served as rector of Middletown and Wallingford from 1752, to 1760. Mr. Camp met with a tragic death in Louisburgh, Virginia, in 1760, at the hands of his brother-in-law. His successors were: The Rev. Abraham Jarvis, of Norwalk, Connecticut, who was graduated from Yale in the class of 1761. He served as Lay-reader for two years. In 1763, there being no Bishop in the Colonies, Mr. Jarvis sailed for England to be ordained, the Church giving him £40 toward his expenses. Upon his return, he was given the very respectable salary of £90 and remained as rector of the Church till 1799. In 1801, he was elected Bishop of Connecticut, when he resided in Cheshire and later in New Flaven, where he died in May, 1813, at the age of seventy-five.

The succeeding rectorships were brief. The Rev. Calvin White, of Middletown, a graduate of Yale in the class of 1786, was rector from September, 1799 to July, 1800: the Rev. Joseph Warren, from October, 1800, to August, 1803; the Rev. Clement Merriam, April, ,1804 to April, 1806; Mr. Samuel Birge, served as Lay-reader for six months, when there was a period of about five years in which visiting clergymen officiated.

The Rev. John Kewley, M.D., became rector in April, 1809. Dr. Kewley was educated in England, at Eaton and Cambridge. He practiced medicine in the West Indies and later, in Pennsylvania, for several years. He was ordained in Chester, Maryland, and soon after went to Middletown. His ministrations were highly profitable, both for the temporal as well as the spiritual side of the Church, but for some reason he was removed by the Bishop in March, 1813, when he went to St. George's Church, in New York.

Deacon Birdsey Glover Noble, of New Milford, a graduate of Yale, in the class of 1810, officiated from 1813, to 1828; the Rev. Smith Payne was rector from December, 1828, to August, 1830; the Rev. George Jones, a graduate in the class of 1823, at Yale, chaplain in the United States Navy and tutor in Yale, served for one year when Mr. Payne returned and served as rector from August 1831 till August, 1836.

The Rev. Samuel Farmer Jarvis, D.D., of Middletown, a son

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of Bishop Jarvis, and a graduate of Yale, in 1805, became rector in April, 1837, and the Rev. John Williams, D.D., was his assistant. Dr. Williams was called to old St. George's Church in Schenectady, New York (the oldest church building in Schenec-tady County), and served there till he was called to the Presidency of Trinity College, in 1849.

It is impossible for Churchmen to think of Bishop Williams without having all that is best in them aroused. What the dignified Washington, the intensely human Lincoln and the lovable McKinley were to the Nation, John Williams was to Churchmen. Venerated and beloved in America; venerated and held in profound respect in Great Britain, by Bishops, Priests and Laymen; his life was complete; a glory to the Divine Power that created it; an honor to the Nation of which he was a citizen; a blessing to the poor; an inspiration to all men; one of the finest men and Christians that the Anglo-Saxon race, in any century, has produced.

The Rev. Edson Wilson Wiltbank was rector from April, 1842, to February, 1844; then the Rev. Horace Hills, till August, 1845; the Rev. F. J. Goodwin, of South Berwick, Maine, a graduate of Bowdoin College, in the class of 1832, was rector in 1845.

The old church building was notable from the fact that it was where the Rt. Rev. Samuel Seabury, the first American Bishop, first met the clergy, after his return from Scotland, where he was consecrated, and the first ordination of Deacons took place in it.

This Church, like nearly every Episcopal Church in the country during the Revolution, suffered considerably from the fact that the clergy were sufficiently Quixotic to believe that a moral obligation bound them to continue to pray for the Royal Family. The patriots naturally felt that the intent was for prayers to be made for the government and that the President or the Congress should be substituted, as is now clone. The majority of the rectors were stubborn in this matter and the result was temporarily bad for the parishes. After peace had been declared, matters adjusted themselves. In September, 1786, the Bishop confirmed 127 persons in Middletown.

The first Methodist Church was organized in 1741', but the Methodist had held service for two years previous to that date.

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The Rev. Jesse Lee preached the first sermon to the Methodists on December 7, 1739. From the founding up to 1816, the society was part of a circuit, but in 1816, the society became a station, or separate charge. In 1816, there were 112 communicants. The Church continued to grow in strength and numbers and such growth was greatly increased by the founding of Wesleyan University. In 1846, when the University took a decided jump in the educational world, there were 515 communicants in the Methodist Church.

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The application for a charter was made on November 6, 1753, and the charter was granted by the Grand Lodge in Boston, Massachusetts, on February 4, 1754. At that time, Thomas Oxnard was Provincial Grand Master for North America, by appointment by Lord Ward, Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of England. As Grand Master Oxnard was in England at the time St. John's charter was granted, his name did not appear upon it. It was signed by Benjamin Hollowell, D.G.M., Charles Brockwell, S.G.W., James Forbes, J.G.W., and John Leverett, G.S.

No name was given to the Lodge in the charter of 1754, nor was a numeral assigned. The first time the name and number St. John's No. 2, appears, is in a catalogue of members in the record book, on February 10, 1787, and it appears in the records for the first time on March 7, 1810. In 1796, the numeral was officially fixed by order of the Grand Lodge.

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The first meeting- was held in the tavern kept by Captain Michael Burnham, on the north side of Washington street, and it is a pleasant and interesting fact, that this first home of St. John's Lodge is still standing. The first Master of the Lodge, who was named in the charter, was Jehosaphat Starr, February 4, 1754; then followed Richard Alsop, June 4, 1755; Philip Mortimer, December 27, 1756; George Phillips, December 27, 1757; Ichabod Camp, December 27, 1758; Philip Mortimer, June 24, 1760; George Phillips, December 27, 1764; Richard Alsop, December 27, 1765; Comfort Sage, December 30, 1767; George Phillips, ——, 1769; Richard Alsop, ——, 1771; John Cotton, December 27, 1781; General Samuel Holden Parsons, December 27, 1782; General Comfort Sage, December 27, 1783; Robert Warner, December 27, 1784; Asher Miller, December 26, 1785; Lamberton Cooper, December 22, 1788; Ebenezer Sage, December 15, 1790; Stephen Titus Hosmer, December 23, 1794; Samuel Canfield, June 21, 1798; and William B. Hall, December 17, 1800. As was the case with the majority of the Lodges in the Colonies and the States, just before and during the Revolution, St. John's meetings ceased in 1772, and were not resumed till 1781, when a meeting was held in Mrs. Shaler's tavern.

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Had Captain Partridge not moved his Academy to Vermont, Wesleyan University would probably not have located in Middle-town. In 1824, the generosity of Middletown caused Captain Partridge to move his American Literary, Scientific, and Military Academy (what a mouthful for a foot ball cheer) from Norwich, Vermont, to Middletown. A charming site was provided and the cornerstone was laid with Masonic honors. A chapel was also erected and the fifth anniversary was celebrated in September, 1825. The Hon. S. VV. Dana delivered the address, to a large number of citizens, as well as to 200 cadets from nineteen states and the District of Columbia. The " A. L. S. S. and M. A." was called the Institution locally, for brevity's sake. The Institution was under the exclusive control of Captain Partridge until 1828, when a board of trustees was appointed and the number of instructors was increased. A considerable number of students were from southern states, the greatest number of students in one year being 240. The Institution flourished and was regarded as a first class, high-toned Academic institution and it turned out some of the foremost military engineers and officers of the Mexican and Civil Wars, and George Dewey's name was the key-stone of the arch of notable and honored sons of the Institution.

In 1829, the Institution was induced to remove to other parts and the buildings erected for academic purposes were left vacant, and being of little use for any other than school purposes, the owners put a bargain-counter price on them.

Just before this time, the Methodist Episcopal Church was feeling the need of a college. The Church determined to establish it in the North anyhow and in the East if possible. The owners of the Institution buildings and chapel offered them as a gift to the Methodist Church, if an endowment of $40,000 could be secured. Middletown's quick response was typical. It pledged $18,000 through public and private subscription and the Church at large had little difficulty in raising the $22,000. In 1830, Wesleyan University began its honorable and useful existence and received its charter the following year. The first president, the Rev. Dr. Fisk, although advanced in years, worked hard for

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the success of the University and he began to see the fruits of his labors before death cut them short.

The newspapers of Middletown had brief and varied existences. The first to be established was the Middlesex Gazette, in 1785. The publishers were William Woodward and James Green. A few years later, Mr. Green withdrew from the concern and Mr. Woodward continued to publish the paper till 1797, when he sold it to Tertius Dunning-. He published the Gazette till his death in 1823, and his son, Charles Dunning, continued it for a year, when it was sold by the administrator of the estate to Epaphras and Horace Clark, in 1824. T. N. Parmelee and E. T. Greenfield purchased it in 1828, and a few months later Mr. Parmelee sold out to Mr. Greenfield who, in turn, in 1830, sold it back to Mr. Parmelee and he edited it till 1832. Edwin Hunt was the next purchaser and soon after he sold it to Joseph Long-king, Jr., and in 1834 it ceased to be published.

The Gazette's plant was sold to George F. Olmsted who started the New England Advocate. The Advocate suspended publication in 1836. The presses were sold to Charles H. Pelton, who was proprietor of a book and job printing establishment.

The Connecticut Spectator was started in January, 1814, by Loomis and Richards. Mr. Loomis sold to Mr. Richards, in 1815, and in 1817 this paper expired.

On January I, 1823, William D. Starr and William H. Niles started to print the American Sentinel. Mr. Niles sold to his partner in 1827. In 1833, the Sentinel and Witness were united. The Witness had been established in January of that year by H. W. Green. The Sentinel and Witness eventually ceased to be published. The Constitution was started by Abner Newton, Jr., in 1838, and in 1847, he attempted a daily, but that expired at the end of twelve months.

The first determined attempt to publish a daily was made by N. J. Phelps & Company, in 1850. It was sold the following year to B. Casey & Company and was discontinued that same year.

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The following were Middletown's first public officers, with the years they served:

The first Recorder, later called Register and finally Town Clerk, was Robert Webster, 1653—1656. He was also the first Justice of the Peace.

The first Mayor was the Hon. Jabcz Hamlin. He was elected on July 13, 1784. He continued to fill the office, without the formality of being reclected, till he resigned in 1788. Mr. Hamlin seems to have been a man of and for the people for he was persuaded by the people to remain in orrice as mayor, which He did till his death in April, 1791.

The first City Clerk was Bezaleel Fisk, from July 13, 1784, to January, 1785.

The first Treasurer was Nehemiah Hubbard, from 1795, to 1800. The first Bank of the City of Middletown was the Middletown Bank, incorporated in October, 1795, but it did not begin banking operations till the spring of 1801. Elijah Hubbard was the first president, from May, 1801, to May, 1808. The first cashier was Timothy Southmayd, from May, 1801 to December, 1821.

Middlesex County Hank was incorporated in May, 1830. Its first president was Henry L. DeKoven, from September, 1830, to April, 1832. The first Cashier was Samuel Cooper, from September, 1830, till November, 1830, when, he resigned.

The Branch Hank of The United States was started in 1817. Samuel W. Dana was its president till 1819, and Arthur W. Magill was its cashier till 1822. In 1824, the Bank was moved to Hartford and in 1835 it ceased to exist.

The Middletown Savings Bank was incorporated in May, 1825, and began operations in June of that year. The first President was Nehemia Hubbard, from 1825, to 1837. The first Secretary-treasurer was Ebenezcr G. Southmayd, from 1825 to 1832.

The first Judge of Probate was the Hon. Jabez Hamlin, who served from 1752 to 1789.

The first Post Office was established in 1775, and the first Postmaster was Winslow Hobby, who served from 1775, to 1807.

The first Collector of the Port was George Phillips, who served from 1795 to 1797.

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Middletown and vicinity had been an Indian stronghold and headquarters for many centuries before the White-man had even heard of it. This is proven beyond doubt by the utensils, beads and implements of tempered copper found in graves which have been opened. On the road toward Newneld the first settlers found an Indian burying ground, that had every appearance of having been used for many generations, on which were found rough gravestones marked with devices, perhaps the Indian symbols for the name of the warrior buried beneath, or possibly, simply the emblem of the tribe of which he was a member.

The Indians whom the white settlers found there in 1650, were the Mattabesett Tribe under the chieftainship of a man of strong character and powerful will who was possessed of far-reaching influence.

Sequasson— erroneously called Sowheag — in Europe would have been a great political leader; in the New World he was a Sachem, whose will was obeyed over an extensive territory. As Great Sachem of the Mattabesetts, he was supreme over the Indians on both sides of the Connecticut River, including several tribes besides his own immediate tribe. From Indian Hill, where he lived, he was accustomed to summon the tribe by blowing on a famous conch shell. This was believed to have magical powers because its tones could be heard at so great a distance by the chiefs and warriors of the Mattabesett and subordinate tribes, whom he wished to summon for council or defence. Sequasson was held in profound reverence by the Indians and was respected and somewhat feared by the white settlers for, while he was not an open enemy of the settlers, he was far from being friendly. They were treated by him with the dignified reserve and contempt of a great chief. He regarded them as interlopers and inferiors, who had encroached upon his birthright. The Indians of the tribe kept his burial place a profound secret from the settlers and when questioned by them in regard to the location of his grave, they showed anger and remained silent. To the north of Middletown, near the Sebeth River, was a field called after him, in which many stone arrowheads and spearheads were found.

Not far from Middletown, in what is now Glastenbury,

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was a small tribe of the Mohawks, of the Five Nations of New York, of whom the Indians of New England were in great dread, with the exception of the Pequots. How this collection of Mohawks happened to be settled there, so far from their own beautiful Mohawk Valley, may be accounted for reasonably enough.

The Mohawks were the most powerful and dominant tribe of Indians on the Continent in those early clays, before the Dutch had demoralized them with rum and trade. It was their boast and an historical fact, that they demanded and received tribute from other tribes, not of the Five Nations, which lived hundreds of miles distant, to the south and east of the Hudson River. They delighted in the power they possessed and were never happier then when inspiring terror in the hearts of those distant tribes. They boasted that one Mohawk Sachern, or even a prominent warrior, could walk alone through the village of one of the tribute-paying tribes and receive anything he demanded. The journeying to the tribes east of the Hudson, and in the south, for the purpose of collecting tribute and asserting their supremacy, came to be regarded as an unnecessary trouble. To avoid this they stationed small tribes of the Mohawk Nation in central points, among the other tribes from whom tribute was demanded, so that the resident Mohawks could collect the tribute and maintain the fear, which was more highly prized than the tribute. That the tribute collected by the small tribes did not reach the Mohawk Nation mattered little, so long as it was paid to Mohawks, and their supremacy maintained. The Mohawks at Glastenbury were probably settled there to keep the New England Indians constantly in mind of the fact that they were subservient to them. It is a strange fact, that one or two painted Mohawks would inspire nearly as great terror among the white settlers, as they did among the Indians of other tribes. Eventually the Mohawks, of Glastenbury, annihilated the Mattabesetts.

There is nothing that more strongly illustrates the power of the Mohawks and the fear in which they were held by the New England Indians, than a clever bit of Indian cunning successfully practiced by Uncas.

Weaseapano, a Poclunk Indian, killed a Sachem of the Mattabesetts, who lived near Middletown, in 1656. Sequasson, Great

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Sachem of the Tribe, complained to the white magistrate of the Colony, that the Podunks were hiding the murderer and that they were protecting him from the punishment he deserved, Sequasson also told his troubles to Uncas and obtained a promise of assistance from him. Uncas then complained to the magistrates that Tontonimo had protected an Indian who had murdered a Mohegan. The magistrates summoned all the parties concerned before them. Sequasson and Uncas demanded that ten of Weaseapano's friends should be delivered up to them for slaughter, as the murderer was a worthless Indian and the murdered man a great Sachem. Tontonimo regarded the price as excessive and brought in a counter claim, that the dead Sachem had killed Weaseapano's uncle. The Governor of the Colony, fearing trouble from direct interference, suggested that the demand was too great and told Uncas and his friend that the white men were content to punish the murderer.

Tontonimo wanted to pay for the dead Sachem in wampum, but it was refused. Uncas then reduced his demand from ten to six men, but this in turn was refused by Tontonimo. The Governor urged that the murderer be delivered to Sequasson and Uncas, and they agreed to be satisfied with him in place of the six men. Tontonimo promised to do as the Governor wished and then secretly withdrew from the court and retired to the Podunk stronghold. The Governor was indignant, but he kept it to himself and tried to persuade the Indians not to fight it out. The most they would promise was, not to interfere with the white settlers or injure their property on either side of the Connecticut River. Uncas then gathered an army of Indians with which to avenge himself upon the Podunks. Uncas met the Podtinks near Hockanum River, opposite Hartford, and seeing the enemy about equal in number to his own followers, he decided not to fight.

Now here comes in his craft. Uncas sent word to Tontonimo, that if he did not give up the murderer he would send the Mohawks to wipe the Podunks off the face of the earth. Uncas' opportunity came soon after the delivery of the message. He provided a Mohegan warrior with several Mohawk weapons (each nation and tribe fashioned its weapons in some peculiar manner so

Page 117 that they could be easily recognized by other Indians, as belonging to such or such a tribe) and sent him to the Podunk stronghold, with instructions to set Arc to a house nearby and then to leave the weapons on the ground and return to camp. In the morning the Podunks went to the place where the fire had been, found the weapons and recognizing them to be of Mohawk make, they believed that Uncas had really won the Mohawks over to his side. Tontonimo immediately delivered up the murderer, Weaseapano, and asked Uncas to make peace with him.

Generally speaking, the white settlers and the Mattabesetts lived in peace. The Indians had everything to gain from such conditions and nothing to lose, for the New England settlers, unlike the Dutch of New York, did not demoralize them with rum.

The last of the Tribe of Mattabcsett was Mamoosun, a fine, high-spirited old man, whose faithfulness to his tribe and its traditions, was inspiring. Where Mamoosun lived is not positively known, but that he made annual visits to Middletown each autumn, for the purpose of paying respect to the memory and the greatness of his tribe, is a matter of history. They spent whole days in the Indian burial ground, near Newfield. mourning over the past glories of the dead who were buried there.

On these annual pilgrimages the old Indian seemed to live more in the spirit than in the flesh, and there can be no doubt that his mind was in an exalted state as it dwelt on the past. During this period he shunned mankind and spent his nights in the hollow of a gigantic sycamore, of great age, that was known for many generations as " Mamoosun's tree ". Mamoosun's pilgrimages began before, and continued for several years after, 1720. The white settlers of Middletown honored and respected the dignified, sad old man who alone of all his tribe still lived. A Mr. Gilbert, who owned the farm upon which the Indian burial ground was situated, was most friendly and hospitable to Mamoosun who, after his days of mourning and religious duties were finished, would go to Mr. Gilbert's home as his guest. Mamoosun dreaded above all things that the graves of his dead should be disturbed by the plow and harrow. Mr. Gilbert promised him, that so long as he lived the field should not be cultivated and the promise was faithfully kept for several years after the visits of the old Indian had ceased.

MIDDLEFIELD.

Like all Yankee settlements, as soon as the people were made into a parish by the General Court, they built a church. A meeting-house, forty feet square, was built in 1745 and the Rev. Ebenezer Gould was the first minister. Although there was dissatisfaction with the minister on the parts of several of the congregation, he remained there till 1756, when he was dismissed. As far as can be ascertained from records, the dismissal of the Rev. Ebenezer Gould from the Middlefield Church ended his ministerial career. From 1756, till 1765, the people were without a settled minister. They had made several attempts to settle one but without success, so it looks very much as if the trouble was caused by individuals of the parish, rather than by the minister. Finally, in February, 1765, the Rev. Joseph Denison, of Wind-ham, a graduate of Yale in the class of 1763, became the minister. He died in 1770, at the age of thirty-one.

The Rev. Abner Benedict, of North Salem, New York, a graduate in the class of 1769, at Yale, was the next minister, he serving from 1771, till 1785, when he was dismissed by his own request that he might move to a place more favorable to the health of his daughter, who was an invalid. The Rev. Abner Benedict was an exceptional man, as a minister and as a citizen.

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While in Middlefield he convinced the people of the sin of slavery and that it was a crime against society, with the result, that every slave owned in Middlefield was freed. The Rev. Joel Benedict, D.D., of Lisbon and Plainfield; and Lieutenant Peter Benedict, a soldier of the Revolution, were brothers of Abner, who was a writer of merit upon religious subjects. The late Rev. Dr. Field in commenting upon the sad disruption in the Church, clue to there being as " many people of many minds ", in those early days, as at the present time, says:

This dismissal was exceedingly unfavorable to the interests of religion in Middlefield. Had he remained there, the Church would have probably been greatly strengthened and the society united and prosperous. But after he was gone the society remained vacant more than twenty years. No minister of Christ was statedly in the desk on the Sabbath, enlighten-ing and establishing the minds of the people in the great truths of the gospel, and telling them on week days from house to house, words whereby they and their children might be saved. The old professors of religion died or removed, until the church was almost extinct.

But the Lord having revived his work in the neighboring town of Durham, and this having spread somewhat in this place, the church was reorganized, or rather a new church was formed in December, 1808, and twenty-nine persons solemnly entered into covenant with God, and with one another. A few of these had been members of the old church, the others were those who had recently entertained hope of a saving interest in Christ.

But the members of this church, and those disposed to attend worship with them, had no meeting-house of their own, and difficulties existed in the way of their occupying the old meeting-house. In this situation they met for a time in private dwellings, and then assembled for worship in a conference-house, which they erected, until they found means to build a sanctuary. This they raised on the site of the old meeting-house in 1841 and dedicated it June 8, 1842.

ROMWELL was known as Upper Houses — sometimes Upper Middletown — from the settlement of Middle-town in 1650, down to 1851, in which year Upper Houses was incorporated as separate town. The Upper Houses were simply the houses, or little settlement, in the upper portion of Middletown. This designation for out-lying hamlets belonging to the larger and principal settlement or town, was customary in many Connecticut towns and many of the original towns gave

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the names of Upper and Lower Houses, to hamlets lying above or below them.

The majority of the first settlers of Cromwell built their houses on Pleasant street. They were John Kirby, Nathaniel White, Robert Webster, Samuel Stocking, George Graves, Joseph Smith, Daniel Harris, John Martin, John Savage, David Sage, and Thomas Ranney. They were joined by several other families before the end of the year. Between the Upper Houses and Middletown was Little River, which was crossed in going to and from the Church and stores in Middletown, by a ferry.

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otherwise they would have to continue as a part of the Parish of Middletown, and would have to pay their portion toward the support of the Church there. At this time, 1703, the little village contained about 250 persons. While they governed their own Church and school affairs, they were, in matters relating to the town, under the jurisdiction of Middletown. A Church was not organized and a minister settled till 1715, when the Rev. Joseph Smith was settled as the first minister of Cromwell. The great fertility of the soil made the chief occupation of the people its cultivation, for nearly 150 years after the settlement. A few years after the close of the Revolution, ship building began and for several decades was carried on with energy and profit. William Belcher, Captain Luther Smith, and Captain Abijah Savage had ship yards, and further back from the river was a rope-walk in which the cables and cordage, for the vessels built there, were made. At about the beginning of the nineteenth century there were a few small manufacturies.

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Friendly Association. It had a small library which formed the nucleus for a larger collection of books several decades later. The first officers were: President, the Rev. J. L. Williams; vice-president, Silas Sage; secretary, William C. Redfield; treasurer, Alien Butler. The association flourished for twenty years and then slowly died.

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Tully William had a good and wise friend, who gave the ambitious youth free access to his library and suggested to him the best course of reading, and study.

That William Redfield in later life became well known, as a scientist, original investigator and philosopher, in the Eastern and Western Hemispheres, was due to his untiring patience and great energy of body and mind. His method was to determine upon some particular object which he wished to attain and then to go at it and, overcoming all difficulties, attain it. An instance of his determination and great physical energy — which was even excelled by his mental energy — will give an idea of the youth who, 'as a man, became the co-discoverer of the rotary motion of storms.

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he was actually on foot twenty-four days and so averaged a trifle more than twenty-nine miles a day. As his eyes and ears were ever on the alert and his ability to perceive and observe was profound, his 7OO-mile journey on foot did as much for him as a year in college would have done for the average young man of twenty-one.

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the neighborhood of Middletown. He followed the course of the storm and gave to what he found intense thought. He discovered that all great storms are cyclonic, or as he expressed it, progressive whirlwinds. For the benefit of navigators, Mr. Red-field immediately published " The Law of Storms ".

It was my good fortune to enjoy for many years the friendly acquaintance of one as remarkable for modesty and unassuming' pretensions as for laborious observation and inquiry after knowledge. To him and to General Reid, of the Royal Engineers of England (now Governor of Malta), are navigators mainly indebted for the discovery of a law which has already contributed and will contribute greatly to the safety of vessels traversing the ocean. The honor of having established, on satisfactory evidence, the rotary and progressive character of ocean storms, and de-

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termining their modes of action or laws, is due alike to the memory of William C. Redfield and to our country's fame.

Mr. Redfield was a marine engineer of note. The famous Connecticut River steamer, " Oliver Ellsworth ", was built by him in 1823. The idea of carrying freight, to and from New York and the upper-Hudson, on long strings of barges drawn by tug-boats was his. Mr. Redfield and George W. Feather-stonhaugh (the first Government Geologist of the United States whose mansion and country estate were in Duanesburgh, Sche-nectady County, New York), were the first to see and appreciate the possibilities for national wealth by connecting by railroads the vast fertile territory of the North-west with the great markets of the East.

It may be remarked incidentally, that Mr. Featherstonhaugh began writing for public prints upon the subject of railroads in 1812, and on March 26, he and Stephen VanRensselaer, the last of the Patroons, incorporated the first railroad company.

In 1829, Mr. Redfield issued a pamphlet setting- forth his ideas, which were to connect the Mississippi and Hudson Rivers by a railroad over which the crops and minerals of the West could be brought to New York, and the West peopled with men of energy and enterprise from the East. The route he proposed was practically that of the Erie Railroad and his prophesy for the routes of other railroads, that would connect Indiana, Illinois and Michigan, with the East, was closely fulfilled.

ILD animals were beginning to be scarce in Middlesex County by the time the Revolution broke out. Bears, wolves, " catamounts", deer etc. could be found by experienced hunters, but it was not so many years before the Revolution that they were to be had without hunting for them.

Wolves were a source of trouble and loss to the farmers till 1770, when those that were left gradually withdrew to the wilder portions of northern New England. They were sufficiently rare for the killing of one in the northern part of Say-

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brook, in the winter of 1815, to excite unusual interest and comment.

That moose ever roamed the meadows and forests of the lower Connecticut, and gorged themselves on lily-pads and river grass, hardly seems possible, but the time was, when they were not at all scarce, although not frequently seen near the settlements, because of their timidity. It is a fact, however, that in 1770, in the Town of Saybrook, near where the wolf was killed in 1815, that a moose was killed. It was probably the last of its kind in Middlesex County.

Deer were so numerous in very early times that they often proved a nuisance as crop destroyers. They were plentiful up to the hard winters of 1764-'65,, when great numbers died or were killed by hunters.

Wild turkeys were common up to 1780, or '85, and could be found by skilful hunters up to 1790.

The animals that were hunted and trapped for their valuable fur, disappeared many years before those that were killed for food, as well as for their hides.

Ferries were established at an early date as a means of crossing the Connecticut. They were as follows: Saybrook Ferry, between Saybrook and Lyme, 1662; Chapman's Ferry, between Hadddin and East Haddam, 1694. These two were the only ferries crossing the Connecticut in Middlesex County for eighty-nine years after the first settlement. Brockway's Ferry, between Pautapoug (Essex) and the northern part of Lyme, 1724; Middletown Ferry, between Middletown and Chatham, 1726; Upper-houses (Cromwell) Ferry, between Upper Houses and Chatham, 1759; Higganum Ferry, between Haddam and Middle Haddam, 1763; Warner's Ferry, between Chester and Hadlyme, 1769. Knowl's Landing Ferry (Chatham), between Middletown and Midtlle Haddam, was granted about 1736, but it was abandoned and a new grant made in 1806; East Haddam Ferry, between Haddam and East Haddam, in 1741, but it was only occasionally used and a new grant was made in 1811; Haddam Ferry, between Haddam and Middle Haddam, 1814.

Post Offices were established, in Middletown in 1775; Say-brook, in 1793; Killingworth, in 1794; East Haddam and Dur-

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ham, in 1800; Haddam, in 1802; Knowl's Landing, Chatham, in 1904; Upper Houses (Cromwell), in 1809; Chester, in 1810; West Chester and North Killingworth, in 1817.

Stage lines were established in 1785, and in 1794, which carried mail from Hartford to New Haven, through Middletown and Durham, in Middlesex County.

The interest and wonder excited by the first carnages, kept solely for driving or " pleasure-carriages ", as they were called, has been spoken of several times. The owning of one of these vehicles was greater evidence of affluence in those days, than a $20,000 " benzine-buggy " is in the twentieth century. The first made its appearance in Killingworth, in 1748; then followed, Middletown, about 1750; Saybrook and Durham, in 1755; Chatham, in 1768; East Haddam, in 1769; and Haddam, in 1785.

The first library in Middlesex was established in Chester, in 1733.

The idea is so utterly ridiculous to us now, that it hardly seems possible that those good, narrow, heroic Christians, who settled New England, should have thought the names of the days of the week to be sinful, because they were derived from the names of mythological gods, but as an actual matter of fact they did think Sunday, Monday etc. were naughty words. The week began on the Sabbath, or Lord's Day; the other days were known and designated by numbers. It really does not seem possible that such intelligent, strong-minded men, a large percent of whom had received liberal educations, could have believed that the taking out from their lives, their speech and their thoughts even, everything that was poetic, beautiful and romantic, was pleasing to the Creator, Who was the source of the very things they deprived themselves of. But they did, and they were honest and sincere in so doing. They would not tolerate the names of the days of the week because of their mythological origin. They deprived their children of all knowledge of Christmas and Easter because they were too strongly associated with Rome.

CHATHAM.

For about fifty years the settlers cleared and cultivated the land and hunted, trapped and fished. Fishing in those days, and for many decades thereafter, meant shad and salmon. It hardly seems possible now, that there was a time when salmon were so common that it was customary in one or another of the river towns, especially Hartford, when an apprentice was indentured, to demand that he should not be given salmon oftener than a certain specified number of times a week. Agriculture and hunting and trapping were succeeded, as the chief occupation, by boat building about 1760, the first to be launched being sloops and small schooners. The first ship was launched from the Middle Haddam yards in 1763. From that time the business increased and flourished till about 1805, when for some reason it fell off and eventually ceased.

The prosperity of Middle Haddam, while the boat building

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yards were at their busiest, made it a trading center for a considerable distance to the south, east and north-east, people going there for their trading from as far off as the towns of Marlboro and Hebron. From 1805, when the business of the boat yards began to decline, to 1838, when it ceased, there were in vessels built, with a total tonnage of 27,430. The vessels launched between those years were: 51 ships, 24 brigs, 21 schooners and 15 sloops, which shows that the greater number were sea-going vessels. One of the most famous master-builders of the Connecticut River was Thomas Child, who was living in 1851, at the great age of 89. During his long life he had charge of the construction of 237 vessels, the greater portion of them being built in the Middle Haddam yards. The ship building industry naturally stimulated the wealthier citizens of Middle Haddam to embark in commerce, and a few of them owned the vessels they commanded, or an interest in those they helped to navigate.

For thirty years the people of Middle Haddam and vicinity were obliged to journey through the woods, or by boat and canoe on the river, to Portland, Middletown or Haddam to attend church. In October, 1738, they, with a few families from Haddam Neck, petitioned for incorporation as a parish. The petition was granted and the Church was organized on September 24, 1740. The Rev. Benjamin Bowers, of Billerica, Massachusetts, a graduate of Harvard in the class of 1733, was the first minister. In 1744, a meeting house was built as near the center of the scattered homesteads as possible.

The first Episcopal Church in Chatham was built in 1772, in the eastern portion of Middle Haddam, but it was not long-lived and the building was taken down. In 1786, another Episcopal Church was built in Middle Haddam, near the " Landing", the Rev. Abraham Jarvis, rector of Christ Church, Middletown, officiating till 1791.

There was a Methodist Church there in 1792. The meetings were held in the homes of the members, or in the school house, till 1796, when a small church was built. There were at one time fifty communicants, but the membership fell off and the church was finally closed.

There is a hill about two miles back from the Connecticut River, partly in Chatham and partly in Portland, that for more

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than a century was a great mineral mystery. The town line runs along the ridge of Great Hill, which rises precipitously from the pond at its south-western front, to a height above the pond of 400 feet and above the sea of 700 feet. For the first hundred years after the settlement of Middletown (which formerly included the Towns of Portland and Chatham), this hill was called " The Governor's Ring ".

It seems, that Governor John Winthrop, of New London, was accustomed to go to Great Hill with a servant and remain there two or three weeks at a time. When the Governor returned to New London he always had one, and sometimes several gold rings, and as everybody supposed that he obtained the gold from the hill, it came to be known as " The Governor's Ring ". On May 25, 1661, the people of Middletown granted to Governor Winthrop certain rights and privileges, and the following is a paraphrase of the document.

The people of Middletown for the encouragement of our much honored governor, Mr. John Winthrop, in his efforts to discover mines and minerals, for the working of which he will set up such works as may be needful, do hereby grant unto our much honored governor, any profitable mines or minerals that he shall discover, upon any common land within the borders of our town, and such woodland as he may need, to be used in working the mines; in area from 500 to 1,000 acres, which woodland shall not be within two miles of the settlement, but in such place as the town shall decide will the least interfere with the town's supply of firewood. The town reserves the right of commonage until the governor incloses the property granted. It is further provided that unless the governor, and such others as may be associated with him, set up works and begin to improve the mines within five years, the town reserves the right to make this grant to other persons, and if the governor accepts this grant, he must do so within two years.

The original wording of this grant was a jumble of words seemingly put together for the purpose of hiding the intention of the document. It certainly was an easy grant to live under. Had there been a dispute, all the interested parties would have been dead by the time the document had been translated into understandable English. Page 132

Nothing definite was done with the supposed mine in Great Hill, till one hundred years after the grant to Governor Winthrop was made. It is probable that he found minerals in it, of several kinds, but probably not in sufficient quantities to warrant the investment of money for its working. In 1762, a German physician, Dr. John Sebastian Stephauney, had a small force of men make a horizontal opening into the hill. He gave up his operations after a brief time, only to renew them in 1770. This time he had two other Germans associated with him, John Knool and Gominus Erkelens. Dr. Stephauney gave up an active interest in the enterprise and turned over the management to his partners, reserving for himself a portion of any profits there might be obtained. They agreed, that should metals or ore obtained from Great Hill be sent to England, that friends of Knool's should be the consignees; if to Holland, friends of Erkelens' should receive them.

The opening made by Dr. Stephauney was enlarged, or a new one made, and the top and sides were shored tip with great timbers for the safety of the workmen. A large number of casks filled with ore taken from the hill were sent to Europe and possibly to China. It was later found according to the private diary of President Stiles, of Yale College, that the mineral obtained was cobalt. Up to this time the people of Middletown and of nearby places, had no idea what had been found in the hill, as the workmen were all foreigners who did not speak English. For once at least, the inquisitive Yankee, with his ever present interrogation point, failed to obtain the information sought.

Under the date, January 1, 1787, President Stiles' diary contains the following entry:

Mr. Erkelens visited me full of his Cobalt mine and his China voyage. He some years ago bought the Governor's Ring, as it is called, or a mountain in the N. W. corner of East Haddam, comprehending about 800 acres, or about a square mile area. Here he finds plenty of Cobalt, which he manufactures into smalt, with which is made the beautiful blue on China ware &c. Governor Trumbull has often told me that this was the place to which Governor Winthrop of N. London used to resort with his servant, and after spending three weeks in the woods of this mountain, in roasting ores and assaying metals and casting gold rings, he used to return home to New London with plenty of gold. Hence this is called the Gov. Winthrop's ring to this day. Gov. Winthrop was an adept, in intimate

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correspondence with Sir Kenelm Digby, and the first chemical and philosophical characters of the last century — as may be seen in the dedication of 40th vol. Phil. Transactions 1740. Mr. Erkelens * * * has Been at £2,000 sterling expense to no profit. He is going on a voyage to China, carrying with him 20 tons of Cobalt ore.

Whether Erkelens really went to China or not in 1787, is not known. The mine was abandoned and eventually the opening was closed by the caving in of the sides and top.

For thirty years the mine was not worked, nor did it " work " anybody till 1818, when Seth Hunt, of New Hampshire, sunk a shaft and $20,000. He obtained a half ton of what he supposed was cobalt but which an essay, made in England, where the ore was sent, proved to be nickel with only a trace of cobalt.

For twenty-four years the internals of Great Hill were not tortured by powder, pick or shovel. In the summer of 1844, Professor Shepherd, who wrote "A Report on the Geological Survey of Connecticut ", began operations with a few men for a short time, probably for scientific purposes, for there is no record that he ever attempted to turn the results of his labors into commercial value. In 1850, Great Hill found other victims, in the persons of Edmund Brown, and a few associates. Mr. Brown did a great deal of excavating and lost a large sum of money, and at the end of a year and three months gave up the work.

HE village of East Hampton, not far from the center of the Township, was settled in 1743. It is located near the charming little lake called Pocotopaugh. Its fine water power was the chief cause of the settlement being made near it. Its greatest length, north and south, is a mile and one third and its greatest width, east and west, is one mile, but so charmingly irregular are its shores that its shore-line is about nine miles. Twin Islands occupy a position near the center of the lake. They are about nine acres in area, and a third of a mile to the north is another island of about two acres. Twin Islands was a popular camping place and stronghold of the Indians. The lake and its surrounding was just such a lovely spot as the Indians prized. The first occupation of the early settlers was a forge, from

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which was produced the great quantities of iron required by the many boat yards on the Connecticut, in Middletown and its neighborhood. Ore was taken to East Hampton from West Point, and pig iron, from New York and Salisbury. The original forge was given up in 1812, and in 1825 a new forge was built upon the site of the old one, where scythes were made, but this, in turn, was abandoned several years later. The forges were succeeded by several factories for the manufacture of bells, hoes, brass-kettles, pistols, satinet, and several saw and gristmills. There was a time when nearly all of the sleigh bells used in the United States and Canada were made in East Hampton.

The prosperity and industrial spirit of East Hampton was very largely due to William Barton, who was born in Windsor in 1762. William Barton, the father, was a captain in Colonel Flower's Regiment of Artillery Artificers, in the Revolution and his son William was with him as assistant. He learned his trade from his father, who was armorer in Springfield in the Revolutionary War. At the close of the war, William returned to Wintonbury, in Windsor, and made pistols and other arms. In 1790, he went to New York and started the manufacture of articles made of brass, especially andirons. He remained there for eighteen years and in 1808, went to East Hampton where he made hand bells and sleigh bells. William Barton was a man of broad mind, who loved his fellow man. He was never so happy as when benefiting others and improving the condition of the community in which he lived and worked. He taught his trade to others and it was not long before East Hampton became a thriving and prosperous community. In 1826, Mr. Barton went to Cicero, New York, where his happy influence was strongly felt. In 1846, he returned to his old home in East Hampton to spend the remaining years of his life, surrounded by his children and the friends and neighbors who honored and loved him. His death occurred, after a long life of usefulness, in 1849.

The first Church of East Hampton was organized in 1748, and its first minister was the Rev. John Norton, of Berlin, Connecticut, who was graduated from Yale in 1737. Using the expression Math profound respect, Mr. Norton was "A Fighting Parson ", one of those many patriotic heroes of the Congregational ministry in New England, who went to the front in defence

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of the British flag, in Colonial days, against the French and later, in defence of the Stars and Stripes, in the struggle for Independence.

As a class, the Congregational ministers of New England were college-bred men of strong intellects and inherited refinement, who would instinctively shun violence, hardship and death, but who possessed the New England spirit (the spirit which has made the Yankee the truest type of American manhood) so strongly, that they sacrificed everything and endured great hardships with cheerfulness, that they might inspire the soldiers with courage, through the word of God; that they might comfort and care for the wounded and sick, and commit to earth the bodies of those who fell while performing their duty to their country.

Of such was the Rev. John Norton. He was born in the Parish of Kensington, in the part of Farmington that is now Berlin, in 1716. He entered Yale and was graduated in the class of 1737, and was ordained over a small congregation in Fall Town, in the town of Deerneld, now Eernardston. This was his first parish and he was its first minister. On November 30, 1748, he was settled over the Church in East Hampton where he was minister for thirty years, his death occurring in 1778. The Nortons were of Norman descent, the name being Norville till it became Anglicised. The Rev. John Norton's great-grandfather was one of the eighty-four original proprietors of Bran-ford, Connecticut. His father, Sergeant John Norton, lived near Mill River crossing, on the road from Farmington to Middletown, where he was a farmer who was considered well-to-do. His mother was Anna Thompson, whose ancestors were among the early settlers of Hartford and Farmington.

Fall Town was so called from the fact, that it was a grant to the men who took part in the great Indian right, of May 18, 1676, at the Great Falls of the Connecticut (Turner's Falls) and later, its name was changed to Bernardston. On account of fear of trouble with the Indians, the little parish of Fall Town seems to have been given up and Mr. Norton dismissed, whereupon he became chaplain of a line of forts extending from Northfield, just east of the Connecticut, to Hoosic (now Adams), nearly across the Colony of Massachusetts, and along the northern border. These forts were built for defense from the French and

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Indians. They were; Northfield, Fall Town, Colerain; Shirley, in the Town of Heath; Pelham, in the Town of Rowe; and Massachusetts, in the Town of Adams, the latter being where Mr. Norton was at the time of its capture by French and Indians. Besides being chaplain of these forts, Mr. Norton preached to soldiers stationed at three small settlements. The commander of this line of forts was Captain Ephraim Williams, the founder of Williams College, who was killed in battle, near Lake George, on September 8, 1755. While Chaplain Norton was making the rounds of the forts, his wife and three children lived at Fort Shirley.

The attack, defence and final surrender of Fort Massachusetts to the French, and the journey through woods and over rivers and lakes to Canada, where he was held a prisoner for a year, was told by Mr. Norton in his diary.

On August 19, 1746, 900 French and Indians, under command of Riguard de Vaudreuil, surrounded the fort at about eight o'clock in the morning. The fort was in command of Sergeant John Hawks (who later became a colonel) and contained twenty-two men, three women and five children. Eleven of the men were sick and of the other eleven, but few were strong enough to fight any length of time, much less against an army of 900. When the attack was made Sergeant Hawks ordered that no one should fire till the enemy was near enough for the shots to take effect. At the first volley several of the enemy fell and Sergeant Hawks killed the fierce chief of the St. Francis Indians. Upon investigation, later in the day, Sergeant Hawks found that the powder and bullets were nearly used up, so orders were given not to shoot, unless there was no doubt of reaching a human target.

Toward night the enemy began to prepare a quantity of wood with which to burn out the defenders of the fort, so the Sergeant had every available vessel filled with water and placed about in the different rooms of the fort. Sometime in the day, John Aldrich and Jonathan Bridgman were wounded. As may be imagined, the night was filled with anxiety, and but little rest was obtained by those who had been fighting all day, and the sick were made worse by the anxiety and excitement. Although he does not say so, it is easy to guess from his narrative, that he

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handled a musket with the few who were able to fight. He does say, however, that he stood watch for a part of the night. The attack was renewed the following morning and Thomas Knowlton was killed by a shot through his head. At noon of the second day's fight, Vaudreuil made known his desire to parley and it was granted by Sergeant Hawks, to whom the Frenchman promised the best of terms if he would surrender. Hawks said he would give his answer in two hours. Upon investigation Hawks found that there was not enough powder to last for more than a few minutes, should they make a strong attack, and although the sick men had been casting bullets and buck shot the previous day, they too, were about gone.

The sentiment of those in the fort was to stand out till the last, Mr. Norton strongly favoring continued resistance, but on account of the women and sick soldiers, it was thought best to surrender upon the following terms:

That they should be prisoners of the French and that not one person should be given over to the Indians; that the children should not be separated from their parents; and that an exchange should be effected at the first possible opportunity. At three o'clock in the afternoon of the second day, the French commander and his officers were admitted to the fort which, manned by 22 men, n of whom were sick, had stood-off an army of 900 for 36 hours and only surrendered then, because there was not enough powder and shot left to defend the women and the sick.

Vaudreuil promised to live up to the conditions of the surrender. As a promiser and a fighter he was a thorough Frenchman; one of the same kind that the Dutch of the Mohawk Valley knew and loved so well, because of similar promises made and broken. The prisoners were divided between the French and their friends, the Indians.

While the arrangements were being made, some of the Indians (they had so far been kept out) pulled away the underpinning and entered the fort. When they found Knowlton's body they took the scalp and cut off the head and arms. A young Frenchman skinned one of the arms, roasted the flesh and offered it to Daniel Smeed to eat; the skin was made into a pouch for tobacco.

When the division of the prisoners with the Indians took place,

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Mr. Norton showed his spirit, and that his fighting blood was up, by telling de Vaudreuil, that had he supposed anything of the kind was to be done he would have strenuously opposed the surrender, for he would far rather have died fighting than to see any of the men killed while they had no chance to resist, and killed he was sure they would be if delivered to the Indians. Strange as it may seem, none of the prisoners were killed nor were they misused by the Indians. On the contrary, the prisoners were treated kindly by the Indians and with kindness and respect by the French. Several of the prisoners who were unable to walk were carried on the backs of Indians, and the women were carried by the French. The journey through the forest was hard and often heartbreaking, but the women bore it bravely and without complaint. In the midst of these hardships, on the second day after the surrender, Mrs. John Smeed gave birth to a daughter. The following day, August 22, Chaplain Norton christened the little girl Captivity. While the French were unblushing liars in regard to the terms of the surrender, they were kind and thoughtful for the women. A frame of saplings, covered with bear and deer skins, was prepared for Mrs. Smeed and the romantically-born little Captivity. Upon this they were carried by the French.

Mr. Norton's account of the journey is simply a statement of facts and is not interesting except as it is historical and shows the stuff of which our New England men and women, yes, and infants, were made, for with such parents and neighbors it may be surmised that even little Captivity took her nourishment and slept, with as little crying as possible, and so became to her

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fellow prisoners, Little Captivating. While Mr. Norton does not hint at anything of the kind in regard to himself (it is a narrative of the experiences of his loved friends; of their captors and of their journey; not an account of his feelings and doings) it is easy to read between the short sentences of bald fact, that he was cheerful, helpful and courageous. It is also easy to see that what he calls the kindness of the French officers to himself, was really profound respect and admiration for the " fighting-parson " whose brave, courageous, cheerful Protestant Christianity, discovered to them the God-loving side of those God-fearing New Englanders. From start to finish Mr. Norton gives no idea that he thought he was doing anything out of the ordinary, but he docs praise his fellow prisoners for their fortitude, and the French for their kindness.

The French permitted Mr. Norton to hold service for the prisoners. When it was discovered that he was greatly in need of clothing of all kinds, some of the Jesuit Missionaries and some French gentlemen sent him all that he needed. A year was spent in captivity and on July 25, 1747, they set sail for Boston, arriving there on August 16, where Colonel Winslow made Mr. Norton his guest, so long as he remained in Boston. Notwithstanding the sickness, hardship and privations he had passed through Mr. Norton ends his narrative with:

May I never forget the many, great and repeated mercies of God towards me.

Mr. Norton's patriotic, unselfish courage was shown in the eighth year of his pastorate in East Hampton, in 1755, when the second French War was in progress, for he again joined the army and went as Chaplain on the expedition to Crown Point.

The first church building in East Hampton was a long time in being finished and even then, it was a most primitive affair, There was no vestibule or entrance hall, the doors opening directly into the church. Between the side aisles and the walls were rows of box pews and between the middle aisle and the side aisles were two rows of box pews. These pews were square and had seats around the four sides so that a portion of the congregation sat with its back to the minister and another portion with its sides toward him. The seats were rough boards supported by wooden horses.

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The top of the fence-like structure inclosing the box pews was ornamented by open wood work something- like miniature balusters. Some of these were not tight and when turned in their sockets would give out a squeaking noise, of the kind to delight the heart of a child. It is a tradition, that an opportunity to turn a loose one and so relieve the monotony of the long drawn out and tiresome services of those strenuous religious days, was seldom missed by the boys.

The pulpit was opposite the doors, on a platform long and narrow. Three or four steps at the western end of the platform led to the pulpit, which was paneled and painted white. A gallery was around three sides of the church and the choir occupied the front seats in that portion of the gallery opposite the pulpit. A pitch-pipe, used for giving the key, was the nearest approach to instrumental music. The two ends of the gallery contained the seats for the slaves. Attached to the posts supporting the gallery, which were painted blue, were sockets with drip-cups for holding the " tallow dips ", or candles, by which the church was lighted at night. When extra light was needed the people brought candle sticks from their homes. Attending church in those days in the winter was a hardship as well as a duty, for there was no means of heating the building. Heat in a church was regarded as an un-Godly luxury for many years. The members of the congregation sat bundled up as for a sleigh ride. When the first talk of " improvements " was started, it called forth strong opposition, for anything like progress or improvements in the church savored of " Popery " or even the works of Satan.

But gradually changes were made. An entrance hall was partitioned off; the box pews in the middle of the church were removed and ordinary seats, with the sitters facing the minister, were substituted. And then, luxury of luxuries, two stoves were set up, one near the west and the other near the east door. In the center of the church, above the heads of the congregation, was a drum into which long lengths of stove pipe entered from the two stoves. The joints of these long pipes leaked and many a garment or head covering was ruined, till finally matters were a little improved by the placing of square pans under the leaking joints. Later still, a whale-oil chandelier was put in and then

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the members began to make their pews more comfortable with cushions on the seats and carpets on the floor.

But it remained for the pretty, vivacious young wife of the Rev. Joel West to cause the sensation of East Hampton, for not only was she brought to her future home in a carriage, the first seen in East Hampton, but she had the first carpet ever seen in any home of the village. Tradition has it, from the memory of an old resident of the charming village, that when Deacon Bill had occasion to call at the parsonage, he walked around the edges of the carpet so as not to step upon so beautiful a thing.

The ordination of the Rev. Joel West in the old church, on October 17, 1792, was a great event in East Hampton. The people came from great distances, great in those days of horseback and oxcart transportation, and one woman, it is said, arrived at the church by sunrise to be sure to get a good seat. Among others, were the Rev. Thomas Brockway and his charming daughter, who rode over from Lebanon (now Columbia) to attend the ordination. The house which was later bought by

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Mr. West for his home, was much more pretentious than the average in the village and was delightfully situated on the shore of the lake. When Miss Betsey Brockway passed this house she was greatly pleased with it and remarked in a joking way to her companions:

See, that is my house.

She was an unconscious prophetess, for she became the girl-bride of the young minister on November n, 1794, and presided with grace, dignity and charming vivacity over the home by the lake, that she had so greatly admired. Tradition tells, that when she first appeared in church in her wedding gown, the like had never before been seen. Her hair was " banged " across her forehead and hung in a long braid down her back. She wore a bright-colored changeable silk dress. Over this she wore a cloak of red broadcloth with a hood trimmed with swansdown and on her pretty head was a white satin bonnet trimmed with swansdown. The cradle in which her twelve children were rocked is still in existence.

As has been said, music was somewhat primitive in the eighteenth century in New England rural churches. In the spring of 1760, Captain Jonathan Alvord was selected to " set the psalm " and Seth Alvord was chosen as chorister, as were Robert Shattuck, Titus Carrier, and Bryan Parmlee. The pitch-pipe was in the form of a book, longer than wide, with a mouth piece at one corner and on the sides were slides which made the different keys.

The part taken by the men of East Hampton, in the Colonial and Revolutionary Wars was a creditable one. As the names of the men who fought for their King and later their Country, will be of interest to their descendants, they are given here, but it is not a complete list:

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grandeur and lovely, peaceful valleys stand as a perpetual monument to them, for with-out the New England women the Nation would never have been won.

Portland was settled about 1690, by John Gill and James Stancliffe, their houses being on the river bank near what is now the principal street of the village. These two were soon after joined by William Cornwall, who made his " pitch " back from the meadow. They and their families were obliged to attend " meeting " across the river in Middletown. In 1714 a petition was sent to the General Court, signed by thirty-one persons, requesting that they be given parish privileges. The petition was granted and in 1716, the people built a little church, forty by twenty-six feet, on the hill. The Church was organized in 1721, and the Rev. Daniel Newell, of Bristol, a graduate of Yale in the class of 1718, was its first minister.

In 1789, there being fourteen Episcopal families in Portland, they decided to build a church. It was finished in 1790, when the number of families in the parish had increased to thirty-four. The Rev. Abraham Jarvis, rector of Christ Church, Middletown, was the first rector of the Portland Church, in connection with the one in Middletown.

The famous sandstone of Portland was known and used soon after the settlement of Middletown, in 1650, for building purposes and for grave stones. At first, there was no quarrying. The great pieces that were broken from the cliffs by the frost were broken up and worked down, for a long time before regular and systematic quarrying was attempted. The stone was seen to be of a fine and superior quality and was in demand in Middle-town, and in neighboring hamlets. As the demand exhausted the surface supply the work of digging the stone out of the ground, where it had fallen from the cliffs to be covered by earth and debris, washed over it by the high water from the river, was begun.

The stone was regarded as common property and was taken by any one, from everywhere. By 1665, the people of Middletown

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(Portland was then East Middletown) began to realize, that the stone was valuable. They decided that no more of it should be removed on flatboats, or otherwise, by strangers. The Town voted that only inhabitants of Middletown should take the stone, and that even they should pay to the Town twelve pence for each ton taken. Eventually, the Town disposed of the ledge to private parties, when systematic quarrying was begun. Another quarry, a few rods south of the original one, was opened in 1783, and from that year the business increased to its present proportions. There was a time when Portland's boat and ship building" yards were of much more importance and profit than its quarries, but the advent of railroads materially hurt the business. For a hundred years Portland built ships and schooners that had enviable reputations, for their staunchness and seaworthiness. The first vessel launched from the Portland yards was a 90-ton schooner, in October, 1741. Then followed a long line of merchantmen, men-o'war and privateers in Revolutionary days. Among them were; " The Trumbull ", of 700 tons carrying 36 guns; " The Bourbon ", 900 tons, carrying 40 guns, or rather it was designed for that number but they were never mounted, as peace with Great Britain was declared before the ship was quite finished;

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"The Connecticut", 514 tons, 20 guns, built at Stevens' Wharf, in 1799. Churchill's yard began operations in 1795, and the following vessels were launched; " The Holker ", 350 tons, 18 guns, built in 1813. She was driven ashore by the British at Narragansett and wrecked, so another ship of the same name was built, in 1814, of 400 tons and 20 guns. The name seems to have been unlucky for she was wrecked in a storm on Long- Island. " The Macedonian ", 400 tons and 20 guns was built in the same year; " The Saranac ", 373 tons and 16 guns; and " The Boxer ", 367 tons and 16 guns, were built in 1815. They were the last of the war ships built in Portland. The " Trumbull", "Bourbon", " Connecticut ", " Saranac " and " Boxer ", were built for the United States Navy.

In the decade ending with 1816, Churchill turned out vessels of a total tonnage of 12,500. In that year the ship building industry declined somewhat in the Portland yards, still, in the thirty-four years succeeding- 1816, Elizur Abbey launched thirty-five vessels ranging from 75 to 300 tons, and Gildersleeve launched sixty-nine vessels ranging from 75 to 700 tons. It is interesting, that in Portland originated the line of packets which later became prominent as The New York and Galveston Line. Alexander Keith, Joseph J. and William Hendly, of Middletown; and Gildersleeve, of Portland, built the schooner, William Bryan, in 1836, which was the first regular packet to sail from New York to a Texan port. The Bryan was followed by five ships and two barks for this line, all of which were built in Portland.

The falling off in the ship building industry on the Connecticut River is something to be regretted. It is possible, even probable, that the industries which succeeded that one are more profitable, if vastly less dignified. There is something particularly grand and inspiring in sea-going vessels and the men employed in building them were Yankee mechanics of a high order; men of intelligence and broad minds who seemed to put some of their own sterling qualities into vessels they constructed. The men who are employed in the industries of to-day are of another class and almost all, of other nationalities. In this year of 1905, in the few villages and towns of the New England coast, where the principal occupation is ship building, the people are of a superior class, broader-minded and more conversant with the affairs of the world, and the foreign population is, in many instances, entirely lacking.

WETHERSFIELD.

Early in the following year the people left behind in Water-town, who were destined for the Connecticut, arrived, the majority coming by ship. It is said that they arrived several months earlier than the Hooker party, which made the journey through the forest. After the vessel which bore them to their new home in the west, lay moored by the bank of the river, the honor of being the first to set foot upon the land of hope and promise was hotly contested by the men of the party, each one stating this or that reason why he was entitled to enjoy the privilege. While this dispute was going on a woman, by the name of Barber, seeing an opportunity to wrest the honor and privilege from the men, jumped from the vessel and reaching the shore made herself famous, for so long as the history of Connecticut shall exist, by being the first white woman to tread upon Connecticut soil.

The village was built upon a slight, flat elevation, above the rich meadows that lay along the river. Could one of those early settlers come back to Wethersfield now and find the streets and houses just as he knew them in 1635, he would still be at a loss to know where he was. This confusion would be caused by the great change in the appearance and course of the river. It would be difficult to describe the changes which have taken place in the Connecticut at Wethersfield, since 1635. The change in the course of the river at Wethersfield was the cause of at least

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one law suit, for land which had formerly been on the east side of the river was found to be on the west side. An account of the resulting law suit is given under the caption, Glastenbury.

Wethersfield was so situated that it was more harried by the Indians, being nearer to the Pequots' headquarters, than either of the two other settlements, Hartford and Windsor. One of the most atrocious acts of that cruel and bloodthirsty tribe, the Pequots, committed in Wethersfield was one of the chief causes for the Pequot war of 1637.In April, 1637, as the men were going into the fields to begin the work preliminary to planting, they were ambushed by a band of Pequots. Three women and six men were killed and scalped and two girls were taken as prisoners; twenty cows were killed and considerable other property was destroyed.

From 1673, to 1693, the Town of Wethersfield included the present Towns of Newington, Glastenbury, Rocky Hill, and portions of Berlin and Marlborough. In October 1693, the area of Wethersfield was reduced one half, by cutting off all that part on the east side of the Connecticut River.

Wethersfield was the mother-town of many of the towns in western Connecticut. In 1638, and '39, there was an exodus to Quinnipiac by Lieutenant Robert Seeley and John Evans, to whom the old records gave the title of gentlemen; Abraham Bell, John Clark, John Gibbs, Richard Gildersleve, John Livermore, and Richard Miles. In 1639, the Rev. Peter Pruden headed a considerable company that settled at Milford — then called Wepo-waug—in 1640, the Rev. Richard Denton and about thirty others, went to Stamford — then called Rippowams — and in 1639, and '40, a small company settled Stratford — then called Cupheag. In 1644, and '45, Branford — then called Totoket — was settled by the Rev. John Sherman, Robert Abbott, Roger Betts, Leslie Bradfield, Robert Foot, John Norton, William Palmer, John Plumb, Sam Richells, Robert Rose, Charles Taintor, John Ward, Thomas Whitway. The Rev. Mr. Sherman went from Wethersfield to Milford in 1639, thence to Branford. He was an ancestor of General W. T. Sherman and Senator John Sherman. By 1660, the number in Branford had been increased by about sixty other settlers. In 1659, the trouble in the Hartford Church caused another and considerable exodus, this time

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to Hadley, Massachusetts, under the spiritual leadership of the Rev, John Russell, Jr. This was the last organized company to leave Wethersfield.

Unlike the settlers of Hartford and Windsor, those of Wethers-field had no organized Church when they arrived in the Valley of the Connecticut. The Church was not organized till the spring of 1636. Although there were several ministers in Wethersfield the Church did not have a minister, till the Rev. Henry Smith was settled over the parish, in 1641. Mr. Smith's pastorate was made unpleasant by that still-existing cause of discord — the rich and influential member — who in this instance was the ruling elder, Clement Chaplin. The Rev. John Russell, Jr., who went to Hadley, was the second minister. Unlike the majority of the Connecticut towns, Wethersfield's ministers were constantly changing, their pastorates being brief. The Rev. John Cotton was minister from 1660, to 1663; the Rev. Joseph Haynes, son of Governor Haynes, succeeded Mr. Cotton for about a year; the Rev. Thomas Buckingham preached for one or two months,

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in 1664; in 1664 and 1665, the Rev. Jonathan Willoughby preached; the Rev. Samuel Wakeman preached for a few months in 1666; the Rev. Samuel Stone — son of the original Samuel Stone of Hartford — from 1666 to 1669. The Rev. Gershom Bulkeley became minister in 1667, and continued as such till his health failed in 1676. Mr. Bulkeley was a man of broad mind and liberal education. He was a graduate of Harvard and was as well known throughout New England for his skill as a surgeon and lawyer, as for his ability as a preacher. In the Indian war of 1675, he served in the dual capacity of chaplain and surgeon. His wife was a daughter of President Chauncey of Harvard. The Rev. Joseph Rowlandson was the minister from 1677, to 1678, in which year he died; the Rev. John Woodbridge, from 1679, till his death in 1691; the Rev. William Partridge from 1691, till his death in 1693.

The first typical New England pastorate began in 1693, when the Rev. Stephen Mix became the minister. Mr. Mix's pastorate continued for forty-four years, ending at his death in 1738. The Rev. Stephen Mix was a son of Thomas Mix, of New Haven. He was graduated from Harvard. His wife was Mary Stoddard, daughter of the Rev. Solomon Stoddard, of Northampton, whom re married in 1696. Mr. Mix was succeeded by the Rev. James Lockwood, who was minister from 1738 till his death in 1772. Mr. Lockwood was offered and declined the presidency of Prince-ton and of Yale. The Rev. Dr. John Marsh was settled in 1774. His pastorate continued for forty-six years and ended at his death in 1821. The Rev. Dr. Caleb Jewett Tenney, who was Dr. Marsh's assistant for the last five years of his pastorate, succeeded Dr. Marsh as minister. Dr. Tenney was graduated from Dartmouth in 1801, at the head of the class of which Daniel Webster was a member.

When the first meeting-house was built is uncertain, as the records give no information on that subject. That there was a meeting-house in 1646, which was probably begun in the previous year, is certain, from the records. Authorities differ as to whether this was the first or second church structure. In 1685, a new church was built not far from the site of that of 1646, and in 1761, the present fine specimen of Colonial church-architecture was erected, not far from the sites of its predecessors. It

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is of the same style as the famous Old South Church, on Washington street, in Boston. General Washington, and the elder Adams, attended service there.

The first Baptist Church was organized in 1784, and the first church edifice was erected in 1816. Although George White-field preached under the great elm on Broad street, in 1740, Methodism cannot be said to have started till 1790, when Jesse Lee, of Virginia, and Freeborn Garrettson preached in Wethersfield, but the first Methodist church was not built till 1824. An attempt was made by the Rev. Samuel Johnson, of Stratford, to establish an Episcopal Church in Wethersfield in 1729, but no parish was organized in the town till 1797, in that portion that is now Newington. It soon ceased to exist. There were schools in the town for many years before 1700. The records show that the first school-house was in such condition that it was unfit for use in 1660.

While Wethersfield of to-day is proud of the fact that it has no hotel nor any place where the weary and hungry traveler may rest and eat, it was well supplied with taverns in the old days. John Saddler was probably the first tavern-keeper, in 1642, on High street. In 1675, Richard Smith, who was the ferryman, kept a tavern on the New London road, at the ferry; and John Belden was licensed to keep a tavern in the same year, on Broad street. John Devotion kept a tavern in 1713 ; Benjamin Belden, in 1714; Corporal John Francis in 1717. Stillman's tavern was the house in which Washington consulted with officers of his army, in 1781.

Wethersfield had a library just after peace was declared in 1783. In the Revolution, Wethersfield men took an active and unselfish part, as in fact they did in all the wars, from the Pequot, soon after the first settlement, down to the Civil War, of 1861. In Colonel John Chester, Colonel Samuel B. Webb, and Captain Ezekiel P. Belden, Wethersfield had the honor of being the home of three original members of the Order Cincinnati.

Ship building was carried on in Wethersfield at a very early date, but it was not of the importance in tonnage or profit that it was in some of the other river towns. In 1648, Thomas Deming built the ship " Tryall ", his yard being on that part of the river that is now the Cove. The " Tryall " was one of the

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first ships built in the Colony. She was in command of Captain Larabee, and Samuel Smith owned the largest share in the ship. Boats were built on the site of Deming's yard for about 200 years. In 1672, there was another yard started, just to the north of the Rocky Hill landing, where a thriving business was carried on and a considerable number of vessels were built. The commerce of Wethersfield was chiefly fur-bearing pelts and pipe-staves ; the former were shipped to Europe and the latter to the West Indies. Among the more notable sea-captains were the following: in the Still-man family were, Otis Southmayde, George, Simeon, Francis, Charles, Allyn, and Joseph Stillman, who was the grandfather of Massachusetts fine patriot of the Revolutionary days, James Otis. Other men who were connected with the sea as captains or merchants, were William Griswold, Joseph Webb, Justus Riley and Barnabas Deane.

Some of the greatest industries of the State of Connecticut, either originated in Wethersfield, or were started by natives of that village. To begin with the most primitive manufacturing interests, it is probable that the dam across Mill Brook — sometimes called Sucker Brook—built by Leonard Chester, in 1637, to store water for turning the wheel of his gristmill, was the first dam built in the Connecticut Valley.

The great britannia works of Meriden with its present allied industries, was founded by Ashbel Griswold, who was born in that portion of Wethersfield that is now Rocky Hill. About the year 1785, Captain Thomas Danforth, of Rocky Hill, manufac-

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tured articles of tin and pewter. The greater portion of his goods were sent to the Southern States. Young Griswold, one of Captain Danforth's apprentices, went to Meriden in 1808, and began the manufacture of block-tin, out of which grew the britannia works. Griswold died in 1853, leaving a large fortune.

Although the first broom, of broomcorn, was made in Hadley, in 1797, it was made by Levi Dickenson, a native of Wethersfield, who moved to Hadley. There is a tradition that Dickenson cultivated the first broomcorn in Wethersfield, before he moved to Hadley.

While it is not claimed to be the first of the kind, the leghorn hats made by Miss Sophia Woodhouse — who married Gurdon Welles — in 1819, should not be passed by. Miss Woodhouse made the hats of red-top and spear-grass which grew about Wethersfield, using the upper portion of the stalks. In 1821, the Society of Arts, in London, awarded her a prize of twenty guineas for a bonnet she had made of those grasses, which was exhibited at the fair of the Society. She was also granted a patent by the United States, in the same year. The color and fineness of her hats was said to be superior to the best Leghorn.

On December n, 1782, Wethersfield, and, indeed, the country for many miles around, was greatly excited and shocked by the murder of his entire family by one of Wethersfield's most prominent merchants and respected citizens, and by his suicide. A peculiar fact in connection with the crime is, that horrible as it was, it seems to have been prompted by a combination of love, and selfish cowardice, due to inability to bear loss of property. William Beadle had decided to kill himself rather than bear, what he thought to be, the shame of poverty. At the same time, he thought it would be cruel to leave his wife and children to bear poverty alone, so he killed them too.

M'r. Beadle was born in the village of Essex, near London, and was supposed to be the natural son of an English gentleman, whose social position made him familiar with the court and club-life. He came to America in 1762, and lived for a time in Stratford, Derby and in Fairfield, where he was married. About 1773, he moved to Wethersfield and was known to be possessed of considerable property. He started in the retail trade and had one of the best stocked country stores in the state. He did a

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large, and what would have been a prosperous business, had Continental currency not depreciated so greatly. Instead of accepting Continental money at a discount, or charging an advanced price for his goods, as most merchants did, he accepted it at its face value believing that it would in time be at par. Instead of investing his profits he kept the cash in his house. The depreciation resulted in a loss which reduced him from affluence to real poverty. His home had been notable for its hospitality and after his loss of fortune, till he destroyed his family and himself, he continued to entertain his friends generously, even while he was reduced to the greatest straits in his private life.

That a misguided pride caused him to be unable to bear his losses with courage, is shown by an extract from one of his manuscripts, in which he expressed the opinion:

If a man who has once lived well, meant well and done well, falls by unavoidable accident into poverty, and then submits to be laughed at, despised and trampled on, by a set of mean wretches as far below him as the moon is below the sun; I say if such a man submits, he must become meaner than meanness itself, and I sincerely wish he might have ten years added to his natural life to punish him for his folly.

Mr. Beadle fixed upon the night of November 18, 1782, for the destruction of himself and his family, but circumstances prevented it. On the evening of December 10, he entertained some friends in his usual pleasant and hospitable manner, and was seemingly calm and undisturbed by the knowledge, that before morning he was to kill his family and himself. Just before dawn of the next morning he killed his wife and then called the house maid, who slept in the room with the children, and sent her on an errand to the doctor, whose house was a quarter of a mile distant. He then killed the four children, a son and three daughters, and finally himself. The people of the village were greatly excited by the deed and demanded that the body of the suicide-murderer should be buried at a cross roads, with a stake driven through its breast, but when the choice of location was considered, no place could be decided upon, as no one was willing to have it near his house or property. The body was finally buried between high and low water on the river bank, with the bloody knife fastened to its breast, but it was partly washed

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out later and so was again buried secretly. The place being found by some children it was buried a third time, secretly. Mr. Beadle was fifty-two and his wife thirty-two.

It is strange, that for months Mrs. Beadle had experienced horrible dreams in which she saw her children lying dead from violence. These dreams had the effect of convincing Mr. Beadle that his contemplated act was proper and that his wife's dreams were inspired by Heaven to convince him that his and their deaths were justified. Beadle believed that it was evidence of sublime heroism to die by one's own act and that, " The Deity would punish no one who was impatient to visit God and learn his will from his own mouth, face to face ". The remnants of the superstition that believed in witches and burned innocent persons for practicing witchcraft, was shown by the people at the time of this tragedy. On December 10, the clay before the murders were committed, the weather was fine and there was a

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full moon. The following is quoted from a letter written at the time, by a gentleman to a friend, and shows that superstition existed:

* * * neither the sun nor moon were visible from the time this horrid deed was done till the body of the man was laid beneath the clods, which redoubled the horror; when suddenly the wind blew from the north-west, dispelled the vapors and discovered a cloudless sky.

Rocky Hill was set off from Wethersfield and incorporated as a separate town in 1843. In 1720, when the inhabitants of Rocky Hill wished to become a separate parish, the people of Wethersfield changed the general order of things, when such a desire was made known, by voting to give the Rocky Hill people that which they desired, instead of opposing it. The petitioners were Joseph Cole, Richard Butler, Samuel Belden, Joseph Butler, Jonathan Curtis, Samuel Collins, Joseph Crowfoot, Elihu Dickinson; Thomas, John and Gideon Goodrich; Thomas Williams, Sr., Jonathan Smith, John Stephens, William Nott, Stephen Williams, John Taylor; Jonathan, Jacob and Joseph Riley; Samuel Smith and Abraham Morris.

In the spring of 1722, the General Court incorporated the parish and Joseph Grimes, Jonathan Curtis and Benjamin Wright were appointed a committee to fix upon the site for the meetinghouse. The first name chosen for the parish was Lexington, after the town of that name in Massachusetts, the former home of Mr. Grimes, but he suggested, that it would be better not to have two Lexingtons, so Stepney was fixed upon as the name. This was the name of the parish till 1826, when the Legislature changed it to Rocky Hill, and if the Legislature should change it to the old name, or to a new one, it would be doing a good thing. Rocky Hill is neither pleasant to the ears, the eyes, nor the imagination.

The original eastern boundary was not at the river, but in 1759, the parish was increased in size by extending the eastern boundary to the Connecticut, and extensions of the western and northern boundaries were made. In 1794, there was a slight contraction of the area of the parish, by adding some of it to the Parish of Worthington, in the Town of Berlin. When the parish was first talked of in 1720, the Town granted to the pros-

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pective Church, sixty acres of farm land, and eight acres for the " home lot " upon which the parsonage was to be built, on the south side of the road from Rocky Hill to Griswoldville. It is supposed, that the meeting-house was begun in the same year the land was given. It was not finished till about 1725. The Rev. Daniel Russell, son of the Rev. Noadiah Russell, one of the founders of Yale, was settled in July, as the first minister. His pastorate continued for thirty-eight years, ending in 1764. The second minister was the Rev. Burrage Merriam, from 1765, to 1776; the third, was the Rev. John Lewis, from 1781, to 1792; the fourth, was the Rev. Dr. Calvin Chapin, from 1794, to 1851. Dr. Chapin was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, and was graduated at Yale in the class of 1788. He studied for the ministry with the Rev. Dr. Nathan Perkins, of West Hartford. From 1791, to '94, he was a tutor at Yale.

It has been mentioned elsewhere, that the people who settled Connecticut were of a superior class, and that many of the families were possessed of considerable means. Of this class were the Notts, of Wethersfield.

The first American ancestor of the Nott family was John Nott, who came to America and settled in Wethersfield, in 1640, just after the adoption of the famous Constitution, when the young Colony was becoming stronger each year. John Nott was born in Nottingham, England. The old records give him the title of sergeant, which in those days was a title of considerable distinction. It was probably on a par with that of captain now, and besides, it must be remembered, that the military and civil offices were given to men of note in the community, so even the lowest title marked the man who bore it.

John Nott owned much land and after the year 1665, was ^or several years a member of the General Court. He was survived by one son and two daughters. The elder of the daughters, Elizabeth, married Robert Reeve, the ancestor of Judge Tapping Reeve, founder of the Litchfield Law School, and the other, Hannah, married John Hale and so she became the grandmother of Captain Nathan Hale of glorious Revolutionary memory. The youngest child was the son John, who was named for his

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father. It is from his large family, which included seven sons, that so many of America's notable ministers and educators of the name of Nott are descended, and although some of them were born in other towns, their origin in America was Wethersfield.

On March 28, 1683, John Nott, the son, married Patience Miller, a widow. They had seven sons and two daughters. The sons and daughters were honors to their name. Abraham, the youngest son, who was born on January 29, 1696, obtained a liberal education and entered the Congregational ministry.

Abraham prepared for Yale College and was graduated in 1720, just after the removal of that institution to New Haven from Saybrook. He then studied for the ministry and was ordained minister of the Second Congregational Church of Say-brook, in that portion that is now Essex, on November 16, 1725. This, his first and only pastorate, extended over a period of thirty-four years and thus began a record for long pastorates for which the Nott family is famous. Abraham Nott was strong, morally, mentally and physically. In College he was a notable athlete and generally won against all competitors in contests requiring great strength and endurance. There is a tradition that his strength was so great that he could raise a barrel of cider and drink from the bung-hole. As a wrestler he was irresistible ; as a preacher he was earnest, and convincing. With one exception the men of the Nott family were thrifty and had ability to accumulate property. Even the ministers of the family were good business men and although their lives as ministers were full, with their pastoral duties, they still found time for looking after their property. The Rev. Abraham Nott died on January 24, 1759, and left a fine property to his four sons.

One of these sons, Stephen, was the unfortunate member of the family. He was regarded as "a well informed man" and had received a good education, although he was not a college-man. Stephen started well in business at the age of twenty-one. He had a thorough knowledge of tanning and farming, but as he preferred commercial pursuits, he opened a store in Saybrook, in 1749. That same year he married the second daughter of Samuel Selden, of Lyrne, the beautiful Deborah Selden, who was but seventeen at the time of her marriage, and her husband but

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twenty-one. The Seldens were among the best families at the southern end of the Connecticut river. The future for these two young persons seemed bright. Of equal social position and intelligence, and the husband with a good business, they little anticipated the misery and poverty that was to be theirs. But Stephen had no more than experienced his first loss of fortune than he discovered that he possessed a mine of unknown wealth in his brilliant and beautiful young wife. As year after year passed and their poverty became more burdensome, Deborah Nott's grand spirit developed. Her courage and splendid fortitude would have caused her husband, had he possessed those qualities, to conquer adversity, but Stephen could not stand up under hard times and finally the gently born Deborah, accustomed in her parental home to all the refinements and luxury of the times, became the support of her " sick " husband and large family of children. It is not impossible, that what the young mother was experiencing while she was bearing her children and while they were young and easily influenced by such nobility as hers, was the fire that separated the pure metal from

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the dross, for two of her sons became famous; one of them the greatest educator of the nineteenth century. Neither of these men possessed a single characteristic of their father's. Their Nott characteristics, of great energy, singleness of purpose, ability to overcome difficulties, great strength of will, mind and body, all came from their grandfather and his father and grandfather. From the Seldens, they inherited their brilliancy, their elegance of manner; and the great educator, the Rev. Eliphalet Nott, D.D., the eloquence which makes his eulogy of Alexander Hamilton as much admired to-day as it was when he uttered it.

The first serious trouble that came into the life of Stephen was in 1759, when the home and all it contained was destroyed by fire. The fire occurred in the night and Samuel (one of the two famous sons), then but five years old, was rescued by his mother at great risk to her own life. A minister who was a guest of the Notts was also rescued by Mrs. Nott with great difficulty. Friends of Stephen Nott made it possible for him to build a new home, and his business prospered so greatly that it seemed as if he would soon recover from the loss he had sustained through the fire. Before a year had passed, the last straw was laid upon a seemingly weak back and from that time onward the fortunes of Stephen dwindled till real poverty was reached. Stephen Nott's business was of the kind known in those days as a general store. He dealt in a great variety of articles. The chief source of his profit was horses. These he would buy from the surrounding farms, giving goods from his store in payment. He, of course, gave the smallest price for which he could obtain the horses, and charged the full retail price for the goods taken in exchange. Here was one profit. In addition, there was a demand for horses in New Jersey at that time, where he drove them when he had a herd of sufficient size, and sold them for a good price. On the occasion in question, he was returning with his saddle-bags well filled with money, when highway-men knocked him senseless and took the entire proceeds of the year's business. For some unaccountable reason his creditors lost confidence in him, refused an extension of time and attempted to confine him in the debtors' prison. He successfully eluded arrest and, after the passage of the insolvency act, returned to his home.

Through the assistance of a relative, Stephen was able to pur-

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chase a small house with a little land, in East Haddam, on credit, where he made use of his knowledge of the tanner's trade to start in that business.

Five or six years of struggle with adversity were passed in East Haddam, and had Mrs. Nott been as easily discouraged as was her husband, the family would probably have gone to pieces. Besides her usual housekeeping duties Mrs. Nott had a family of six small children to care for, make clothes for and to teach. In addition, there were long periods in which her husband was laid up with malaria — the disease that is so apt to afflict persons who are without energy or spirit — in which she supported the family by making dresses, knitting stockings and teaching drawing

Deprived of the refinement and cultivation of her girlhood; with no hope of reward in this life; stimulated only by a Divinely inspired sense of duty and by her deep love for her husband and children, Mrs. Nott made a drudge of herself and, notwithstanding, kept herself joyous and cheerful for the sakes of those she loved and because it was her duty. Deborah Selden Nott was

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a type of New England woman that existed then, exists now and always will exist, so long as New England cherishes its traditions and the memory of the noble men and women who made it what it is. The world is better for her having lived in it. Who can estimate the value of her quiet self-sacrificing life, or measure the widespread influence for good; for education; for State and National progress; that was accomplished in the ninety-three years in which her son Eliphalet lived. He often said, that his mother's teaching and influence had made him what he was, and that which he had been able to accomplish was due to her training and example.

It is a lamentable fact, that while historians record the noble, unselfish lives of New England men, the same qualities in the lives of the New England women — who did as much toward the making of the Nation as the men and sacrificed more — are taken for granted and remain unrecorded. The heroic men of the Colonial and Revolutionary periods received a certain degree of reward for what they did, or accomplished, from the deference paid them and honors bestowed upon them by their fellow men. The women expected neither recognition nor honors; they accomplished, sacrificed and suffered willingly, with happy faces, content to be unknown, because they loved their country and their God. And of such was Deborah Selden Nott.

From East Haddam, the family moved two miles east to a little hamlet called Foxtown, where the struggles were even harder and in 1772, they moved again, this time entirely out of the Connecticut Valley, to Ash ford, in Windham County, where the desolate country resembled the barren wastes of the moon.

Of the two famous sons of Stephen and Deborah Nott, Samuel was born in Saybrook, on January 23, 1754; and Eliphalet, in Ashford, June 25, 1773.

The Rev. Abraham Nott left his valuable library to his grandson Samuel, in the hope that he would choose the ministry for his life's work. The poverty of his parents would have made this hope of his grandfather impossible, had Samuel not possessed those qualities which his father lacked and which were so striking in his ancestors. He began early in his life to render every possible assistance to his mother. His early attendance at school were brief, intermittent periods, for the small

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wages he was able to earn were needed at home. Of good blood from both sides of the house, his pride was not false, so he buckled to whatever work he could find that would bring in a little money.

On one of his book and trinket peddling trips, he stopped in a place where the district school was without a teacher. The Nott intellect was well known, so he was given the chance to fill the vacancy for two months, with "a steel trust" salary of four dollars a month. Samuel undertook the duties of teaching with reluctance. He feared that some of the older pupils would discover his deficiencies. That he might do his best for his pupils, he studied the next day's lessons the night before and so, was not only able to do well for the school, but was also acquiring the most practical kind of education for himself. All of the money he received was sent to his mother, his board and lodging being a part of his salary. This teaching revived his dormant ambition for a college education. After overcoming difficulties and disappointments that would have laid his father up with a serious attack of " malaria ", he found the friend in need in the

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person of the Rev. Daniel Welsh, of Mansfield, who made it possible for Samuel to enter Yale College. This he did and was graduated with credit with the class of 1780. He then studied for the Church under the Rev. Jonathan Edwards, who was at that time minister of a New Haven Church. After acting as supply for the Church in Bridgehampton, Long Island, he was called to the Congregational Church of Franklin, Connecticut, and was ordained as its minister, on March 13, 1782. As was the case with his grandfather, Abraham Nott, his first parish was his only one and it continued over a period of seventy-one years, ending with his death, on May 26, 1852.

Eliphalet's boyhood was hard enough, but his youth and education were far easier than had been his brother Samuel's. Samuel was nineteen years older than Eliphalet so, when the time came for Eliphalet to leave the poor home in Ashford, after the death of his inspiring mother, Samuel was well settled as the minister at Franklin and there, in his brother's home Eliphalet spent many years, and was educated. Eliphalet taught in the country schools and later was appointed master of the Plainfield Academy, where he conceived that system of school government and discipline that he perfected as president of Union College, in Schenectady, New York, of which institution he became president in 1804. While master of the Academy in Plainfield, he became intimately acquainted with the Rev. Dr. Joel Benedict and on July 4, 1796, he married the eldest daughter of his friend, Sarah Maria Benedict. In the autumn before his marriage, he had been given a degree of Master of Arts by Brown University. Immediately after his marriage, he left for New York State. From this time on his life was spent in Cherry Valley, Albany and Schenectady, so the history of it belongs to the Mohawk Valley, rather than to the valley of the Connecticut. The years of the Rev. Abraham Nott and of his two grandsons, the Rev. Samuel and the Rev. Dr. Eliphalet, spent in the ministry were 34, 71, and 63, respectively, making a total for the three lives of 168 years.

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HEN Newington was a part of the Town of Wethersfield, the inhabitants of Wethersfield voted to divide the unoccupied land between Wethersfield and Farmington into lots, and the portion which became Newington was known on the records as the East Tier.

In the center of the Town of Newington is a pond, in the midst of a considerable plain which was known for many years as Cow Plain. This pond with its water-power, and the excellent grazing land and fertile valley, attracted the first settlers, who were five families by the name of Sled and Hunn and three named Andrews — according to Barber, while other writers give the name as Andrus — who made their pitches about 1690. They were from Farmington. Joseph Andrews built his house near the meeting-house and fortified it as a place of refuge and defence against possible attack by Indians, who were numerous. The shore of the pond was the site of an unusually large Indian village, but the Indians lived peaceably with the white settlers. As the war-like Sequasson, who hated the English, was the great chief over the local chief, the English thought it no more than prudent to provide a place of refuge, should Sequasson take it into his head to attack the place.

This Joseph Andrews bought the lots known as the sawmill-lots in 1684, and by later purchases he became one of the greatest property owners. He was a son of John Andrus, one of the first settlers of Farmington, and was born in 1651. Joseph had a son, Dr. Joseph Andrus, who was prominent in the social and church life of Newington and the doctor's son, Joshua, was a deacon of the Church. Deacon Joshua lived on the property recently occupied by the Kappell family. The two other settlers of that name are supposed to have been Daniel and John Andrus, nephews of Joseph, one of the first settlers of that name. These brothers settled in the southern part of the town. Of the other first settlers, Samuel Hunn was prominent in the affairs of the town and church. He settled in the northern portion of Newington; the other, John Sled, settled a half mile from Joseph Andrus and not far from the site of the old Academy.

Mr. Roger Welles, in his history of Newington says, that Sergeant Richard Beckley, who settled in the northern portion

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of the town, was the earliest settler and greatest property owner. He received a grant of 300 acres from the General Court in 1668, the property lying on both sides of the Mattabesett River and the Town confirmed the grant in 1670. There is a tradition that Sergenat Beckley married a daughter of Chief Turramuggus who was next in succession to Sequasson, Sachem of the Mattabesetts. The records of the New Haven Colony show that Sergeant Beckley lived in New.Haven from 1639, to 1659, and that he was one of the prominent members of Davenport's Church. Other members of the Beckley family settled near him in Newington in considerable numbers. For this reason the district was known as Beckley's Quarter.

The settlement of Newington had increased sufficiently by 1708, for the inhabitants to petition to be set off as a separate Church. While the petition was not granted, permission was given, in 1710, for the inhabitants to meet for worship in Newington during the winter months, from December to March inclusive, instead of going to the Church in Wethersfield. Another attempt was made for a separate society in 1712, which was successful. A committee was appointed to fix upon a site where the meeting-house should be built. The site was fixed in 1713, and limits of the parish were determined as being two miles and fifty rods east from the Farmington line, with Hartford and Middletown as the northern and southern boundaries. There were two settlements in the parish, called the Upper Houses and the Lower Houses. The former contained about twenty-three families and was north of the pond in the center of the parish; the other consisted of eight families and was south of the pond. The meeting-house was built at the Upper Houses.

The inhabitants of the Lower Houses objected to the location of the Church, so far from their little settlement. They petitioned to be allowed to leave the Church at the Upper Houses and to join that at the Great Swamp. Again quoting Mr. Welles:

As an equivalent for their secession they proposed the annexation to the new parish of some of the proprietors' lands in Farmington, abutting upon Wethersfield. These settlers were nearer the chosen site of the meeting-honse in Newington, than to that in the Great Swamp Society, and they were willing to make the exchange. For the encouragement of this exchange, the " Lower Inhabitants" executed a bond, dated May

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13, 1715, for the payment, to their " neighbors in the said Western Society ", of £50 to help build the new meeting-house, and lodged it on file in the office of the colonial secretary at Hartford, where it is still to be seen.

A petition was presented to the General Court at its session in May, 1715, to legalize the exchange. The General Court appointed a committee to " go upon the place" and effect a settlement if possible; to consider the subject of the exchange; fix a site for the meeting-house, if necessary, and report at the next October session of the Assembly. The committee reported in favor of the exchange, and fixed the site of the meeting-house upon the commons " near Dr. Joseph Andrus' house ", which was the site previously selected by the Town Committee. The Assembly accepted the report, and passed an act to carry it into effect. Thus, Stanley Quarter, as the annexed portion of Farmington was called, became a part of the parish of Newington, and it so continued till 1754, when the parish of New Britain was incorporated.

The work of building the Church was begun and in 1720, the Rev. Elisha Williams was called. In 1721, the society was named Newington by the Legislature; the Church was organized on October 3, 1722, and Mr. Williams was ordained on the seventeenth of the same month of the same year.

Mr. Williams was a minister, an educator and a politician, with a decided preference for politics. He was born in Hatfield, in 1694, his father being the Rev. William Williams. He was graduated from Harvard in 1711, having entered in the Sophomore class in 1708. After graduation he taught for a year in the Grammar School in Hadley. He moved to Wethersfield in 1715, and married Eunice Chester, daughter of Thomas Chester, of Wethersfield. His political life began in October, 1717, when he represented Wethersfield in the General Court. He continued as its representative till 1721. He was Clerk of the House in '17, '18, and '20, and auditor of public accounts in '19. In 1716, he began his educational career by tutoring Yale students in Wethersfield, in that and the following years. In 1720, he was seriously ill and, according to President Stiles, of Yale, "he became sanctified ". On August 5, 1720, he was chosen minister of the Newington Church, and so began his ministerial career.

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Five years later, in 1725, he was chosen to be the Rector of Yale College and was installed in September, 1726, and continued as Rector till October, 1739, when failing health caused his resignation.

Relief from the arduous duties of the Presidency of Yale must have had a beneficial effect upon his health, for seven months later, in May, 1740, he was again in the Legislature as Representative and Speaker of the House, in which capacity he served for several sessions. That same year, 1740, he became Judge of the Superior Court and continued in that office for several years. In 1745, he was chaplain of the Colonial militia and was present, in his official capacity, at the capture of Louisburg. In 1746, he was again in the Legislature and was appointed by that body as chaplain of a regiment in the expedition against Canada. For some reason the regiment did not go to Canada, but the Rev. Elisha Williams was sent to England to negotiate for the expenses incurred by the regiment. Mrs. Williams died while he was in England, on May 31, 1750 and eight months later, on January 27, 1751, Mr. Williams married again, his second wife being the daughter of the Rev. Thomas Scott, of Norwich, England. She was Elizabeth Scott, the writer of hymns. Mr. Williams returned to Wethersfield and died there in July, 1755. It is rather odd that the second minister of the Church, the Rev. Simon Backus, of Norwich, who was ordained in 1727, was also chaplain at Louisburg after its capture, Mr. Williams being the chaplain at the time of the capture. Mr. Backus died in Louisburg in 1746. Elis wife was a sister of the Rev. Jonathan Edwards.

The long contest over the site for the second church building resulted in the withdrawal of a number of families who, with others from Worthington and Kensington, organized Christ Episcopal Church, in 1797, in the south-western corner of the parish. During the thirteen years of its existence, its rectors were the Rev. Seth Llart, the Rev. James Kilbourn, and the Rev. Ammi Rogers.

Public schools were not started so soon after the settlement as in other towns. In 1723, a school committee was appointed and the first mention of a school-house in the records, was in December, 1729. In 1757, a school-house was built in the north

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end of the parish. In 1773, there was one at the south end, and in 1774, a new building was erected at the center of the parish. On October 18, 1726, John Camp was elected captain; Ephraim Demming, lieutenant; and Richard Bordman ensign of Newington's first militia company, which was Wethersfield's fourth company. In 1735, Captain Martin Kellogg was in command. Captain Kellogg's life, from his childhood to old age, was spent in close relation with Indians and in serving his King and the Colony. It was a life that was full of excitement and adventure. Captain Kellogg was born in 1686. At the age of eighteen he was living with his parents in Deerfield, Massachusetts. On February 29, 1704, when Deerfield was attacked by the French and Indians, he and his father, brother Joseph, and sisters, Rebecca and Joanna, were captured and forced to make the journey on foot through the wilderness to Canada. While irt captivity the children learned the Indian language and the elder sister, Joanna, liked the life lead by the Indians so well that she married one of the chiefs, and adopted the manners and customs of the tribe. Their knowledge of the Indian language was frequently made use of, they acting as interpreters. Captain Kellogg was several times captured by Indians and taken to Canada. His familiarity with that country and the Indian language was the cause of his appointment as pilot, on the St. Lawrence River, for the British ships in the proposed expedition to Canada. Captain Kellogg was possessed of great strength and was notable for coolness and courage in danger. In 1749, and '50, he was employed as a teacher in the Hollis School for Indians, in Stockbridge, especially for the Indians of the Six Nations who attended that school. He was sent with clothing to Chief Hendrick of the Mohawks, as agent of the Colony, in 1751. In 1716, he married Dorothy Chester, a cousin of the Rev. Elisha Williams, the minister of Newington, and great-granddaughter of Governor Thomas Welles, who was Governor of Connecticut in 1655, '56, '58 and '59. He was a member of the committee appointed to arrange the financial part of the removal of Mr. Williams from Newington to New Haven, where he was to be the Rector of Yale. Captain Kellogg purchased the fine mansion built by the Church for Mr. Williams and lived in it up to the day of his death, in November, 1753.

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Another captain of the militia company was Deacon Charles Churchill, who built one of the largest and finest houses in that part of the town. This old-time residence was famous for years. It had a reputation for hospitality that extended for many miles around. There were four large ovens in the house and it was sometimes necessary to use them all, in order that sufficient food might be prepared for the great number of guests in the hospitable old mansion. It is tradition, that Washington and Lafayette were guests of Captain Churchill. Besides the ovens, the house contained other features that were somewhat unusual in those days. There were seven of those great fireplaces, in which four-foot logs provided heat and light, and stimulated sociability and good-fellowship among the guests. Captain Churchill furnished supplies for the army and was paid for them in the depreciated bills of the day. One of the rooms in his house was papered with these almost worthless bills.

The people of Newington in the early days seem to have lived a peaceful, quiet life on their fertile farms, with little or nothing to distract their attention from the cultivation of the soil and attendance at Church. The nearest approach to any happening of a really exciting nature, was the dispute in regard to the location of the second church edifice.

In such a peaceful atmosphere lived Mr. Andrus, a man who was notable for his conscientious, peaceful religious life. He seemed to be a perfectly contented and serenely happy man. It is not strange, therefore, that his choice of a wife excited great interest and surprise, for she was reputed to be " the most ill-natured, troublesome woman in the neighborhood". Being in Yankeeland, where people ask direct and searching questions, Mr. Andrus was requested to tell his neighbors the reason for his odd choice. Mr. Andrus gratified their inquisitiveness by telling them, that his life had been particularly free from trouble and annoyance, so much so that he feared he would become too much attached to this life and the good things in it. He thought, that if he could experience some of the afflictions of life he would become more weaned from the world; for that reason he had married such a woman as he believed would accomplish his object.

The community was small and the distractions few, so it was

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but natural that the story should finally reach the ears of the purveyor of his hoped for afflictions, by way of one of the human newspapers of those days, of the spinster variety. Mrs. Andrus's anger was great and she declared that she was not going- to be made a pack-horse to carry her husband to heaven. In a spirit of revenge she entirely changed her life and became one of the most pleasant and dutiful of wives, and poor Mr. Andrus became more enamored of this world and its joys than ever.

OTABLE, as originally a part of Wethersfield, the oldest town on the Connecticut River, Glastenbury, is also notable for being the first town in Connecticut made by dividing one of the original towns, for it was cut off from Wethersfield and incorporated in 1690.

The original territory of Glastenbury as granted by the Indians, was measured by rods up and down the river and by miles east from it. These long, narrow lots retained their general shape for a great many years. As time went on and the property was sold, or descended to the heirs of the original owners, some of the lots were sub-divided. There is at least one instance of a sub-divided lot being sold, that was but eight rods wide and three miles long.

Of the original proprietors, the more prominent families were the Welles, Wylis, Hale, Hollister, Kimberly, Talcott. The Welles estate, purchased by Thomas Welles from the great Indian Sachem, Sequasson, generally known as Sowheag, was in the family for more than 200 years. Of this family were Samuel Welles, the well known banker of Paris, and General Arnold Welles, who married a daughter of General Warren, of Bunker Hill fame. The old Talcott house was used as a fort, or place of refuge, in case of an Indian raid. A descendant of this Talcott family was Colonel Talcott, who was superintendent of the United States Arsenal, at Watervliet, New York, in 1836.

Glastenbury is noted for its varied, beautiful and extensive views. Back from the immediate neighborhood of the Connecticut River flats, the surface begins to rise gradually till five miles back, toward the east, it is a mass of high, steep, tumbled-up

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hills of nearly a thousand feet elevation. The view from Kongscut (now called Skunkscut hill) near Diamond Lake, is especially fine and extensive, in all directions. This Indian word, Kongscut, means the goose-country, as the wild goose was found there, and on Diamond Lake, in great numbers. It is little wonder that the territory comprised within the bounds of Glastenbury was a favorite with the Indians and that they loved the hills and the valleys, through which the many streams flow into the Connecticut, for the Indians had a silent appreciation of natural beauties and, too, the forest abounded with game and the streams with fish. A small band of Mohawks had a permanent village of Glastenbury, probably for no other reason than to keep watch of the tributary Indian tribes, and to make life a burden to them by the fear they inspired.

The broad plain extending along the western portion of the town, from Roaring Brook (which the Indians called Nayaug, or Noisy-water) to the Llartford line was, and still is called Hanabuc, or Naubuc. The Rev. Dr. Chapin gives three possible definitions for the Indian words used to designate this plain.

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Hanabuc means, more clear, or open, or the plain; Naubuc, means blood and so conveys the idea that great battles were fought on the plain, probably between the River Indians and the Mohawks. Another possible meaning is the east-side. The English settlements were first made on the west bank of the river and those portions of the towns across the Connecticut were spoken of as the east-side, so it is possible that the Indians compounded Nop, meaning east, and uc, meaning place or side or locality, thus making Nopuc, or Naubuc. It is quite evident that Dr. Chapin himself was uncertain which definition is the correct one.

The first purchase of land was made from Sowheag, it is generally stated, but as a matter of fact, that was not the name of the fierce chief of the Mattabesetts. His name was Sequas-son and the full name and title of the Sachem was Sequasson-Sequin-Sowheag, which in English is, Hard-Stone, King-of-the-South-Country.

The second purchase, of 1673, was from several Indians, whose names and their English equivalents were; Tarramuggus, or Bear-catcher; Massecuppe, or Great-fierceness; Wesumpshye, or Great-eater; Wumpene (the old records give it as " One peny ") or Belt-of-wamptim; Nesaheeg, or Instrument-of-death; Seockett, or Wild-cat; Pewampskin, or Fair-complexion.

The first military organization on the east side of the river was in Glastenbury. On May 18, 1653, the General Court passed an act exempting the inhabitants on the east side of the Connecticut from training with the towns on the west side, and empowered William Hill to call the men of the east side together for training.

Before the incorporation in 1690 the people of Glastenbury paid their share for the support of the Church in Wethersfield. After the incorporation, Glastenbury had its own Church and the first minister of the town was the Rev. Timothy Stevens, who was called on July 28, 1692.

Mr. Stevens was a son of Timothy Stevens, of Roxbury, Massachusetts, and was a graduate of Harvard, in the class of 1687. He married Eunice Chester of Wethersfield, May 17, 1694. She died in 1694, and in 1701, Mr. Stevens married Alice Cook. He was minister of the Glastenbury Church from 1693, to the time of his death, in 1726.

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At an early day in the history of Glastenbury the people offered inducements to thrifty, honest and otherwise desirable families to settle in the town, by granting a small farm from the Common lands, with the stipulation, that the land should be improved within a given time. Like many of the other river towns, Glastenbury made laws for the protection of the trees from wanton destruction. In 1700, no person was permitted to cut pine, or " candlewood ", as they called it, for the purpose of obtaining pitch, and the penalty for doing so was a fine of twentv shillings each load and the forfeiture of the wood.

Glastenbury increased in population rather rapidly. In 1693, there were thirty-four householders; in 1714, there were sixty-four tax payers all of whom were probably householders as well; in 1723, there were 118, and in 1757, there were 191. The increase was so rapid that the first meeting-house of 1693, was too small so, in 1706, the people voted to enlarge its seating capacity by building galleries, or " leantos ", as the committee thought better.

In 1701, a number of persons from Wethersfield and Hartford

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went to Glastenbury and " squatted " upon public land, in the eastern part of the town, but they were all expelled after considerable trouble.

The Revolutionary period was an exciting one in Glastenbury. The men of the town had had experience under arms, and were well acquainted with the hardships of war and army life in the old French War. They knew the hardships to be borne in a country covered by a wilderness, with supplies hard to obtain and often not to be had. In fact, the mortality in that war among the men from Glastenbury was so great, that after the first enthusiasm, due to patriotism, had died clown, it was difficult to get enlistments for the Revolutionary army. No doubt this also was partially due to the high prices of the necessaries of life. So Glastenbury, as did many other towns, provided for the families of the Continental soldiers of the town, in such cases where it was necessary, and made liberal provision in clothing and food for the men themselves.

Glastenbury was not menaced by Tories as were some of the shore-towns, but still, there were two prominent citizens against whom charges were preferred. They were, Ralph Isaacs and Abiathar Camp. These men were tried and found guilty of being Tories and were sentenced to live in Eastbury, there to be in the charge of the Selectmen and to maintain themselves at their own expense. Isaacs was afterward moved to Durham, because of failing health, and Camp took the oath of fidelity to the State and later was removed to Wallingford.

It is not generally known, that in 1777, in the heat of the first days of the Revolution, that Glastenbury became the home of a portion of Yale College. The price of board was so high in New Haven, on account of the high price of all kinds of provisions, that the several classes were distributed over the country. The Freshman class was sent to Farmington and the Sophomore and Junior classes to Glastenbury, where they were under the charge of the Hon. Nehemiah Strong, the professor of mathematics. The students boarded in the homes of the village and made their headquarters at the home of William Welles, who was a graduate and a tutor of Yale.

In 1792, an Academy was established on the Green and later, an Academy was established at South Glastenbury. Both Schools

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flourished and turned out very creditable students. Two of the teachers were Noah Webster and Elihu Burritt, better known as " The Learned Blacksmith ".

In 1701, Glastenbury had a school and Robert Poog was the schoolmaster. He was employed to teach for three months and longer if he gave satisfaction. His pay consisted of his board, the keep of his horse and £3 for the first quarter, and £2 for each additional quarter.

The Indians of Glastenbury and the white settlers lived in"peace and good-will, notwithstanding that the Indians were numerous within the bounds of the town. The Nayaugs lived in a glen near the mouth of Nayaug, or Roaring-Brook, as the word means in English, where is now the village of South Glastenbury. Here they lived in a natural fortification which protected them against the bitter north wind, the chill and damp of the east wind, and those more dangerous enemies, hostile bands of other Indians. They had two look-outs from which sentinels could easily see the approach of enemies. On the river side, was

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Red-hill, rising abruptly from the meadows and the other was Chestnut-hill, giving an extensive view to the north, east and south. Along the shore of Roaring-Brook, at the foot of a cliff, the Nayaugs, it is said, dug a hole in the rock, to a depth of two feet and a half and two feet across the top, which they used as mortar for pounding Indian-corn with a great pestle, to make it into Nasaump, or samp as the white settlers called it. While there is no evidence that the Indians did not make this mortar, there is an equal lack of evidence that they did. It is probable that instead of making the hole in the solid rock, they adapted a pot-hole that had been made by Roaring-Brook with the help of a pebble. This mortar is still there and is, or was, covered by the artificial pond from which one of the mills obtained its power. The Nayaugs lived in harmony with the white settlers and the following anecdote is of the only fight known between one of the Nayaugs and a white man.

John Hollister, who lived on the west side of the Connecticut, owned land on the east side which he cultivated. He was known as the most powerful and athletic of the settlers. One morning, as he was at work on his land on the east side, an Indian of the Nayaugs, who was equally noted among his people for his great strength and agility, challenged Mr. Hollister to a trial of strength. The challenge was promptly accepted.

They fought till both were exhausted when, by agreement, they sat upon the same log to rest and then went at it again. They continued their rounds and rests till sun-down, when they agreed that it was a draw. The admiration of each for the other was great and they became fast friends and the two most notable men, in the opinion of the Nayaugs, in all the country.

Although " Father " Stocking was not a native of Glastenbury, he was for many years a resident of that town and was closely connected with the history of Methodism there. The Rev. Jeremiah Stocking was born in Chatham, in December, 1767, his " schoolin' " ending in his ninth year. His father was a seafaring man and was away from home much of the time. From the age of nine till he was thirteen, Jeremiah lived in Haddam, and in his thirteenth year he joined a privateer, at about the close of the Revolution. When he left the ship, he went into trade till he was twenty-one and in 1790, he married and moved

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to Glastenbury. His health failing, his physician advised that he turn Post-rider so that he could be out in the sun and air. In 1799, Jeremiah began carrying newspapers between Hartford and Saybrook and in 1801 he carried the mail. During the twenty-five years he was thus employed he traveled 150,000 miles and crossed the Connecticut River more than 8,500 times.

While living in Glastenbury he became a " half-way Covenanter " and five years later was " converted " by a Methodist preacher. Not long after he was " converted " to Christianity he, himself, became a Methodist preacher and spent considerable of his time, at- first, in tirades against other denominations, but finally a deeper Christianity entered his heart, and from then on he lived in charity and good will with all. There is a very curious fact in regard to seven male members of his family, all of whom were in the ministry, of one or another denomination. It is, that all of their given names began with S. They were Sophronius H. Stocking, Selah Stocking, Solon Stocking, Sabura S. Stocking, Septerius Stocking, and Sabin Stocking.

FARMINGTON.

New settlers either purchased from the original proprietors or were given land by the Town, The population grew rather rapidly in the early days, there being forty-six property owners who paid taxes on property to the value of £5,519, in 1655, and this same year for a comparison, the number of tax payers in Hartford was but four times as large and the total value of their property was not quite four times as great. Down to 1700, the population increased and the settlement contained, in that year, as many dwellings as were in Farmington one hundred and forty years later, in 1840.

In 1672, the eighty-four proprietors divided the land, using Round Hill as a center from which measurements were made. A parallelogram was thus made, three miles to the north, five miles and thirty-two rods to the south, two miles and sixty-four rods to the east and two miles to the west. This was called the reserved lands. A considerable part of it had already been taken up. The portion that was not, was reserved for town-commons, home-lots, pastures and " pitches ". All the land outside of this parallelogram was surveyed, and divided among the eighty-four proprietors in proportion to the taxes they paid. The Rev. Samuel Hooker, their minister, received a double portion. The western portion of the town was divided into lots a mile east and west and eleven miles north and south. These lots were

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distributed so that each man owned one that was a mile long and of a width in proportion to the property he already owned. All other parts of the town were divided on the same plan. The survey for this work was completed in 1728, and it is upon this survey, that the titles to the land are based, within the towns that have been formed from the original territory of Farmington.

Generally speaking, the settlers and Tunxis Indians lived in harmony, but in 1642, there was considerable alarm caused by the gathering of many Indians about Tunxis, as a plot of some kind was feared. The General Court took prompt and vigorous action and nothing came of the gathering, probably because of that prompt action. At other times, later, there were Indian scares. In 1657, John Hart and all his family, except one son, were burnt to death in the home which had been set on fire by Indians and in the same year a settler, by the name of Scott, was killed. For the burning of the Hart home and family the Indians were required to pay eighty fathoms (480 feet) of wampum yearly for seven years. In 1668, a complaint was made, probably to the General Court, that the Indians had fired bullets into the settlement from their fort, or encampment, and also that they had extended their hospitality to strange Indians. For this, they were ordered to move to another place. In 1689, and 1704, the people feared danger from a distance, possibly the Podunks or the Mohawks. For better protection several houses were fortified with double doors and narrowed windows.

Authorities differ as to the year the first Church was organized. Trumbull fixes the date as being October, 1652, and Noah Porter, Jr., sometime in the year 1645. The Rev. Roger Newton was the first minister. His wife was the Rev. Thomas Hooker's daughter Mary. In 1661, the Rev. Samuel Hooker, son of the great divine of Hartford, became the minister of the Church and his pastorate continued till his death in November, 1697. Mr. Hooker was a graduate of Harvard and was almost equally esteemed with his illustrious father. In 1662, the Rev. Samuel Hooker was one of the committee appointed to negotiate with the New Haven Colony for a union with the Colony of Connecticut. He was the grandfather of that beautiful and pious thirteen-year old girl, Sarah Pierpont, of New Haven, with whom

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Jonathan Edwards fell In love while a tutor in Yale, and finally married.

Farmington was an educational center from very early days clown to the regretted closing of Miss Porter's school for girls, a few years ago. In 1682, the Town appropriated £10 toward maintaining a school; the next year a similar appropriation was made and in addition four shillings a quarter was required to be paid for each child attending • the school. Later, ^30 was appropriated. This larger sum was evidently given because so much more was to be required of the " man-teacher ". He was required to teach reading, writing and grammar and also, " to be able to step into the pulpit to be helpful there in time of need "; and a little later an ability to teach Latin was required. Dr. Noah Porter gives the following fine description of the natural conditions in Farmington in early days:

During this period (the first sixty years) the inhabitants by degrees became more numerous, but with the exception of the colony near " the Seamorfort " and two or three houses on the northern border of the " great plain ", they were scattered for two miles or more along the street. The upland near their dwellings had been slowly cleared and the forest still lingered in sight, along the foot of the mountain. The western woods were yet an unbroken wilderness, save the opening which had been made by the Indians, as they retreated in 1672, to their reservation across the meadows, and rallied around a new burying place for their dead. On the south was " the white oak plain ", still unsubdued, and " the great plain " was thickly crowded with its growth of birches and tangled shrub-oakSj It was not till 1695, that a highway was laid through this district of the town. * * * The river furnished to the English and the natives, its overflowing abundance of shad and salmon, and the west woods abounded in deer, in wolves and panthers. In the forest, up the mountain, was their common place of pasturage. The meeting-house lot was as yet a noble common of several acres. A canoe with ropes was furnished at the north end of the street, by which the river was crossed as it was not till 1725, that the first bridge was erected at this place. At the annual town meeting, no man might be absent who valued his twelve pence. Then were chosen the townsmen, the register, the fence-viewers, the chimney-viewer, so necessary in those days of wooden mantles, of ill constructed chimnies, and of their enormous fires, their tything men, and last, not least, their one constable, who was to them the right arm of the king himself; a functionary treated with reverent awe, and obeyed with implicit deference. Whosoever resisted his power, resisted the ordinance of God. Two men besides Mr. Hooker bore the appellation of Mr.; Mr. Anthony Howkin and

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Mr. John Wadsworth. Nor may we forget to name Captain William Lewis, Captain Stanley, Ensign Thomas Hart, and Sergeant William Judd. Their communication with the other towns was infrequent. Occasionally a traveler would appear by the path from Hartford, with news from their friends and kindred there, or with a message of alarm from his Excellency the Governor, and now and then someone would emerge from the forest by the " New Haven path " with tidings from that commercial emporium, or from the lands beyond the seas. The Indians were still here by hundreds, their canoes might be seen every day filling the little creek that put in from the river.

The Sabbath was the great and central day of the week; a day of awful and yet of rapturous joy. As the drum beat with its wonted and pleasant sound of invitation, they resorted to the house of worship with cheerful steps. Here they were roused and comforted by the fervent Hooker. Here they forgot their weekly labors in the forest, their fear of famine; their terror of the natives, far and near; the armed guard that stood before the sanctuary, and the necessity that had planted it there. From the house of God they return at evening, to spend the remaining hours of sacred rest upon joyful reflection upon the words there heard, doubly grateful for a church such as they loved, though it were in a wilderness. Then they instruct their children with strict and judicious care, and close the day by committing themselves and theirs to the care of the Almighty. To men situated as were they, His protection was more than a name; for desolate indeed was their lot, if He cared not for them.

So wrote Noah Porter, Jr., in 1840, who later became President of Yale.

From its settlement, Farmington was a farming community. It was the unusual fertility of its meadow lands and the unceasing supply of water from the river and streams that first attracted settlers. It was a farming community of the highest class for while the fathers and sons cultivated their fields industriously, and to the greatest possible profit, they did not fail to cultivate their minds and manners as far as it was possible. They lived close to Nature and, therefore, close to God, and this very proximity to the Creator and His handiwork made them the highest type of Nature's gentle-folk.

When not employed in their official capacities, the ministers and magistrates worked side by side with their sons, their hired men and the slaves; always in lead, doing even more work than those whom they employed or owned. As one of Farmington's finest sons, Governor John Treadwell, has expressed it.

They have been content to eat their bread in the sweat of their brow; and it was honor enough to be esteemed the first among equals.

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The only means of transportation for individuals up to about 1750, was the horse, with saddle and pillion behind for the woman. But in that year the Rev, Timothy Pitkin brought home the daughter of President Clap of Yale College, as his bride. When it was known that they were coming in some kind of a machine on wheels, the greatest interest was excited among the entire community. The older men of the community went out to meet their minister and his bride. When they saw the four-wheeled phaeton, one of the older men exclaimed in his excitement: " I see the cart, I see the cart ". It was Farmington's first sight of a pleasure carriage.

Up to about the time the war with Great Britain began, there was but one store in Farmington, but after peace was declared a commercial spirit began to assert itself to the hurt of the simple society. For, with the accumulation of something like wealth by a few persons envy, heart-burn and dissatisfaction with the simple, clean life that was characteristic for so many years, began to show itself. In 1803, there were $125,000 invested in business enterprise in Farmington. There was, however, a gain through trade and consequent greater intercourse with the outside world and this gain was the broadening of the ideas of the people, in regard to quite proper and innocent social pleasures and amusements. But commercialism did hurt that charming simplicity which was a part of Farmington's life. In 1802, Governor Treadwell deplored the increasing commercial spirit somewhat strongly as follows:

The farmer is thrown into the shade; he feels that riches, as the world goes, give pre-eminence. In homely dress and covered with sweat and dust, with weary steps returning from the field, he sees with pain the powdered beau rolling in his carriage * * * and feels himself degraded. The young ladies are changing their spinning-wheels for the piano-forte and forming their manners at the dancing school, rather than in the school of industry. Labor is growing in disrepute.,

While this view of the change was of a somewhat low-spirited nature, it was at the same time quite true. The fact still remains, however, that the fine qualities of the early settlers have descended down through nearly two centuries and have made Farmington notable in New England.

Up to 1825, Farmington had but one religious denomination

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within its bounds and that was, of course, the Congregational. In 1825, a Methodist society was organized and in 1834, their church building was erected.

Farmington was the home of many of New England's prominent men. Perhaps the most notable were the Hon. John Tread-well, Governor of Connecticut, and the Rev. Dr. Noah Porter, who, as president of Yale College, was the personal acquaintance of nearly every undergraduate, and the best friend of every one of them.

John Treadwell was born in Farmington, on November 23, 1745. He prepared for Yale and was graduated in the class of 1765, and then began to study law. The profession had no attractions for him so he never presented himself for the necessary examination for admission to practice. A life of public usefulness seemed most attractive to him, and it proved to be the life he was best suited for. In the autumn of 1776, he was elected to the General Assembly as the representative of Farmington and, with the exception of one session, was continued in that office till 1785. Then he was elected as one of the Assistants and continued in that office till 1798, when he was appointed Lieutenant Governor. When Governor Trumbull died in 1809, he was appointed by the Legislature to the office of Governor, and at its next session his appointment was renewed for the following year. Besides these high offices, Governor Treadwell was for twenty years, Judge of the Probate Court; for twenty years, a Judge in the Supreme Court of Errors; for nineteen years, a member of the Corporation of Yale College; and for three years, Judge of the County Court. He was for many years also a member of the Prudential-Committee of Yale.

Governor Treadwell's interest in public education was great and it may be said with truth, that he had more to do with the organization of the public school system of Connecticut than any other individual. He was regarded by the people as being a man of unquestioned honor and wisdom in the affairs of the State, of which he possessed a more intimate knowledge than any other man.

His interest and efforts for the honor, dignity and systematic order of the Church, were as great as was his interest in the State. Governor Treadwell became a member of the Farming-

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ton Church at the age of twenty-seven, and the parish found, on the two or three occasions when harmony was disturbed and serious discord was threatening, that his advice and example were of the greatest value. His ecclesiastic offices were numerous as were his civil offices. He was the first chairman, and one of the original trustees, of the Missionary Society of Connecticut and he continued in these offices till advancing years caused him to refuse reappointment. He was the first president of the American Board of Foreign Missions and one of the commissioners who drew up its constitution. He was president of the Board till his death.

The Rev. Dr. Noah Porter described him in 1840, as: "A man not possessed of brilliant genius or extended erudition, or commanding elocution; that he had not the advantages of birth, patronage, personal attraction or courtly address; that he did not possess the power of delighting society by the brilliancy of his fancy, nor of swaying public assemblies by the eloquence of his appeals; that in the common sense of the term, he was not a popular man and yet he had a moral and intellectual greatness which carried him superior to all obstacles, in the path to eminence ; so that, with no advantages above what thousands enjoyed, he united in himself, in a perfection rarely found, the characters of a jurist, a civilian and a divine."

In a less general degree, John Treadwell may be compared favorably with Judge James Duane of New York. What James Duane was to the young Nation in the Revolutionary period, and to the Episcopal Church; John Treadwell was to the young State and Congregational Church. He died at the age of seventy-seven, on August 18, 1823.

LTHOUGH the settlement of the district now comprising the Town of Berlin is ancient, that town did not come into existence till 1785; a mere infant, of one hundred and twenty odd years, in comparison with the surrounding towns. It was originally a part of Farmington, from which town it was set off as the second society (church society) in 1712, and was given the name of Kensington and the Rev. Mr.

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Burnham, the first minister, was ordained that year. Kensington consisted of fourteen families. In all, about one hundred individuals, including children and infants. Before the settlement of Mr. Burnham, these people were obliged to go ten miles or more to the church in Farmington. They did so cheerfully, many of the women carrying their infants all that weary distance, because they must attend worship and could not leave the little ones at home. Kensington was divided in 1753, when the society of New Britain was formed, and again, in 1772, when the society of Worthington was formed. In 1785, Berlin was incorporated as a town, portions of Wethersfield and Middle-town being included within the bounds of the new town. In 1834, the Borough was formed and the bounds extended two miles north and south and one mile east and west.

Tradition has it, and nothing definite in history has been found to the contrary, that an Irishman named Patterson (probably a " Blue-nose ") settled in Berlin, or Kensington as it then was, in 1740, and made the first tin-ware on the Continent of North America. Patterson — there seems to be uncertainty as whether his name was William or Edward — was a tinner and soon after he settled in Kensington he began to manufacture tin-ware and continued in that trade till the commencement of the Revolution, when it was suspended for a time, as he could not obtain the raw material. After the Colonies had won Independence, the trade was continued by the young men who had learned it from Patterson. In the early days, when Patterson was the only tinner in the Colonies, he would make up as much of the ware as he could carry in a basket and then tramp over the surrounding country, from hamlet to farm and from farm to hamlet, selling the new kind of utensils, which the women found most convenient. The value of the business became known and soon others took it up and so it spread all over the country. But the demand could not be supplied by hand baskets, so larger baskets were carried on horseback, and then two-wheeled carts were used. Finally, that institution peculiar to New England, the ted, four-wheeled, tin-peddler's wagon, came into existence and every tiny settlement and the intervening farmhouses, of New England and eastern New York, were visited by these tin-peddlers who, besides tin-ware, carried notions useful to the

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housewives. These peddlers were a welcome sight to the farmer and his household, as they were for many years the only source of news from the other parts of the country and from the outside world. Speaking generally, these tin-peddlers were the social equals of the people whom they traded with and, also speaking generally, they were of superior intelligence. The very fact that they " took to the road " showed a disinclination to remain in the ruts and a desire to see the world, or as much of it as their horse and four-wheeled, red cart could cover, between Easter and Thanksgiving. So, being shrewd, they stored their memories with all the important and interesting news, and while they were imparting it to the news-hungry families, they made their bargains, gave the smallest possible price for the rags they took, and charged the largest possible price for the tin-ware and notions they gave in exchange. This was purely a matter of business with the peddlers; and as for their customers, they received full value for the excess they paid for tin, as the news of the outside world which they received, saved them from utter stagnation. It is a notable fact, that the foundations of many of the greatest fortunes in the East were laid by these same merchants-on-wheels. And many of the great merchants of New York, Boston and some of the smaller New York and New England cities, in the period just after the Revolution, were farmers' sons who had been stimulated to something better than their placid, turnip-like existences on the farms, by the information given by the tin-peddlers, in regard to the opportunities in the towns. The Yankee peddler was a man worth knowing; the scum of Europe which has succeeded to the business, are things to be shunned.

Berlin will always be notable as the home of the tin-ware industry, one of the most profitable businesses of the first half of the nineteenth century.

HARTFORD.

They were Christian families beyond doubt, but they went to the antithesis of what they left, and had suffered loss of fortune and martyrdom for, and became stern, and even unlovely in their Christianity. The words; " Fear God " were more often spoken by them than those other words; " Love God ", and their children were brought up " in the fear of the Lord ". It is doubtful, had they been differently constituted in their religious devotion and manner of life, that New England would ever have come into existence and, if it had, that it would have become the cornerstone of the United States; and the people the personification of the best American manhood and citizenship. So, while the people of New England have become the most ardent of God-loving peoples, they began in the Fear of the Lord.

One of the most notable of these God-fearing men was the Rev. Thomas Hooker, a learned, profound and brilliant preacher, of Clemsford, in Essex, England, who for non-conformity was subject to fines, imprisonment and persecution, by that class of Christians which then professed to love God rather than fear Him. So great was Thomas Hooker's fame that forty ministers, all of whom were conformists, took up his cause and petitioned the Bishop of London not to make it necessary for him to leave his native land, but without avail.

As a preacher of the Gospel his fame was wide, for he possessed the brilliancy that attracted the intellectual, the simplicity

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that appealed to the simple and the power that convinced both classes of the truth of the Gospel that he preached. Eminent persons, among them the Earl of Warwick, came from great distances to hear him preach and many were willing to hazard life in a new, strange and wild country, to continue in the benefits of his teaching.

Thomas Hooker fled to Holland to escape the fines and imprisonment that would have overtaken him had he remained in England. Soon after his people were deprived of his presence they began to long for a place to go, where they could live in freedom of worship with their beloved minister. They naturally thought of that new continent in the west, whither others had already fled and had made settlements. In 1632, a large number sailed for New England and settled in Cambridge — then called Newtown — and those who had arrived a little before them and had settled in Weymouth, joined those of Newtown. The Rev. Thomas Hooker, having been made acquainted with their plans and their earnest desire that he would join them as their minister, left Holland for Newtown. He brought with him as teacher of the Gospel, Samuel Stone, who was a lecturer in Towcester, Northamptonshire, England. He and his company arrived at Boston on September 4, 1633. In that company of 200, were Cotton, Goff and Haynes, who later became Governor of Connecticut. Mr. Hooker immediately went to Newtown and was welcomed by his people. On October n, after prayer and fasting, Mr. Hooker and Mr. Stone were ordained as the minister and teacher of the community.

The Connecticut Valley was already known to the people of Plymouth, Boston and Newtown, through the Indians who had tried to induce the English in those places to go to it for settlement, and from a few hardy pioneers, of whom John Oldham was the chief and most notable. So, when in 1634, Newtown and the neighboring settlements began to suffer from a lack of food and other necessities, through the steadily increasing population, Hooker and Stone and their people naturally looked toward the beautiful river where the land was so fertile, and fur-bearing animals so numerous. It seems strange now, that 270 years ago those Massachusetts towns could possibly have been over populated. Of course there was area sufficient, but the

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difficulty was, that the people lacked the necessary knowledge for making the soil produce food.

This proposed exodus aroused the Massachusetts authorities. Forgetting that they had left their homes in England for the greater freedom hoped for in the new world, the people of Massachusetts strongly opposed the inherent right of Thomas Hooker and his people to go whither they pleased. But finally, in 1635, the General Court, which had absolutely no right to interfere in the matter or to dictate as to the movements of individuals or companies, graciously granted permission for the removal to the Connecticut Valley. In 1636, Thomas Hooker, Samuel Stone and one hundred men, women and children, started through the wilderness, in which there was not even an Indian trail. When it is remembered that many of the company were persons of gentle birth, who were totally unacquainted with work or hardship, their sufferings may be realized. The fact that breeding imparts courage, fortitude and the power to accommodate oneself to all conditions, is emphasized by this enterprise. They drove before them cattle, the milk of the cows forming their chief sustenance. Mrs. Hooker was carried on a litter. Arriving at the beautiful valley they settled at Suckiaug and named their settlement Newtown after the place they had left behind, but in February, 1637, the name was changed to Hartford, in honor of Samuel Stone, that being his birthplace in the Old Country. Both Stone and Hooker were University men, they being graduates of Emmanuel College at Cambridge.

The land was purchased by the original white proprietors from the Indian, Chief Sequasson, the original proprietor. The Pequots naturally resented this and, no doubt, they were excited to hatred of the English settlers by the Dutch traders. The Dutch generally got along well with Indians. They had no compunctions about selling them rum. If the thirsty Indian had a good supply of exceptionably fine pelts for trade, the Dutch trader often gave the rum, so that the bargain for the pelts would be much more advantageous for the trader, because of the muddled condition of the Indian's mind.

The Pequots knew very well, that unless the English were somehow got out of the way, the time was not far distant

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when they would be humiliated in the sight of the hated River Indians, and would also be under the control and subject to the laws of the English. An Indian chief to the Dutch was an Indian chief; to the English he was a heathen who must be converted to Christianity and taught the ways of civilization, and made to live as nearly in conformity with those ways as possible. Another cause for Pequot hatred of the English was, that with the English behind them the River Indians would refuse to pay further tribute to the Pequots.

So Thomas Hooker and his friends found themselves and their homes in daily danger from the cruel Pequots, and finally the Pequot war came upon the people. They met it with the same energy and determination not to fail, with which they met every difficulty, danger or undertaking. Hartford's share in it was creditable; as was that of other settlements which took part in war. Coming- so soon after they had effected their settlement, and before they had had time to become accustomed to Indian fighting; in

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fact before they had become fully accustomed to the new conditions in which they were living; it is a wonder that the English were not annihilated.

The danger from attack by small bands of Indians at unexpected times was so great, that the General Court formed a guard, armed and provided with at least two rounds of ammunition each, which should attend public worship at the meeting-houses on Sundays, under the command of two sergeants, one of whom sat inside the church with the guard, near the door, while the other acted as sentinel outside the church. This custom obtained in nearly every settlement in Connecticut.

Finally, on May 1, 1637, after about thirty settlers had been killed by Indians, the General Court met and declared a war of extermination against the Pequots. As the matter to be considered and decided upon was of so great importance, the towns, for the first time, sent committees to the General Court. The men on the committee were; The Messrs. Chaplin, Geffords, Hull, Mitchell, Sherman, Talcott, Whiting, Webster and Williams. The Magistrates of the Court were; The Messrs. Ludlow, Phelps, Swain, Steel, Wells and Ward. Of the ninety men to be raised in Hartford, Wethersfield and Windsor for the army that was to exterminate the Pequots, Hartford's quota was forty-two, and the Rev. Samuel Stone was the chaplain. When the Yankee of early days awoke, ate or went to sleep he asked for the blessing and protection of Almighty God, and so they did, on this occasion. When the little army of much less than two hundred men started from Hartford down the river to the Pequot country, their faithful minister stood on the bank of the river surrounded by the wives, mothers and sweethearts, whose fortitude was as great as the men's courage, and called down upon them God's blessing and protection, and His strength, that they might fight to win. They fought and won and when they returned to their homes the proprietors of Hartford granted to them twenty-eight acres of land known as " Soldier's Field ", in grateful appreciation of their services. Some authorities claim that this was the first act of the kind in America.

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The success of this war made the English the masters of the Indians and forced them to obey certain laws that were passed, regulating their relations and conduct with the whites. Hartford, however, was by no means finished with Indian dangers. In 1642, it was discovered that the River Indians and Narragansetts had concocted a joyous little plot to kill all of the English, but vigorous action on the part of the authorities, in putting the Train Band in effective condition; in communicating with the authorities of Massachusetts and restricting the " comings " of the Indians (they might go where they pleased, even to the devil) ; the plot came to naught.

The restrictions regulating the " comings " of the Indians were rigid. They were not permitted to enter Hartford in bands, small or large, and absolutely no Indian was allowed in the town at night. No Indian was allowed to enter a house, except that of a magistrate and then, only a sachem and but two other Indians with him. It was against the law for a settler to sell a dog to the Indians or to go to their wigwams, in the South .Meadows, to trade with them, nor could the whites sell arms or powder to them. Finally, the conditions were greatly improved, and the entire defeat, of the Pequots removed the greatest cause for alarm, but did not entirely remove the danger from fanatical, revengeful Indians who, considering the settlers to be interlopers and land-robbers, thought whitemen's scalps a pleasing offering to Kiehtan, their "Great Spirit ".

Such eminent historical writers and students as John Fiske and Alexander Johnston and other men of equal repute, give Hartford the unique and enviable reputation of being the place in which the first written constitution of the world, * as a permanent limitation on governmental power ", as Professor Johnston expresses it, was conceived and brought forth.

Again quoting Professor Johnston: " The common opinion is, that democracy came into the American system through the compact made in the cabin of the Mayflower, though that instrument was based upon no political principle whatever, and began with a formal acknowledgement of the king as the source of all authority. It was the power of the crown ' by virtue ' of which ' equal laws ' were to be enacted, and the ' covenant' was merely

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a makeshift to meet a temporary emergency: it had not a particle of political significance, nor was democracy an impelling force in it. It must be admitted that the Plymouth system was accidentally democratic, but it was from the absence of any great need for government or for care to preserve homogeneity in religion, not from, political purpose, as in Connecticut. It was a passive, not an active system; and it cannot be said to have influenced other American commonwealths. Another though less prevalent opinion is, that the first democratic commonwealth was the mother colony of Massachusetts Bay. * * * On the contrary, it is not difficult to show that the settlement of Connecticut was itself merely a secession of the democratic element from Massachusetts, and that the Massachusetts freemen owed their final emancipation from a theocracy to the example given them by the eldest daughter of the old commonwealth."

On January 14, 1639, all the free planters of Hartford, Wethersfield and Windsor met in Hartford to draw up and adopt this famous first written constitution for civil government.

The manner of the distribution of the land to the original settlers, or proprietors, was to give each head of a family a lot in the settlement proper, or the village, of about two acres upon which the home was to be built, and then a piece of greater acreage outside of the village, for raising crops. These farm pieces were bounded by the settlement at one end and stretched out in all directions, in long, narrow strips. The acreage in these farm pieces was determined by the sum the individual had contributed to the general fund for the purchase, or by services rendered. Sometimes they were in accordance with the position in the community of the individual, and sometimes in accordance with his necessity. The rule in regard to the two-acre lots in the settlement was that the house should be built within a year, and in regard to the farm land, that it should be improved. Failure to comply with these rules caused the land of both kinds to revert to the Town. Realizing the danger from fire and the seriousness of loss by fire (for the houses were built

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with great labor) and the danger, should a fire start, that the other dwellings with their logs covered with dry, inflammable bark, would all go, the people were required to provide a ladder, or to leave one tree sufficiently near the house for it to be used as a ladder. No owner was permitted to sell his village lot or farm, or any portion of either, without giving the Town the first chance to purchase, the payment to be for only the improvements. Property could not be sold by an original owner without the consent of the Town.

This was a wise provision. It was made for the same purpose as was that governing the admission of new Inhabitants ; to keep undesirable outsiders from gaining citizenship. In 1640, this rule regulating the selling of property was changed, so that owners who had been Inhabitants for four years could sell as they chose, but a reversion to the old rule was made by the General Court, in 1651.

That portion of the territory purchased from the Indians, that had not been assigned to original proprietors, was known as the Commons and belonged to the Town. When new settlers were admitted as Inhabitants, portions of the Commons were assigned to them. The common lands were at first under the charge of a committee, and later under the Selectmen, whose duty it was to see that there was no damage done by live stock, and that the timber should only be cut by those who were given licenses to do so. Grants of the common lands were made for public service, such as ditching and clearing, but the grants could be made only with the knowledge' and consent of the entire town. The feudal system was unknown in Hartford. The people owned their property absolutely, save that they owned it under a superior authority, which was the People, of which superior authority each owner was a sovereign unit. So their land was not held under the superior authority of the King in the mother country, but under that of Themselves and their fellow Inhabitants. No man of Hartford ever took the oath of allegiance to the British King till after the Charter of 1662 was granted.

There were also laws governing extravagance and display in dress and ornament, and the prices to be paid for the

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work done by men and cattle, and the length of the work-day.

The wages paid for labor by the day varied from eighteen: pence to two shillings and sixpence, the season of the year and the " smartness " of the man being considerations influencing the pay. The length of a work-day in summer was eleven hours, and in winter it was nine hours.

The charge for the use of cattle for a day varied from four-teenpence to eighteenpence, also according to the season and working qualities of the cattle. For the use of a cart from threepence to sixpence a day was charged. . Sawyers, the makers of lumber, received better pay than farm laborers. The pay for this work varied from four shillings and sixpence to seven shillings, and if either party gave or received more than the sums fixed, for the particular kind of work, he was fined five shillings for each offence.

Trouble aizising" from an employer taking advantage of a man's necessity, was settled by arbitration by the Townsmen, who imposed fines to suit the offence. So, while some of these laws were arbitrary, they were made for the good of the community and if they seemed a hardship in particular cases it was due to ignorance, or lack of experience, rather than a desire on the part of the employed to do as little for as much as possible, or on the part of the employers, to give as little for as much done as possible.

Besides all of the common grains, and beans, the settlers had a fair variety of vegetables. The raising of tobacco, hemp and flax was encouraged and regulated by law. To encourage the raising of tobacco, there was a penalty of five shillings for using any that was grown out of Connecticut, and the Connecticut referred to in the law was composed of the three towns of Hartford, Wethersfield and Windsor. Strict laws were passed in regard to the use of tobacco, for the General Court feared that the people were abusing themselves with it. The Court ordered that no person under the age of twenty-one should use tobacco in any form, without a certificate from a physician that tobacco was good for him, and even then, the would-be user was required to obtain a license from the General Court. This requirement included

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all who had not acquired the habit, as well as those under twenty-one.

After the certificate and license had been obtained, the possessor was forbidden to smoke, chew or snuff, on the public streets, the highways, or in barn yards, and on training days he could not indulge in any open space. This probably was to prevent the use of tobacco on, or about the training ground. The penalty for each offence was sixpence, and any one could be convicted by the testimony of but one witness.

In 1640, the General Court compelled the raising of flax and hemp. This law provided that each family should plant one spoonful of the seed, the seeds to be planted one foot apart. In the second year, each family keeping a team was to sow at least one rood of hemp or flax; each person keeping cattle was to sow twenty perches; families not owning cattle were obliged to sow ten perches and to provide at least a half pound of hemp or flax seed, or be subject to the public censure of the Court. As there was a scarcity of hemp seed, the Court ordered that any person who possessed more than the required spoonful and refused to sell to those who had none, should be obliged to plant that much more.

Their animals were cattle, horses of a rather poor quality for any other purpose than heavy work, hogs, sheep and goats. The goat's well known capacity for mischief caused him to be barred from the commons and the streets of the settlement without a keeper. While pigs were a frequent article of diet in the form of pork, as pigs, they were a frequent subject of legislation by the Town.

There is a tradition that many years later than the period just mentioned, about the third and fourth decades of the nineteenth century, there were finer specimens of " trouble-poultry " — as an old colored man called his fighting cocks — in Hartford than could be elsewhere found in New England. Had it not been for a hungry woman on one of the emigrant ships, of 1637, Hartford might have had fighting cocks with spurs on heads as well as heels. Tradition says that this woman was bringing with her from Old England to New

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England, in 1637, a pair of fowls which had spur-like horns growing out from their heads on either side, but she killed and ate them before landing.

The earliest record of a law in regard to public education in Connecticut is that of 1642, when £30 was set aside for the Town School. Thus early did Hartford establish " The Little Red School-house " in which the majority of America's greatest men obtained their first thirst for knowledge.

In 1650, each Town of fifty householders was required to maintain a school master, and each Town of one hundred house-holders was required to maintain a Grammar School, with a master who was competent to prepare pupils for the University — meaning Harvard. In 1664, Governor Hopkins gave to this school £400, that the school might be on a firm foundation. One of the chief reasons the people were so strongly in favor of an education was, that more persons would be able to read the Scriptures in the Greek, and so avoid the danger of depending upon translators, who might construe the original to suit their own " mistaken " ideas. Another was, that a greater number of young men might be stimulated to fit themselves for the ministry.

One of the duties of the Selectmen was to require all children and apprentices to attend school, and they were given authority to take minors of both sexes from parents or masters who neglected their duty in sending their children or apprentices to school. Such children were to be placed under the guardianship of some person — till they were twenty-one in the case of boys, and eighteen in the case of girls — who would see to it that they were properly educated for good citizenship, industry and obedience to the laws. The Selectmen were also obliged to require heads of families, once a week, to catechize their children and servants in the principles of their religion, meaning the Congregational Church. The schools had a hard struggle for the people, however well off they might be, had little ready money to give to their support. The people had a keen appreciation of the advantages of an education, and they showed a determination and sincerity of purpose, to do all that was possible to keep the " little red factory " of good citizenship at work on full time,

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with a full force. For this noble purpose many ways for keeping the machinery going' were adopted. Wood for heating the school-house was donated; small sums of money were given for the rent of a room, when the cost of a school-house would be too great; or pupils were charged a tiny tuition. The people voted in Town Meeting- to tax themselves for the support of the institution that was so close to the Church, that it stood nearly on a level with it. Those old-time New Englanders were austere, rather mirthless and grim, but they wrere nation and character builders and devoted to their Church and School.

In the very early days there were queer laws made for regulating who should be, and who should not be inhabitants. There can be no doubt that the laws, queer as they were, were necessary for the protection of the community in its social, political, industrial and religious lives. The community was com posed of families which had undertaken a great enterprise in leaving the comfort and, in many instances, the luxury of their homes in England and later, in leaving the comparative safety of their homes in Massachusetts for the unknown far-west. They were united in their purpose, in their standard of life, both public and domestic, and in their manner of worship and Church government, so they could not afford to hazard the discord that might result from the promiscuous influx of strangers. They were a house which, divided against itself, would not only have fallen, but would have been annihilated. They had instituted their wonderful Town Government and it must be maintained, even at the expense of seeming inhospitality.

Strangers could become inhabitants only upon proof of good character— which meant honest, God-fearing industri-

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ous lives — and then, only upon an affirmative vote of a. majority of the inhabitants. Persons who were evidently waifs were absolutely barred from citizenship. Families, which were already inhabitants, were not permitted to entertain strangers in their homes for a period of time longer than one month, without permission from the Town. Young unmarried men were not allowed to live in any family without permission from the Town, no matter how good were their characters; nor was a young unmarried man permitted to live in bachelor-quarters, unless he kept a servant or was a public officer. The penalty for such an offence was a fine of twenty shillings. This was the strangest of the laws governing life in those early days. It was probably due to the fear that a man living alone would become slovenly, dirty and perhaps immoral and to them, the people of Connecticut, who gave to America its Town Government and to the World its first written Constitution, cleanliness of .person and domicile was but little less important than cleanliness of morals.

Inhabitants were obliged by law to attend Town Meeting. Failure to do so without reasonable excuse, was punished by a fine of sixpence — small indeed in value, but the principle involved by the fine was great. If there were a similar law now, in every State of the Union, in regard to attendance at primaries, the high officials in Town, County, State and Nation, would be men who have inherited their American Citizenship instead of those who have acquired it through the naturalization courts.

There was one striking particular in which Connecticut, and therefore Hartford, was far in advance of the Colonies of Massachusetts and New Haven. To be a voter in Connecticut it was only necessary to be an Inhabitant; in Massachusetts and New Haven, membership in the Congregational Church was necessary. They were continuing in the New World that union of Church and State which they found so objectionable in the Old World. The people of Massachusetts found that the union was rather a pleasant condition, giving as it did, greatly augmented power to those persons who held office. And in New England they were the

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Church and State, while in Old England they were simply the puppets of the Church. It is not at all strange that they found the power very pleasant and tickling to their self-esteem.

Human beings were put to death:

For worshipping another God than the Lord God.

For being a witch, or consulting with a familiar spirit.

For blaspheming the name of God the Father, Son or Holy Ghost * * * with presumptuous or highhanded blasphemy.

For wilful murder.

For slaying another through guile, either by poisonings or other such Devilish practice.

For kidnapping.

For false witness.

For conspiring or attempting an invasion, insurrection or rebellion against the Commonwealth.

For a child above sixteen years of age to curse, or smite his father or mother.

For a son above sixteen years of age, who will not obey his father or mother, after he has been chastened by them.

There is no city in New England, in which public hospitality for travelers is greater, or the accommodations more comfortable and elegant, than in Hartford. The city has inherited this characteristic for 260 years for in 1644, the Legislature, or General Court as it was then called, ordered that the towns of Hartford, Windsor and Wethersfield should each provide a house for the entertainment of strangers and the traveling public, in which they should be feel and lodged in a " comfortable" manner. The tavern-keeper was chosen for that employment by the people and was approved by two magistrates, as being the right man for the best interests of strangers and the reputation of the towns. There was a fine of forty shillings, to be paid by the Town failing to comply with this order within a month after its issuance,

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and a similar fine was imposed for each successive month that passed, before the order was complied with.

The first tavern in Hartford was in 1644, and Jeremy Adams was its keeper. Tradition and history makes Jeremy Adams a typical landlord. Hospitable, jolly and full of deviltry in his youth, when he began the duties of landlord, in later years he settled down and became a solid, substantial and prominent citizen. One of his early improprieties was to urge Thomas Hosmer, against whom an execution had been issued, to resist the levy by the constable. For this the General Court censured him formally. In 1662, Adams was confirmed by the authorities as tavern-keeper, so it is evident that he was regarded as the right man for the place. In 1663, he was appointed to the responsible office of Master of Customs. An especial enactment by the General Court provided that Adams' house should remain the tavern for the entertainment of neighbors as well as strangers; that if Adams failed in any particulars of his agreement, his license should not be forfeited, but that he should continue in its possession at the discretion of the Court and himself be subject to its censure.

This was practically a monopoly and no doubt it was as profitable in those days as are the monopolies of today. His monopoly included the exclusive right to sell wines in all quantities under a quarter cask, and all liquors under an anker; a Dutch measure of liquids used in England, containing ten wine-gallons. So Jeremy Adams had control of the retail and wholesale trade of the Colony, as it is hardly probable that his colleagues in the other towns were doing enough business to be able to buy wines and liquors in greater quantities than a quarter cask or an anker. It would be unjust and partaking of the nature of a vandalism to even suggest that the authorities received any of the mysterious presents, in unadressed envelopes, which the grantors of monopolies of the twentieth century find in their desks or coat pockets. In those days, when time was still young in the Colonies, public officials were simple, honest men, who had not reached that advanced stage of civilization that

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obtains in this century. It is evident, however, that Jeremy had what in these days is known in politics as a " pull ".

Jeremy Adams was in Cambridge in 1632. He was an original settler of Hartford and married Rebekah Greenhill, the widow of Samuel Greenhill. Adams came into possession of the Greenhill estate by giving a bond to pay to the two minor children a stipulated sum when they became of age. He sold his house and lot to Thomas Catlin and moved to the Greenhill property, on the west side of Main street, just south of the bridge. In 1651 he purchased a lot of John Steel on the east side of Main street, where the Travelers' Insurance building stands, and kept a tavern there for years. Becoming involved in financial difficulties he mortgaged this property to the Colony, which was redeemed by his grandson, Zachary Sanford, in 1685.

This first tavern or inn was situated on the east side of Main street, on three acres of ground, and the well in front of the inn continued in use for more than 200 years. In 1687, when the Charter was in jeopardy, the General Court met in this inn, where Captain Wadsworth blew out the candles, upon the arrival of Governor Andros, and, securing1 the Charter in the confusion resulting from the sudden darkness, escaped thence to hide the precious document in the Charter Oak. When this historic event took place, the inn was kept by Zachary Sanford. Sanford, a grandson of Adams, bought the mortgage which Adams had given the Colony and which the Colony had foreclosed. So it seems that notwithstanding his profitable monopoly, Adams got into debt more heavily than he could manage to get out of. Jeremy Adams died in 1683.

Some time later the authorities made rules for the regulation of inns which were rigidly enforced. A sign was to be placed where strangers entering the town could see it and, in 1679, when Adams neglected to so place his sign, he was fined forty shillings. The act of the General Court required that guests should be made comfortable and provided with as great a variety of nourishment, both liquid and solid, as possible. The Inn was to be to the traveler as his own house. Provided he had the money,

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he was to order what he liked and had the run of the kitchen to give directions as to how it should be cooked. The bed must have clean sheets, on which no one had before slept. A servant was to be provided to make his fire and to pull off and clean his boots. He had the option of eating with his host at the common table, or in his private room. There were rules for the care and feeding of the traveler's horse, and if the landlord failed to live up to the rules he was fined by the town two shillings and sixpence a day, and double that sum had to be paid to the owner of the horse. The rules governing the landlord were, that he must not permit excessive drinking or intoxication in his house. Half a pint of wine was the limit to be served to one person at one time. Drinking was not to continue for more than a half hour at one sitting, and never at unseasonable hours. Liquids ceased to flow at the call of the thirsty at nine o'clock at night. Wine could not be sold to be taken out of the Inn, except upon written authority from the head of a family. Every person found drunk, in or about an inn, was fined ten shillings. The Court imposed fines for different offenses in the use of strong drink and wine. For drinking more than the Court thought to be sufficient, there was a fine of three shillings and fourpence; for drinking for a longer period than a half hour, the fine was two shillings and sixpence; for drinking at unseasonable times, or after the hour of nine at night, the fine was five shillings. For second and third offenses the fines were two and three times as great respectively, while for the fourth offence, the penalty was imprisonment. If any convicted person was unable to pay his fine, he was either put in the stocks or given ten stripes.

Moses Butler was a famous and well liked inn-keeper in the old days. His place of entertainment was at the corner of Main and Elm streets, just south of the bridge. Besides being an excellent landlord, Butler was a character and a " crony ", and he gathered a number of other cronies about him — gentlemen who were past middle life — and formed the " Seven Copper Club ". This odd name was derived from a rule of the Club, that whenever two or more of the members met at Butler's — and Butler's was the meeting place of the Club — each one was obliged to spend seven coppers for a half mug of flip, no more

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and no less, nor was any other drink permitted. In this Inn, they would sit about a cherry table, polished till it shone, with pewter flip mugs of a quart capacity, and discuss matters of interest, Butler was strict in his rule that the club should adjourn at nine o'clock and that only one half-mug of flip should be drunk. On such occasions — and they were probably frequent— when one or another of the members urged for "just one more half-mug ", or for an extension of the time for adjournment till past the hour of nine, tradition has it, that Butler's invariable reply was: " No, you sha'nt have another drop. Go home to your families ". No doubt this domineering spirit of Butler's was one of the charms of the Club, to the gentlemen who formed its membership, for there is nothing more pleasing to the man whose social and financial position is such that he can do just as he pleases, than to be domineered.

John Steele, the first Town Clerk, served till 1651, when he was succeeded by William Andrews, who was the first schoolmaster.

The Sealer of Leather was a man of importance, for all tanned hides must be examined by him and bear his mark of approval, otherwise there was trouble for the man who killed the animal which wore the hide, or for the tanner. Leather was much used for clothing as well as for foot covering, besides all of the many other uses to which it was put. The care taken in removing the hide from the animal, and in the tanning, was of great importance for the supply was far from being in excess of the demand. Hides were obtained only when an animal was slaughtered for food. Its flesh would provide food for a great many more persons than its hide would provide leather for shoes, boots and clothing, to say nothing of the various other uses to which leather was put, so the law was definite and strictly enforced. If the butcher was careless and gashed the hide while skinning the animal he was fined twelvepence for each gash. If the hide was carelessly allowed to heat, the fine was twenty pounds, or if the tanner spoiled it or made poor leather of it, the sealer refused to pass it and the tanner was out of pocket to the extent of the value of the tanned hide. Part of the duty of the Sealer

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of Leather was to inspect the premises of the tanner, to see that the curing liquors were of the best quality, and that the work was done with care and skill, and to mark the good hides with his seal, and confiscate the poor ones. For each hide under five inspected, the sealer received twopence; when the number was greater than five, he received twelvepence for every ten hides inspected. The Packer's duties were to unpack hides sent in from the farms and other settlements and to repack them, and brand each barrel which he had packed with the letters C. R. which were supposed to stand for Connecticut River.

The first Customs Master was Jonathan Gilbert, who began his duties in 1659. He was a trader and ship-master and his warehouse was at the Landing. Mr. Gilbert was also High Sheriff.

The Brander of Horses' duties were as his title implies. His brand mark and the color and age of each horse exported from the Colony were recorded by the Town Clerk, who received sixpence for each entry.

John Gunning was the Chimney Sweeper. He received his appointment in 1639. The danger from fire was great, should the thick soot from the wood fires become ignited, and it was his duty to see that the chimneys were free from such accumulations. In those days and with those people one man was as good as another. There were a few who possessed more money than their neighbors and others who were better educated, but there were only two classes — as we of this country know class distinctions— and the dividing line between them was morals and citizenship. There is no reason to believe that any man was " looked up to " because of his wealth. There is reason to believe that every man was highly respected because of his mental attainments, and there is absolutely no doubt that the good citizen who kept the laws and made it his business to see that others kept them, who lived and worked for the good of the community, as well as for himself, and lived in the fear of the Lord, was honored and came as near to being one of a superior class as the Colony of Connecticut had. So, while we regard the Chimney Sweeper as a very humble officer, it is hardly probable that his fellow settlers did so regard John Gunning and it is probable that he was as well off as the average settler.

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The first paper money issued by the Colony of Connecticut was when Connecticut was called upon to help in the " reduction " of the French in Canada, in 1709. Of the 350 men under command of Colonel Whiting who took part in that campaign of disaster, ninety were killed. A special assembly of June 8, 1709, passed a bill that paper money should be printed to the value of £5000, the bills ranging in value from two shillings to five pounds. Only one half of the bills were signed and issued, at first, the other half being kept in the treasury till it should be needed. A tax was imposed for the redemption of the bills first issued, at the expiration of one year and for the other half at the expiration of the second year. The act required that these bills should be received for one shilling" on the pound more than gold or silver.

In 1713, Connecticut consisted of four counties — Hartford, New Haven, New London and Fairfield — and a population of 17,000. Each county supported a regiment of militia, giving a total for the Colony of nearly 4,000 men.

The only direct exports to Great Britain were, tar, pitch, turpentine and fur pelts. The principal trade of the Colony was with Boston and New York, to which places grain, pork, beef and cattle were sent; and with the West Indies, the trade being, besides pork, beef and cattle, horses, hoops and staves. The chief articles received from the West Indies were, rum, molasses and cotton.

The total annual expense of the Colonial government at this period was about $3,500. The Governor received equivalent to $800 and the Lieutenant-Governor, $200 a year. The cost of the Legislature was $1,600. The Legislature, or General Assembly, met twice a year but a session seldom continued for more than ten days.

The Connecticut Gazette of May 31, 1766, gives the following account of the reception of the news that the Stamp Act had been repealed and of the shocking accident that was the result of the careless enthusiasm of the people :

Last Monday evening the long expected, joyful news of the total repeal of the Stamp Act arrived in town; upon which happy event, the General Assembly of this colony, now sitting here, appointed the Friday following

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as a day of general rejoicing. The morning was ushered in by the ringing of bells — the shipping in the river displayed their colors — at 12 o'clock twenty-one cannon were discharged, and the greatest preparations making for a general illumination. Joy smiled in every face, and universal gladness diffused itself through all ranks and degrees. But sudden was the transition from the height of joy to the extreme of sorrow! A number of young gentlemen were preparing fireworks for the evening, in the chamber of the large brick school house, under -which a quantity of powder granted by the Assembly for the purposes of the day, was deposited. Two companies of militia had just received a pound a man, by the delivery of which a train was scattered from the powder cask to a distance of three rods from the house, where a number of boys were collected, who tin-designedly and unnoticed, set fire to the scattered powder, which was soon communicated to that within doors, and in an instant reduced the building to a heap of rubbish, and buried the following persons in its ruins viz.

Mr. Levi Jones, John Knowles (an apprentice to Mr. Thomas Sloan, blacksmith) and Richard, second son to Mr. John Hans. Lord, died of their wounds soon after they were taken from under the ruins of the building. Mr. William Gardiner, merchant, had both legs broke. Doctor Nathaniel Ledyard, had one of his thighs broke. Mr. Samuel Talcott, Jun., very much burnt in his face and arms. Mr. James Siley, goldsmith, had one of his shoulders dislocated and some bruises in other parts of his body.

Mr. John Cook, Jun., had his back and neck much hurt. Ephraim Perry, slightly wounded. Thomas Forbes, wounded on his head. Daniel Butler (the tavern keeper's son) had one of his ankles put out of joint. Richard Burnham, son of Mr. Elisha Burnham, had his thigh, leg, and ankle broke. Eli Wadsworth (Captain Samuel's son) is much wounded and burnt in his face, hands, and other parts of his body. John Bunce, Jun., (an apprentice to Mr. Church, hatter) wounded in the head. Normond Morrison (a lad that lives with Captain Siley) a good deal burnt and bruised. Roderick Lawrence, (Captain Lawrence's son) slightly wounded. William Skinner (Captain Daniel's son) had both his thighs broke. Timothy Phelps (son of Mr. Timothy Phelps, shop joiner) had the calf torn off one of his legs. Valentine Vaughn (son of Mr. Vaughn, baker) had his skull terribly broke. Horace Seymour (Mr. Jonathan Seymour Jun's., son) two sons of Mr. John Goodwin, a son of Mr. John Watson, a son of Mr. Kellogg, hatter, were slightly wounded. Two mulatto and two negro boys were also wounded.

When the new theatre was opened in Hartford, the Connecticut Courant, of August 10, 1795, gave it the following notice. It is evident that the press agent had been liberal with passes:

The new Theatre in this city was opened on Monday last, with a celebrated comedy, entitled, The Dramatist, preceded by a handsome and pertinent address by Mr. Hodgkinson. From the specimen that has been

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given of the ability of the performers, and the assurance of the managers that they will so conduct the Theatre, that it may be justly styled a school of morality; it is presumed that it will be a great source of instruction and amusement to those that visit it; and we will hazard the assertion, notwithstanding the prejudices that some have entertained against it, that as an amusement it is the most innocent and, as a source of instruction it is the most amusing of any that we ever yet experienced. While the theatre is well conducted, on chaste principles — when vice is drawn in colors that will disgust, and virtue painted in all its alluring charms, it is hoped it will meet the approbation and encouragement of the citizens, and of the neighboring towns.

" The handsome and pertinent address " by Mr. Hodgkinson included the following poem.

In matters of every day life the people of the eighteenth century were not so different from those of the twentieth as one

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might suppose. The chief difference was, that what they said and did, was not as we would say and do it.

For instance ; the man who wished to air his views, or to " knock " someone in a communication to the public press, existed in seventeen hundred, just as he exists in nineteen hundred. And, if one may judge from the following communication to the New London Gazette, dated in Hartford on June 24, 1768, these eighteenth century "knockers" were just as timid about signing their names as the same genus is now. The communication is as follows :

Mr. Printer — I wish you would put this into your newspaper for the complainant. Sir: — I was at Hartford a little while ago, and I see folks running about the streets after the gentlemen that belonged to the General Assembly ; and I asked what it was for, and an old woman told me that they came a great way, matter of forty miles easterly, to find fault with what the Assembly was a going to do. And what I want of you is, to complain of it ; for it does not seem clever to have them gentlemen pestered so by cats-paws, when we have got them to do all our business for us by themselves. And you know when folks have folks talking to them all the while, it will pester them. I wonder people will act so ; if what I once read in a book is true;

How entirely nineteenth-century. Crowds of people chasing legislators ; old women gossiping ; and a reformer writing. The only difference is, that while the chasing of the legislators " pestered " them in 1768 ; it helps them to- lay up treasure where moth and rust does corrupt, and they like it, in the nineteenth century.

The early law makers of Connecticut evidently had no suspicion, that in time, the Constitution of the United States would provide that no cruel or unusual punishments should be inflicted, for they certainly showed great ingenuity in devising both cruel and unusual forms of punishment. The Connecticut Courant, of January 4, 1785, thus describes the punishment of a man who was convicted of stealing a horse : The sentence of the Supreme Court was; that the criminal (or victim) "Should sit on a wooden horse for half an hour, receive fifteen stripes, pay a fine of £10, be confined in gaol and the workhouse for three

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months, and every Monday morning for the first month to receive ten stripes and sit on the wooden horse as aforesaid ". The Courant says in commenting upon the punishment:

One of the rogues was sentenced to ride the wooden horse, that wonderful refinement of punishment in our modern statutes. Accordingly, on Thursday last that terrible machine was prepared — consisting of one simple stick of wood supported by four legs; and by order of the sheriff placed on the State House square. Hither the prisoner was conducted, and being previously well booted and spurred by the officer, was mounted on the oaken steed. Here he continued for half an hour, laughing at his own fate, and making diversion for a numerous body of spectators, who honored him with their company. He took several starts for a race with several of the best horses in the city; and it was difficult to determine who were most pleased with the exhibition, the criminal or the spectators. After this part of the sentence had been legally and faithfully executed, the culprit was dismounted and led to the whipping post, where the duties made him more serious. The whole was performed with order and regularity.

Another man, convicted of polygamy, was sentenced by the same term of the Supreme Court, " to receive ten stripes, be branded with the letter A, and to wear a halter around his neck during his continuance in the State and if ever found with it off, to receive thirty stripes ".

When the news of the death of General Washington reached Hartford, the people of that city were depressed and sorrowful. The following account of the services held, and the reproduction of the hymn written by Theodore Dwight for the occasion, are from the Connecticut Courant, of December 30, 1799:

In consequence of the afflicting intelligence of the death of Genl. Washington, divine services were performed at the north meeting house in this town on Friday last. The town never exhibited a more solemn and interesting appearance. Notice having been given to the inhabitants of this and the neighboring towns, the concourse of people was greater than almost ever was known on any former occasion. The stores and shops were shut through the day — all business being suspended — the bells were muffled, and tolled at intervals, from nine in the morning till the services commenced. The meeting house was greatly crowded, and still a large portion of the people could not get in at the doors. The services were appropriate, solemn and impressive. A very 'eloquent and pathejtic sermon was delivered by the Rev. Nathan Strong, to a most attentive, devout, and mourning audience, from Exod. XI. 3. "And the man Moses was very great", &c. The music was solemn and sublime; and the whole scene exhibited in the strongest of all possible colors, the

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deep affliction of the people at a loss utterly irreparable. The Roods of tears, the badges which were universally worn, the church was hung in black, a procession of many hundreds of persons, composed of men of all classes, and the solemn grief pictured in every countenance, made impressions on the minds of the beholders, which many years will not efface. We presume that the sentiments and feelings which inspired the persons present, pervade the whole country, on the distressing event which called them together. However divided into parties on political subjects, with respect to the character of this great man, we trust that there is but one opinion in the United States. As he lived, loved and admired, he has died truly lamented; and his memory will be honored as long as wisdom, virtue and piety shall be esteemed among men. " The beauty of Israel is slain upon the high places; how arc the mighty fallen ".

The following was the hymn written by Dwight:

There is a patriotic nobility of sentiment; fine appreciation of the dead hero, patriot and soldier; and faith in, and devotion to, Almighty God, that is typical of a Dwight in this hymn, which becomes even more striking by two or three readings.

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Kendall's account of the doings on election day in Hartford, toward the end of the first decade of eighteen-hundred, refers to the reforms that were made about the time the new Constitution was adopted. Among- them being, that the clergy were no longer dined at the expense of the public, that the election sermon was eliminated and that the Governor's guard was no longer fed at public expense. It will be noticed that leaving the clergy to go hungry was one step in reform and the restraining one of their number from exhaling superheated atmosphere for two hours on election day, was another. An ante-reformation election day was observed somewhat as follows, according to Kendall:

The Governor had volunteer companies, both horse and foot. In the afternoon the horse were drawn up on the bank of the river to receive him and escort him to his lodgings. The mounted guard wore blue cloth and the Governor was dressed in black with a cockade in his hat, which was of somewhat ancient form (probably the three-cornered chapeau). In the morning the foot guards were paraded in front of the State House, where they afterward remained under arms, while the troop of horse occupied the street on the south side of the building. The clothing of the foot was scarlet coats, white waistcoats and white pantaloons. Their appearance and demeanor were military.

The apartments and galleries in the State House were filled by the members of the Legislature and other notable citizens, awaiting the arrival of the Governor. At about 11 o'clock his excellency made his appearance and took his place at the head of the procession, which proceeded to a meeting-house about a half mile distant. Those in the procession were on foot and included the Governor, Lieutenant-Governor, assistants, high sheriffs, members of the lower house of the Legislature, and all of the clergy of the State. It was preceded by the foot guards and followed by the horse guards. Arrived at the old South Meeting house all of the military, except a few officers, remained outside. Neither the Governor nor any of the other high officials, wore anything like insignia of office. The only women in the church were the twenty in the high gallery opposite the pulpit, who composed the choir.

On the large platform behind the pulpit were four ministers; one to open the ceremony with prayer; another to preach the election sermon; another to offer the closing prayer and the last, to pronounce the benediction. The sermon was on matters of government and when all was finished the procession returned to the State House, the clergy on foot, numbering about one hundred.

It was in the military alone, that any suitable approach to magnificence

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was shown. The Governor was in black, the Lieutenant-Governor wore riding boots and the sheriffs wore their village habiliments (all of which were of a varied nature) and dress swords. At the State House the military formed on either side of the street and presented arms, as the Governor passed through their lines. Then a general division took place. The Governor, Lieutenant-Governor and the assistants going to their special room in the inn; the ministers to another and the members of the Legislature to another where dinner was served.

Soon after the dining was finished, the Assembly met in the council room to examine and count the written votes for the officers, when the public, official announcement was made. Then the Lieutenant-Governor administered the oath to the governor, who returned the courtesy and continued it with the other officials elected. At a few minutes past 6 o'clock, the military fired a salute and were then dismissed. On the night after election there was a grand, public ball and on the Monday night after election there was another ball not for the people, but for the few select ones.

Election clay and in fact the week following that day, was a general holiday in Connecticut. About the only one the people had, for such was the odd state of mind of the Congregational leaders in authority, in the early days in New England, that nearly all that was tender and beautiful in Christ's religion was resigned, without the asking, to the Church of Rome. So the early Christians of the Congregational faith (and Christians they surely were) knew nothing of Christmas, Easter and Whitsuntide, but rather lived " in the fear of the Lord " and election day was their chief holiday. Indeed, so late as 1886, in a Vermont city, a Congregational Church refused to place a beautiful cross, that had been presented by a friend, behind the pulpit on Easter, " because it was so much like Popery ". It was a strange religion that willingly robbed itself of the tenderness, and retained so much of the harshness of Christianity and yet this same unbeautiful religion was a power for good, great good, in the Colony and voting Nation and produced many of the Nation's finest and most liberal men and women.

A queer old custom that may have originated in a spirit of fun, was the election day of the negro population, when a negro governor was elected. Or perhaps the custom was established by the masters to keep the slaves in good humor and by placing the most intelligent of them over the others, they may have relieved themselves of many of the petty annoyances that exist with slavery. The custom obtained long before the Revolution,

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and continued to a few years after the second war with Great Britain.

" Nigger election" was usually on the Saturday after the regular election of the Colony, or State. It was an occasion of unusual liberty and delight for the negroes. Much of the voting was clone by proxy, as not all of the blacks could attend the election. Often the choice was largely left to the masters, who chose a black for governor who was able to keep his fellows in . order by means of his superior intelligence and great muscular strength. Sometimes the existing black governor passed his office and authority on to another of his own choice, but above all, the whites required that the black governor should be one notable for his honesty.

After the election, the governor appointed aids, military officers, sheriffs and justices of the peace. In fact, the whole business was carried on with as much dignity and as nearly like an election by their masters, as the farcical natures of the negroes permitted. They had their post-election parade and, generally, this was followed by a feast of some kind. The governor's duties were never definitely defined, any more than the duties of a policeman's club are defined and, like the policeman's club, he was a sort of instrument of punishment to be held over the heads of wrong-doers among the people of his own color. Neptune, one of the negro justices of the peace, generally known as " Squire Nep ", was a terror to evil-doers of his own color for when, one of them was brought before him, Squire Nep always inflicted the most severe punishment upon conviction. Nep was a barber, and was as much respected by the whites for his Integrity, intelligence and influence among the negroes, as he was feared by the latter. On one occasion, a nigger thief had been taken before Jonathan Bull, a white magistrate. Squire Bull sent him to " Squire Nep " for trial. Nep found him guilty and sentenced him to receive thirty lashes upon his bare back, and to give up his gun and tobacco as a means of restitution. The execution of the sentence took place at night, by the light of a candle, upon the South Green.

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EST Hartford was originally a portion of Hartford and was for many years known as West Division. It was owned by a large company of proprietors who voted to divide the district in 1672. Up to that year, nothing had been done toward a survey and division of the land. In fact, nothing was done till 1674, when a strip of land extending north and south for the full length of the Town of Hartford and east from the Farmington line for a mile and a half, was set off and divided into lots, in proportion to the individual interests of the proprietors.

At that time, the Farmington line was at the foot of Talcott Mountain. This long, narrow territory was divided into lots that were a mile and a half long and from ninety-one rods in width down to but three rods, the width being in accord with the individual interests of the owners. The western boundary was sometime later moved toward the west, by changing the Farmington line from the foot, to the top of Talcott Mountain, and by adding a considerable strip of land to the eastern boundary of West Division. The distance of the little settlement in West Division from the two Churches in the Village of Hartford, was so great that the inhabitants petitioned the General Court, in 1710, for a separate Church Society, but the petition was not granted till May, 1711, when the twenty-eight petitioners were formed into a separate society. The Church was organized in February, 1713, with the Rev. Benjamin Colton its first minister. It was known as the Fourth Church of Hartford. Mr. Colton was the minister for forty-three years. lie was succeeded by the Rev. Nathaniel Hooker, a descendant of the Rev. Thomas Hooker, the Colony's first minister, and a grandson of Governor Talcott. The third minister was the Rev. Dr. Nathan Perkins, whose pastorate lasted for sixty-three years, and was only exceeded by the pastorate of the Rev. Samuel Nott, who was minister of the Franklin Church for seventy-one years. Dr. Perkins was a liberal, progressive man and a warm patriot during the Revolution, and in the second war with Great Britain, in 1812. He was one of the first and most uncompromising opponents of slavery. He, like many of the Congregational ministers of the

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early days, was frequently notable for his keen sense of humor, which was, upon the proper occasions, often dry and biting. The custom of paying a portion of the minister's salary in fire wood obtained in his day. Colonel X, one of his parishioners, called Mr. Perkins out, one day, to pass judgment upon a load oi " salary wood ". The wood was chiefly composed of the small, crooked, tops of trees and being so crooked it did not pack closely, and was far from being up to the standard load of wood. Dr. Perkins looked at the load from both sides and then going to the rear, stooped and, seemingly looking through the middle of the load, at the cattle in front, remarked; " That is a remarkably fine pair of steers you have on the lead, Colonel ".

He was the originator of the Theological Institute in Hartford and the first meeting of ministers, preliminary to its founding, was held in his home, and he laid the corner-stone of the first building. It is somewhat remarkable, that with the exception of a very small and short-lived Society of Quakers, the Congregational was the only religious organization in West Hartford, from the first settlement down to 1843, when St. James' Episcopal Church was organized. The first four-wheeled vehicle of West Hartford, for carrying persons from one place to another, was introduced by an ancestor of William Faxon, who was Lincoln's Assistant-Secretary of the Navy. Captain Faxon had purchased this " carriage " for the especial purpose of carrying his family to Church. He probably had no idea that it would be a cause of disturbing the peace of the "Sabbath" and of keeping the people away from their places in Church till after the service had begun. But it did, and the good people considered it to be so wicked an instrument of Satan, that the Monday after the Faxon family first arrived at Church in it, a committee called upon Captain Faxon to inform him that such a wonder-exciting contrivance would not be tolerated upon the highway on the Sabbath. The Captain explained that he had purchased the carriage for the express purpose of taking all of his family to Church in it, so finally the committee consented to its use, if he would drive very slowly so that the people would not be too greatly excited by it, and so be late to Church.

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Noah Webster was the kind of man and citizen who belongs to the nation at large. Not alone for his, and his father's service in the Continental army in the Revolution; nor for his high literary attainments and profound scholarship in the science of philology, which culminated in Webster's Dictionary; but chiefly for his patriotic and disinterested championship of President George Washington. For this purpose he left his lucrative law practice in Hartford to go to New York City, to establish and edit a newspaper devoted to the support of the Washington administration. That Washington could need friends, or that he had venomous enemies, seems impossible to Americans of today (to such Americans as have inherited their citizenship, not to such as have acquired it through the naturalization courts), but such is a fact. President George Washington was maligned, lied about and ridiculed, just as Lincoln and McKinley were maligned, lied about and ridiculed, by the same variety of vermin,

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whose acquired American Citizenship was of that kind which regards dollars and cents more highly than good breeding and honesty.

But while the Nation may claim Noah Webster, the soldier-author, the charming old village of West Hartford claims him as her son, for there he was born on October 16, 1758. New York, New Haven, and Amherst, also claim him as an adopted son, for he was a resident of those college towns for many years.

He was descended from John Webster, one of the first Governors of Connecticut, and from William Bradford of the Plymouth Colony, on his mother's side. His father was a farmer and for the first fifteen years of his life Noah lived at home doing the usual " chores " and light work that falls to the lot of a farmer's son. Just after he was fifteen, in 1773, he began to fit himself for College under the Rev. Nathan Perkins, D.D., and entered Yale, in 1774. In his junior year he joined the Revolutionary army as a volunteer, and was under the command of his father, who was a captain in the " alarm list", a body of citizens who had passed the age of forty-five, and were only called upon in an emergency. Notwithstanding the interruptions caused by his military duties, he continued his studies and was graduated from Yale, in 1778, with honor.

After graduation, he taught in a Hartford school, and studied law and was admitted to the bar in 1781. In the summer of 1779, while he was teaching and studying law, he lived with Oliver Ellsworth, who later became Chief Justice of the United States and whose son, Governor Ellsworth, became a son-in-law of Dr. Webster. Noah Webster did not practice his profession, as the war had so greatly impoverished the country that the prospects for a young lawyer were not bright. He chose instead, the occupation of teaching and took charge of a Grammar School in Goshen, New York. It was in Goshen that he compiled his famous blue-covered spelling book, in which the majority of Yankees for many generations learned their a-b abs. This famous book was published in Hartford, to which city he returned in 1783. While in Hartford, he published a grammar and a reading book.

To the twentieth century Americans, Dr. Webster is best known for his educational authorship, but in his day, he was

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a prolific and convincing writer on political subjects. His support of an act of Congress, for pensions for Revolutionary soldiers, by means of a series of articles published in the Connecticut Courant, was of such a nature, that, although the masses, who disapproved of the act, were on the verge of revolt, a majority of the members elected to the Legislature in April, 1784, were supporters of the Congressional act. His successful efforts were so highly regarded that Governor Jonathan Trumbull thanked Dr. Webster personally, for what he had done.

That the Constitution of the United States was written and adopted may be traced to a pamphlet that he wrote in the winter of 1784-5, entitled; " Sketches of American Policy " in which the first definite proposal for a Constitution of the United States, to take the place of the "Articles of Confederation", was first suggested in public print. To Dr. Webster may also be traced the copyright laws, for in 1785, he journeyed through the southern states presenting petitions to the several Legislatures for the passage of such laws. From 1784, to 1788, he was lecturing Baltimore, Philadelphia and in the principal Atlantic-coast cities, and teaching in Philadelphia. In 1788, he published the American Magazine, in New York, for one year. In 1789, he married the daughter of William Greenleaf, of Boston, and returned to Hartford to practice law. In 1793, he became the champion of the Washington administra-

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tion by starting a newspaper in support of it. That paper became The Commercial Advertiser. From that time, his literary labors increased, as did his publications. They included politics, international diplomacy, hygiene, finance and history. In 1798, he went to New Haven and resided there for fourteen years. In 1812, he left New Haven for Amherst, Massachusetts, and lived there for ten years, when he returned to New Haven. Another matter of national importance, in educational interests this time, may be traced to Dr. Webster. While living in Amherst he was chiefly instrumental in the founding of an Academy, which later became Amherst College. He received the degree of LL.D. from Yale in 1823.

In 1823, he had been at work upon his greatest literary production for sixteen years, for it was in 1807, that he began his Dictionary. Dr. Webster spent several months in Paris, and at the University of Cambridge, in England, in 1824, and it was in Cambridge that the great work was finished. Writers in those days were more apt to appreciate the seriousness of producing a volume than they are now. Books were cornparatively scarce and authors were few. This made the production of a book — especially such a volume as Webster's Dictionary — a much more notable and serious event than it would be now. At any rate, Dr. Webster was much affected when his great work was finally finished, as will be seen from the following extract from a letter that he wrote to Dr. Thomas Miner, in 1836:

When I finished my copy, I was sitting at my table in Cambridge, England, January, 1825. When I arrived at the last word, I was seized with a tremor, that made it difficult to proceed. I however summoned up strength to finish the work, and then walking about the room, I soon recovered.

AST HARTFORD, originally a part of Hartford, was the home of the man who had as much to do with the settlement of the Connecticut Valley as any man in New England, probably more. This was Wahqinnacut, a leader of the Podunk Indians, who went to Boston and Plymouth in 1631, to urge the English to come to the beautiful valley, with its rich meadows, its fur-bearing animals and its fish, to settle. As has

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been shown elsewhere, this invitation was due to a desire on the part of the River Indians to secure the friendship of the English, whose superior intelligence and more deadly weapons would be a powerful help against their natural enemies.

The Podunks had a stronghold on Fort Hill, near the main street and to the east of it. They lived peaceably enough with their white neighbors till Philip's War, when they joined that intelligent and warlike chief and were either killed or dispersed. A few individuals of the tribe lived on the Hockanum River, in 1745, but by 1760, even they had disappeared.

Up to its incorporation in 1783, the history of East Hartford was largely the history of Hartford. Joseph O. Goodwin gives the following list of names, as being among the more prominent of the early settlers, on the east side of the Connecticut. In that portion of East Hartford known as Hockanum — Richard Risley, who died in 1648; Edward Andrews, who settled near the mouth of the Hockanum River, about 1657; William Hills, who was wounded by Indians in 1675. Thomas Burnham, a lawyer who was made a freeman in 1657, settled in the district known as Podunk; William Pitkin, the founder of the family of that name, who became prominent in the affairs of the Colony, settled there about 1659. John Bidwell, who ran a sawmill in partnership with Joseph Bull, at Burnside, settled about 1669; William Warren, whose house was on Main street, below the Hockanum River, was made a freeman in 1665 ; Sergeant Samuel Gaines, 1667; Lieutenant John Meakins, before 1669; Richard Case, who was made a freeman in 1671 ; Thomas Trill, a soldier of the Narragansett War, was the first person to be buried in the old Center Burying Ground; Obadiah Wood, also a soldier of 1675; whose gravestone was the first in the same cemetery; William Buckland, previous to 1678; James Forbes, in that portion of the town known as Scotland, till 1865, when it became Burnside, settled there in 1688; William Roberts, about 1688 — he married the daughter of James Forbes; Deacon Timothy Cowles, whose house was on the east side of Main street, just south of Gilman's Brook; Deacon Joseph Olmsted, whose house was on Prospect street, in 1699.

In the spring of 1694, the people of East Hartford petitioned to be made a separate society and in the autumn their petition

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was granted, and Church was known as the Third Ecclesiastical Society of Hartford. The society, or parish, included the present Towns of East Hartford and Manchester. As was the case in nearly all new Churches, the meetings were first held in one or another of the homes. There seems to have been nothing done in regard to building a church until December 29, 1699, when the records show that a committee was appointed to oversee the work being done on the meeting-house. Seats were put in and the interior finished in 1707, and in 1713, a gallery was added. The same year the meeting-house was started, in 1699, a house for the minister was built. The Rev. John Reed preached to the people for several years, but he was not settled over the parish, although he was asked to become its minister.

On March 30, 1705, the Rev. Samuel Woodbridge was ordained and so became the first settled minister of the East Hartford Church. He was paid £60 a year and was given £25 with which to finish the parsonage, the understanding being that he should remain as their minister for life. Mr. Woodbridge was a graduate of Harvard. He was a man of ability and was possessed of qualities which commanded the respect and affection of his people. Notwithstanding this fact, for some unaccountable reason, when his health failed, in 1736, the people refused to pay his salary and only did pay it when forced to do so by the General Court. In 1734, Mr. Woodbridge was selected for the honor of preaching the election sermon. About 1740, the first church building was taken down and a new church built upon its site. Mr. Woodbridge died on June 9, 1746, at the age of sixty-three.

The Rev. Eliphalet Williams was the second minister. His pastorate continued from 1748, to 1803. He was chosen to preach the election sermon of 1769, and in October of the same year, he preached the funeral sermon of Governor Pitkin. Another honor that was conferred upon him was the degree of Doctor of Divinity. In 1801, the Rev. Dr. Andrew Yates, of Schenectady, New York, was ordained as Dr. Williams' assistant. Dr. Yates was a descendant of Joseph Yates who settled in Albany in 1664. Dr. Yates was greatly opposed to the use of alcohol as a beverage and although few of the ministers of his day agreed with

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him, he was never backward in stating his convictions in regard to its use. But at the same time, he was liberal and broad-minded, and although he would not drink anything containing alcohol, he did not condemn others who disagreed with him. A story is told of him in East Hartford, that on one occasion when there was a meeting of clergymen in his house, Dr. Yates produced the usual variety of liquor with the remark; " Brethren, here is rum, gin, brandy and laudanum, all poison; help yourselves". Dr. Yates left the Church in 1814, to fill the chair of Moral and Mental Philosophy at Union College, Schenectady, where he had previously been professor of Greek and Latin.

Up to 1817, nothing as luxurious and worldly as stoves, for heating the church, had been thought of in East Hartford, but in that year they were put in. As there was no chimney the stovepipe was run out of the windows. Many persons disapproved of the stoves strongly, and some went so far as to let their imaginations run astray. They complained that the great heat from the stoves caused their heads to ache and that many of the women's large back combs, which were then so fashionable, were warped by the heat. When it was discovered that the headaches and warped combs were caused by stoves in which no fires had yet been lighted, the opponents of the exhibition of world-liness had nothing more to say.

In 1708, the people of East Hartford agitated the subject of public schools. In 1710, the Rev. Samuel Woodbridge, Samuel Wells and William Pitkin, were appointed to take charge of school matters and to hire a teacher, and a school-house was built. In 1718, there were two schools. One was south of Hockanum River and the other, to the north, was on Main street, just south of Prospect street. The teacher taught in both schools, dividing his time equally between them. Up to 1730, the parents who had children in school paid a small amount toward the support of the teacher, and furnished the wood for heating the school-house, but in 1730 the whole expense of the schools was paid by the society. At Burnside — then called Scotland — the first school was organized in 1735, and the second, in 1748.

The first mills for sawing logs and grinding grain were

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started in 1639, by John Crow and William Goodwill, to the north of the lower falls of the Hockanum, at Burnside. This place was later called Pitkin's Falls, because the mills and water-power were acquired by the family of that name. They also acquired the adjoining mill-sites, and at the lower falls they had a fulling mill. John Bidwell and Joseph Bull built a sawmill at the middle falls, in 1669, and in 1690, the Pitkins had a fulling mill there. About one hundred years later, in 1784, besides the fulling done, paper was manufactured in the mill. This old mill site is now occupied by the East Hartford Manufacturing Company for the making of fine writing-paper. John Allyn owned a sawmill a mile to the east of Burnside, in 1671. He also had a grant of 100 acres surrounding his mill and the right to cut timber on the commons. In 1747, Colonel Joseph Pitkin had a forge on this site, but in 1750, the British Government stopped iron working in the Colonies. As Joseph O. Goodwin remarks, in his history of East Hartford, " By a grim sort of justice the power was turned to the manufacture of gunpowder, to be used against the home government, in 1775 and in 1812 ". An odd kind of compensation was made to William Pitkin for his losses in the manufacture of powder to be used in the Revolution. It was the exclusive right to manufacture snuff in Connecticut for fourteen years. Possibly it was thought, that as he had lost money in manufacturing one kind of powder that was explosive, it would only be fair to let him recuperate by making another kind of powder that would produce explosions. After the Revolution the forge was resumed. This historic water-power was owned by the Hartford Manilla Company. Corporal John Gilbert built a sawmill in South Manchester, on Hop Brook, in 1673.

East Hartford's first tavern was kept by John Sadler, in 1638, at Hockanum. Philip Smith kept a tavern in 1710, near the south-ferry road. Thomas Olcott had a tavern at Hop Brook, South Manchester, in 1711; and Benjamin's Tavern, at the corner of Main and Orchard streets, was a popular stage house in the Revolution.

In very early times, the militia of East Hartford was known

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as " The Rag-toes ", from the fact that members of the company met for training in various and weird garments and often bare-footed. As many of the bare-foots had acquired " stun " bruises, splinters and cuts, they frequently appeared with the injured member done up in a rag, which held a plantain leaf against the sore place. In 1653, the General Court ordered that the inhabitants should meet at the call of William Hill for training. As time passed, the cornstalks and hoe handles and the mixed garments and lack of interest were replaced by muskets, uniforms and enthusiasm. In 1755, East Hartford sent a company to Crown Point, under command of Lieutenant-Colonel John Pitkin. In 1775, a company of forty-nine officers and men was organized and sent to Rox-bury, under command of Lieutenant-Colonel George Pitkin. Several of the men of the company later volunteered for longer service in the Continental army. Among those who served the Colony in the struggle for Independence on the sea, was Captain Gideon Olmsted, who, with three fellow prisoners on the British sloop "Active ", overpowered the officers and crew and captured the vessel and took it into port. In 1781, when Count Rochambeau was on his way with an army of 15,000 men from Newport, to join Washington on the Hudson, he stopped at East Hartford and was entertained in the Elisha Pitkin Mansion, the army camping on the field to the north of Silver Lane, which was so called from the " hard money " of the French soldiers. On his return east, in 1782, the Count again stopped at East Hartford.

The Pitkin family has been one of the most prominent in Hartford County for 250 years. The first American ancestor of that name was William Pitkin, who was born in Marylebone, then a suburb and now a part of London, England, in 1635. In 1659, he arrived in Hartford and in 1660, was a school teacher there. In 1661, he purchased land on the " east side " and in 1664, was appointed Attorney for the Colony. With the exception of a few months, he was a member of the General Court from 1675 to 1690. His wife was Hannah Goodwin, daughter of Ozias Goodwin.

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REVIOUS to 1823, Manchester was a part of Hartford. The territory included in the bounds of Manchester was originally a part of the hunting ground of Chief Joshua, of the Niantics. He sold it to Major Talcott as the agent of the Town of Hartford. The Chief died before the transfer was made, but his administrators, Captain James Fitch and Thomas Buckingham, deeded the property to the selectmen of Hartford in 1682. This tract was five miles wide from east to west and from this fact it was known for ninety years as " Five Miles ".

The first settlement of Manchester was made near Hop Brook in the western portion of the town. The settlement was of sufficient size, or at least importance, in 1711, for the appointment of Thomas Olcott as tavern keeper. This little settlement seems to have been on a highway to Hartford from the east, over which droves of cattle were driven on the way to Hartford. A general division of the land took place in 1731, and by 1753, the land was all taken up and occupied.

The exclusive privilege of making glass was granted to Elisha and William Pitkin and Samuel Bishop, in 1783, for a period of twenty-five years. They built a glassworks, the picturesque ruins of which are still in existence. In 1794, the Hartford and Boston Turnpike was opened. This had the effect of increasing the general prosperity of Manchester, as the Boston and Providence stages passed over it on their way to New York. The tavern kept by Deodat Woodbridge, and after him by his son, Dudley Woodbridge, was famous in its day and a favorite house for rest and entertainment. It was frequently patronized by men prominent in the profession of law and by officers of Washington's army. Washington stopped there once and made the daughter of the proprietor an object greatly envied by her young associates, because of the fact that she had, in response to his request, given the great soldier, statesman and patriot a glass of water.

Timothy Cheney, the somewhat famous maker of the old-fashioned, tall, wooden clocks—wooden as to works as well as case — was one of the brothers of that name to whom

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John Fitch, the inventor of the steam-boat, apprenticed himself to learn the clockmaking trade and was only taught to tinker with brass. But however unfairly Cheney may have treated Fitch, his clocks were reliable and the person who owns one to-day possesses something of considerable value.

" Five Miles " for some reason was from an early date a manufacturing and inventing center. It may have been due to the waterpower which attracted millwrights who, in turn, attracted mechanics possessed of inventive genius. Benjamin Lyman made the first cast-iron plows in Connecticut, thus doing away with the old-fashioned wooden plow shod with iron. He was the first maker of anything approaching a light weight pleasure carriage, and by so doing greatly reduced the profits of the makers of pillions, for before his light-weight wagons the woman had to ride in oxcarts or on pillions. The second papermill in Connecticut was built at Union Village on the Hockanum River. Watson and Led-yard made the paper on which the Connecticut Courant was printed at the beginning of the Revolution. The first successful cottonmill in Connecticut was built in 1794, in Union Village. This business was regarded as hazardous, for very little was known about it on this side of the ocean. The machinery was made by an English mechanic, on the principles of Sir Richard Arkwright, the inventor of the spinning-jenny. This mill was one of the wonders and persons came from considerable distances to see it work.

In 1808, John Mather built a small powdermill and glassworks. The capacity of the mill was fifty pounds of powder daily and when a wagonload had been made, it was sent over to Boston and " swapped " for cash and New England rum. The fact that Mr. Mather had twelve names on his pay-roll caused him to be regarded with profound respect and almost awe, simply because he could " boss " and give orders to twelve men. There was a mill for the manufacture of woolen cloth in 1780, built by Aaron Buckland.

The descendants of Timothy Cheney of clock fame became the founders of the great Cheney silkmills of the present day and it is because of them and the great industry, that they built up and not because of John Fitch, the inventor of

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the steamboat, that Manchester is best known to the world. This proves that money makes a much louder noise in the twentieth century than does genius. Another invention that must be credited to Manchester, although at a much later period — about the middle of the nineteenth century — is the famous Spencer repeating rifle, 100,000 of which were used in the Civil War and later on the plains against the Indians. This weapon, perfect in its day, was invented by Christopher M. Spencer, who by thought, study and experiment produced the result desired; a weapon which General Custer declared to be the finest known.

WINDSOR.

The attention of the English settlers at Boston and Plymouth was first attracted toward the Connecticut by the Indians, for the same reason that the Mohawks, of New York, sought and welcomed the Dutch. The River Indians were greatly harassed by the Pequots, who were fast driving them from the beautiful country which had been theirs for centuries. The River Indians felt sure, that could they induce the English to come to their river as friends (whose good will was to be assured by promises of corn and beaver skins), they would be a source of great strength against the savage Pequots. This was in 1631. The Bostonians were not enthusiastic in regard to moving so far into the wilderness, but the people of Plymouth, being of a more adventurous disposition, were strongly impressed with his representations, so Captain Holmes was sent with his company of pioneers to settle above the Dutch, on the Connecticut.

The claim of the Dutch, who had a small fort at the place where Hartford was afterward situated, was based upon deeds from the Pequot Indians, who had stolen the land from the original Indian owners. But the Plymouth people went back of this ownership by conquest for their authority to the land. Holmes took with him the Sachems who had been driven from their lands by the Pequots and so obtained his deed from the original owners. This made the English the friends of the River Indians. The house Holmes put up was situated about two miles south-east of the First Congregational Church, on the western bank of the river, near a point of land extending down the river, known as Plymouth Meadow.

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In 1634, the Dutch sent VanCurler to purchase land from the Pequots on the Connecticut, but those self-willed, determined Yankees were found to be so firmly fixed and so tough a proposition, that VanCurler did nothing more than to protest. A little later, a leader with seventy men under arms — and presumably outside of plenty of Dutch courage — made a military display in the hope of driving Holmes and his companions away. When it was found that this could not be accomplished without shedding blood, the Dutch returned to their master, VanTwilier, at Fort Amsterdam, without having accomplished anything, except to acquire a knowledge that the transplanted Englishmen were there to stay.

In 1630, the Rev. John Wareham, with the Rossiter, Maverick, Ludlow, and Wolcott families, among others, arrived by ship from England, at a place they named Dorchester, Mass. These families were of a superior class socially and intellectually and were possessed of more means than the average settlers of the Colonies. In 1635, a number of these people visited Connecticut and, being pleased with the prospects, they began their journey with their families from Dorchester to Windsor, on October 15, 1635. This little company of pioneer gentlefolk, to the number of sixty men, women and children, took with them their live stock, through forest and swamp, over mountains and rivers and arrived at their destination just as the winter was setting in. The people were entirely unprepared for the great cold, deep snow and bitter wind. The few

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cabins were insufficient in number and far from being a protection from the cold. The Connecticut was covered with ice on November 15, 1635, and the snow was so deep that it was impossible for the people to get but a few of their cattle and sheep across. Many of them died of starvation and cold. The household goods and much of their provisions had been sent around by ship, but did not arrive.

In December their provisions had nearly given out, and what they suffered can hardly be imagined. Thirteen of their number attempted to reach the nearest settlement in Massachusetts. One of them was drowned by falling through the ice on a river that was being crossed, and had the remaining twelve not received food and temporary shelter from friendly Indians, they would probably have perished. They finally reached a settlement, at the end of ten days of awful hardship. Seventy persons, including adults and children, worked their way to Saybrook and finally reached Boston in the " Rebecca ", a 60-ton vessel. These were the persons who were mentioned in the chapter on Saybrook.

Those who remained at Windsor to keep the settlement in existence suffered greatly. The cattle which were left on the east bank of the Connecticut suffered less,— strange as it may seem — than the few which were taken across to the settlement. They kept warm in the deep snow and lived by browsing. In the spring and summer following this dreadful winter, large numbers of settlers arrived at Windsor; and at Hartford and Wethersfield.

At this time the territory of Windsor was great, the length of the boundary lines being forty-six miles. They included ten small tribes of Indians, who outnumbered the white settlers twenty to one. For a number of years the settlers were troubled with fear of the Indians, not all of them being friendly. Fights were frequent and danger from ambuscades so great that the settlers carried their arms to Church and to the fields, which they worked in small companies for the safety of numbers. As an additional protection they built a large fort to which the people could go, should a general attack by the Indians take place, and where the women and children were sent whenever an attack by Indians was feared.

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Their first minister, the Rev. John Wareham, was a thoroughly good man who was bowed clown by an unfortunate bilious-temperament which was the cause of much misery for him, as he frequently feared that he was unworthy of Divine love and goodness. His doubts were so overpowering on occasions, that he would refrain from partaking of Communion while serving his people with that miraculous source of Divine strength and courage. There is a tradition, that he was the first minister in the New England Colonies to preach from notes. This was almost an unpardonable offence, in those days, in New England, but so eloquent and earnest were Mr. Wareham's discourses, that his people forgot the fault in their admiration for the man and delight in his sermons. Mr. Wareham died on April I, 1670, after forty years of service as minister; thirty-four of which were spent in Windsor, the other six in Dorchester.

In those days it was a custom for nearly all of the New England settlements to have a minister, and a teacher of the Gospel. The minister's duties consisted chiefly in exhorting the people; the teacher's duties were to expound and interpret the Scriptures and to defend the doctrines of Congregationalism. Windsor's teacher was the Rev. Ephraim Huit, who was installed in 1639.

In 1640, there were in Windsor the following heads of families according to the town records for that year.

Matthew Alien Deacon William Gaylord John Bissell Nathan Gillet Thomas Barber Edward Griswold Thomas Buckland Matthew Grant Thomas Bascom Thomas Holcornb Daniel Clark William Hill Aaron Cook William Hosford Thomas Dibble William Hayden Thomas Dewey John Hillyer Nicholas Denslow William Hurlburt Bigot Eglestone Roger Ludlow Lieut. Walter Filer John Loomis Thomas Ford Joseph Loomis

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Deacon John Moore Bray Rosseter James Marshall Thomas Stoughton Captain John Mason Henry Stiles The brothers Newberry Return Strong- Richard Oldage Isaac Shelden William Phelps Peter Tilton Humphrey Pinney John Taylor Samuel Phelps Stephen Terry George Phelps Owen Tudor John Porter Thomas Thornton Eltwed Pomeroy Richard Vore Elias Parkman Henry Wolcott George Philips John Whitefield Nicholas Palmer Robert Watson Abraham Randall Roger Williams

Roger Wolcott, who was born in Windsor on January 4, 1679, was one of the first, so called, self-made men of Connecticut. Pie rose from the possession of nothing more than a healthy mind and body, a trade and a few clothes, to the possession of the respect and admiration of all classes of his fellow countrymen — from the farm laborer to the college professor — and finally reached the office of Governor of the Colony. Without a single day's attendance at school, he so far cultivated his mind that he was able to write poems which attracted attention all over the Colony.

Roger Wolcott was born in that part of Windsor which was most harried by Indians, so no minister or school master was ever seen there during his boyhood. At the age of twelve years he was bound as apprentice, till his twenty-first year, to a mechanic and upon receiving his freedom he started in business for himself at his home. As he was the best in his trade so he was the best in the military and civil offices, which he filled, with honor and credit to himself and the Colony.

The apprentice boy of 1688 became Commissary of the Colony in 1711, in the expedition against Canada, and in 1745, at the capture of Louisbourg, he was a major-general. In civil life his first office was that of member of Assembly, then member of the Council, judge of the County Court, Lieutenant-Governor, Chief Judge of the Supreme Court, and finally Governor of the Colony

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in 175l-'54. Roger Wolcott's only inheritance was character and this inheritance was so carefully managed and so well invested, that it not only became notable all over the British Colonies in his generation, but has come down as the most valued possession of his descendants, in the twentieth century. When he finished his work in his eighty-ninth year, on May 17, 1767, it was simply death of his body, for his influence remained alive in the New England Colonies for many generations.

Another of America's famous men was Oliver Ellsworth, also a son of Windsor. Ellsworth was born on April 29, 1745. He possessed early advantages that Roger Wolcott lacked, but at the same time, his greatness was the result of his own exertions and fine qualities and not the less deserved and admirable, because of his advantages, than were the honors borne by his splendid fellow townsman. It is a fact,

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that the men of early times in the Connecticut Valley, who became famous, were so because greatness was in them, whether they started with nothing or with much.

Oliver Ellsworth was graduated from New Jersey (Prince-ton) College in the class of 1766, and then began the study of law. Possessed of eloquence, elegance of manner, and great mental energy, he rose to the highest legal position in the country and the most honorable office — barring none — in the United States, that of Chief Justice. In 1777, he was a delegate to the Continental Congress; in 1784, he was Judge of the Superior Court of the State of Connecticut and was in the convention that formed the Constitution of the country which honored him and which he honored by his splendid citizenship, patriotism, wisdom and profound scholarship. When the Federal Government was organized in 1789, Mr. Ellsworth was elected to the Senate in which he continued till he was appointed to be Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court, in 1796. Toward the end of his fourth year as Chief Justice, he was appointed Envoy Extraordinary to France, in 1799. Soon after, he resigned from the chief justice-ship because of failing health. After his return to Connecticut he was elected to the State Council and was appointed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the State, but this office he declined as his lack of health would not permit of his acceptance. His death occurred on November 26, 1807. There was an act of Judge Ellsworth's that was not entirely approved by his strict fellow townsmen, who believed that no human necessity was sufficiently great to warrant the breaking of the " Sabbath". One Sunday, soon after the advent of the year 1800, a military officer, said to be General Armstrong, was seen by the tithingman, Lemuel Welch, being rapidly driven through Windsor, on his way to Boston, where he had been ordered to report as soon as possible. Mr. Welch stopped the horses with the intention of arresting the man in the carriage, who was breaking the Commandment, and the State law regulating the observance of Sunday. General Armstrong was indignant and ordered that the horses be released, but the faithful Tithingman, who believed in enforcing the letter as well as the spirit of the law, refused to

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let the General go further on that day. The General, unaware of the strictness of the law in Connecticut, and of the fearlessness of the officers of the law in Windsor, threatened Mr. Welch with his pistol and ordered him to loose the horses. Mr. Welch told the General that he had seen bigger guns than that in the Revolution, and that he could go no further on that day. General Armstrong appealed to Judge Ellsworth, stating the necessity that he should be in Boston with all possible haste, as ordered by his superiors, and succeeded in obtaining a pass through Connecticut from Judge Ellsworth, which would permit him to travel on Sunday. Mr. Welch was indignant and asked Judge Ellsworth if he was to " fish with a net that would catch the little fish and let the big fish run through". Mr. Welch's indignation and disgust were so sincere, that he resigned the office of tithingman.

This incident had the effect of causing his successors to become careless in their duty and finally, Sunday travel be-

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came so general, that Judge Ellsworth and a number of the most influential men of the town, made strenuous efforts to restore the old order of things in this respect, but without satisfactory success.

According to the records, the first inns of Windsor were kept by Simon Chapman and Eliakim Marshall, who were appointed at a Town meeting- held in December, 1715. On the east side of the Connecticut, the innkeepers were Grace Grant, widow, and Nathaniel Cook — Mrs. Grant kept the inn in East Windsor till 1735, when she was succeeded by her son, Captain Ebenezer Grant, who became the leading merchant of the east side—the other innkeepers on the east side, before the incorporation of the town, were Nathaniel Porter and Captain Joel Loomis. The latter was succeeded by his son, Captain Giles Loomis, who built an addition to the store to be used by the Masons for a lodge.

The first American ancestor of the Grant family was Matthew Grant, who arrived in Dorchester, Massachusetts, in May, 1630, and settled in Windsor in 1635, where he was surveyor of the Colony for forty years and for many years Town Clerk. His eldest son, Samuel, settled on the east side and the property was in the family for nearly 250 years. General U. S. Grant was the eighth in descent from Matthew, and the seventh from Samuel Grant.

Captain Ebenezer Grant's business grew to large proportions and he eventually took his son, Roswell, into partnership with him. Roswell was given a liberal education. He was possessed of excellent qualities and good business judgment. The Grants bought largely from the great statesman, John Hancock, and from Jonathan Mason, both of Boston. They did a large business in trade with the West Indies, exporting horses, tobacco, lumber, and barrel staves and importing rum and sugar. The correspondents of the Grants were Samuel Olcott, Samuel Welch and Jonathan Welch, of Barbadoes; and Thomas Elmer, of Antigua. Besides building several vessels at the mouth of the Scantic River, Mr. Grant was part owner in many other vessels.

Ship building in the Windsors was a prosperous and busy industry for many years. The first launch being that of a sloop.

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in May, 1724. John Hayden, one of the famous ship builders of Essex, went to Windsor just before the year 1800, and opened a ship yard at the " Old Red House ", near the present station of Hayden. There was another yard at Rivulet Ferry and three on the east side — at Warehouse Point; the mouth of the Scantic and at Higley's Ferry — where vessels were launched till about 1820.

There was a type of patriot in the Revolution, few in number, and unselfish and heroically patriotic, which has been portrayed by Cooper in his finest of books, " The Spy ". To this type belonged Daniel Bissell, of Windsor. But Daniel Bissel went further in his patriotism than did the majority of spies, for besides the great risk, and surety of death should he be discovered to be a spy, he cheerfully sacrificed his feelings, his self-love and his pride by permitting himself to be regarded as a deserter by his neighbors and fellow soldiers. Mr. Bissell was officially reported as a deserter, because Washington feared, that unless he was

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regarded as a deserter by his fellow patriots the secret would leak out that he was a spy, and so would reach the British. To be a spy required great bravery; to allow himself to be regarded as a deserter required a degree of courage that was magnificent.

Daniel Bissell was born in Windsor in 1754, and was the eldest son of Daniel and Elizabeth (Loomis) Bissell. As a youth and young man he was notable for his bravery, caution, self-reliance, and inherited integrity. When war was declared with Great Britain by the Colonies, he enlisted, and served with credit to him self and his town. As a soldier, his cool head and warm heart won the affectionate regard of his fellow soldiers and the confi dence of Washington. Because of this confidence he was selected by Washington for the dangerous and important work of obtaining information in regard to the British forces and their plans, in NewYork and on Long Island, in 1781. Mr. Bissell took part in the battles of White Plains,Trenton and Monmouth.

The heroism of Sergeant Daniel Bissell is not tradition but fact, as may be found from documents in the War Department in Washington. It is a humiliating fact that Mr. Bissell was not rewarded by Congress, either in the way of promotion or estate. It only adds to the wrong, that although he again and again petitioned Congress for reimbursement for money spent in clothing himself for nearly four years, and for the purchase for his food for thirteen months, all of which money was expended by him while in actual service in the Continental Army, not one cent did he ever get, notwithstanding the fact that Congress had agreed to reimburse non-commissioned officers and privates

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who provided their own clothing. Washington, however, gave to Mr. Bissell an autograph testimonial which compensated him for the indifference of Congress. The testimonial was as follows:

Whereas, it hath ever been an established maxim in the American Service, that the road to glory was open to all, that Honorary Rewards and Distinctions, were the greatest Stimuli to virtuous actions, and whereas Sergeant Daniel Bissell of the Second Connecticut Regiment, has performed some important service, within the immediate knowledge of the Commander-in-Chief, in which his fidelity, perseverance and good sense, were not only conspicuously manifested, but his general line of conduct throughout a long course of service, having been not only unspotted but highly deserving of commendation.

Now, therefore, know ye, that the aforesaid Sergeant Bissell, hath fully and truly deserved, and hath been properly invested with, the Honorary Badge of Military Merit, and is entitled to pass and repass all Guards and Military Posts, as freely and as amply as any Commissioned Officer whatever ; and is further Recommended to that Notice which a Brave and Faithful Soldier deserves from his Countrymen.

This was written by General Washington in the Highlands, on May 9, 1783. When Mr. Bissell returned from the British in New York to his own army, he was offered an honorable discharge and a pension. He refused the first because he had been in every campaign and wished to continue in the army till the war was ended, and he refused the pension because he believed his Country was too poor to be able to pay it.

Mr. Bissell served in the Indian War of 1799, as a first lieutenant, of the i6th U. S. Infantry. Later, he moved to Vermont where he married Rhoda Hurlbert for his second wife, and in 1810, he moved to Richmond, New York, where he died in August, 1824, at the age of seventy.

Another of the Nation's fine heroes was Elihu Drake, a Windsor boy only eight years old. A number of Tories living in Windsor thought to have some amusement with the little Rebel by forcing him to say " God save the King". Although they threatened to duck him in the river he courageously refused to speak the words. The Tories becoming angry, that even the children were possessed of so fine patriotism, actually did duck the little fellow. When he was pulled out of the water they heard his half-strangled, squeaky voice shout, " God damn the

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King " and although he was again ducked no other sentiment could they drown out from that heroic little patriot. Elihu was the son of Adjutant Augustine Drake, of Windsor, and four years later, when he was but twelve years old, he accompanied his father to the war.

OWN to 1835, when Bloomfield was incorporated, it was known as Messenger's Farms and later, the Parish of Wintonbury, in the Town of Windsor. Wintonbury was made up from the Towns of Windsor, Farmington and.Simsbury and it is said that the name was composed from the first three letters of Windsor, the last three of Farmington, and the last four of Simsbury, Win-ton-bury, so that each Town, which gave land for forming the parish, might be honored. The idea is sufficiently attractive for it to be well to have faith in the tradition.

The territory included in the bounds of Bloomfield was known for many years after the settlement of Windsor as the Wilderness, and was so described officially in an Indian deed of 1660. There is not even tradition as to when the first settlement was . made. In 1734 the inhabitants of Messenger's Farms petitioned for what was then called winter privileges. This meant, that they should not be required to labor through the deep snow, exposed to the bitter cold, to attend Church in Windsor, but should be permitted to worship in one or another of the homes of the settlement in the winter months.

It seems odd that it was necessary to ask permission to worship where they chose, when it is remembered that the settlers of New England had left comfortable and even luxurious homes in Old England to obtain entire freedom in religious matters. As a matter of fact, there was no freedom or liberty in religious matters in New England, for a great many years, except that all had liberty and freedom to be Congregationalists, and to live in strict accord with its laws, one of which was, that no one should refrain from attending Church no matter how great the distance or the hardship. So, when the twenty-six heads of families of Messenger's Farms became convinced that the journey through the woods, with the snow anywhere from knee to

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waist-high was a menace to the health of their women and children, they did not fear the displeasure of Almighty God, if they remained in their little settlement and worshipped Him in their homes during the winter, but they were in mortal terror of that powerful, well organized Congregational Church. So they humbly asked permission of the Church to worship at home, instead of exposing their women and children to the hardship of the long journey through the snow. The petition was graciously granted and two years later the Parish of Wintonbury was formed from the three towns already named.

The new society met in November, 1736, and voted to build a church and to settle a minister. The Rev. Hezekiah Bissell was ordained in February, 1738, as the first minister. He was a supporter of the half-way covenant. A disagreement in the Church between Deacon Abel Gillett (or Gillette) and John Hubbard resulted in the withdrawal of the Gillett faction and the organization of a Baptist Society.

HEN the First Congregational Church of East Windsor was 102 years old it had had but two ministers, so it may be seen that the town was as prosperous and peaceful in Church matters as it was in temporal matters.

In 1736, individual families began to select sites for their homesteads. The heads of these families were men of worth; as men, pioneers, and Christians and it is notable that their first homes were not the usual log cabins, but frame houses, small to be sure, but comfortable and neat in appearance. From this it may be guessed that they were a little better supplied with this world's goods than were the average settlers, who could build their homes only of logs.

The first Church society was organized about 1752, and on October 30, 1752, the people voted to raise £500 with which to build a church. There was a little delay in fixing upon a location that would be central. In 1754, the Rev. Thomas Potwine (Sir Thomas Potwine, the old records named him) was called as the minister of the people, but as yet no church edifice had been erected, so he was ordained in a new barn that had not yet been used. The church was not built till a year after his ordination,

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and in the meantime service was held in the homes of one or another of the people. After the church had been built a small building was erected near it. Here, those who had come from a distance spent the recess between the morning and afternoon services, and ate the luncheons they had brought with them. It was during this recess that the weekly exchange of news and harmless neighborhood gossip took place. In the winter, they refilled their footstoves with coals for the afternoon service, from the stove in this little building, for in those days a heated church was considered far too luxurious and profane. As was the custom all over the Colony, everybody attended church, generally on horseback, so it was not at all unusual for one hundred saddled horses to be seen on Sundays, all of them carrying from one to three persons, the father, mother and infant, or small child.

When the church became somewhat dilapidated, through neglect caused by a serious division in the Church, some of the people advocated repairing the old building, which they regarded with affection, it being the first place of worship in the community, while others, probably the younger element, wished to build a new church. In the evening of October 5, 1801, the church was seen to be on fire and before any thing could be done to save it, the dry material of which it was built turned to ashes and charred embers. It was suspected that the fire was due to the desire of that portion of the congregation which wished to build a new church. Several persons were openly accused of being responsible for the burning of the old church. The families and close friends of the accused ones took sides and many persons withdrew from the society. The burning of the old church, in which he had served for fifty years, was a source of great grief to the venerable minister and, in connection with his failing health, hastened his death, which occurred a year after the fire.

Up to the year of its incorporation, in 1768, East Windsor was a part of Windsor and was known as Windsor Farme.

More or less confusion in regard to the Towns of East Windsor and South Windsor and the village of East Windsor, is unavoidable. The Towns of East and South Windsor were known as East Windsor up to 1845, when South Windsor was incorpo-

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rated so, while South Windsor did not exist during the period covered by the text, it is referred to in the text in order that confusion in regard to the location of houses and the places where certain historical events took place, may be avoided. For instance; the house in which John Fitch was born was situated on the boundary between East Windsor and Hartford but the same house is now situated on the boundary between South Windsor and East Hartford. Bissell's Ferry connects the Town of Windsor with the Town of South Windsor at the village of East Windsor.

HE Town of South Windsor, formerly East Windsor, will be notable in New England, for all time, as the birth-place of Jonathan Edwards, the great Congregational minister of the eighteenth century who discovered that '' hell is paved with infants' skulls ". It should be notable to the entire civilized world, for all time, as the birth-place of John Fitch, the inventor and builder of the first steamboat of the world.

The great-grandfather of John Fitch was an early settler in Windsor, where he purchased one-twentieth of the township. To his sons, Joseph, Nathaniel and Samuel, he left a considerable estate which they squandered. Joseph was the only son who married. His inheritance to his two children, Joseph and John, was poverty. Joseph, the father of John the inventor, was taken by a family of means and good position in Hartford society, and brought up by them, and given a good education. He married Sarah Shaler, of Bolton, and of their six children the fifth was John, the inventor.

If it is true, as Mrs. Carey has said, that some of the most successful lives of the world are those of men who have died poor and whom the world regards as failures; successful, because regardless of discouragements, adversity, opposition, misunderstanding, abuse and ridicule, they kept their faith in God, themselves and mankind, and struggled on hopefully and energetically to the end, instead of weakly giving up and sinking under overwhelming discouragements. If such men are successes, then John Fitch was the greatest success of the eighteenth

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century, In addition to possessing the qualities enumerated, he was patient and forbearing, although possessed of a proud spirit and hot temper; he was courageous and patriotic, but he seems to have been born to be misunderstood, insulted and abused. His fine instincts were treated with ridicule and coarse contempt; his first act of splendid heroism — performed when but a little boy — won for him a beating and villification at the hands of his elder brother. His repeated efforts to serve his country in the Revolution, in any capacity, were repulsed, and he was subjected to humiliating insult by his fellow patriots, who, as the world gauges men, were successful, because they had no obstacles such as he had, to overcome. And even after his death, his misfortunes continued, for Robert Fulton, the thief of other men's ideas — at least of John Fitch's — was and is credited by the world as being the father of steam navigation. Notwithstanding the fact that Fitch invented, built and successfully navigated a steamboat for carrying passengers, many years before Robert Fulton knew of the possibility of the application of steam as a motive power for marine purposes, and twenty years before he " plowed the Hudson", with his misappropriated " invention ", Fulton is generally credited with being the inventor of the steamboat.

John Fitch, the fifth child in a family of three sons and three daughters, was born in January, 1743, in the home which was situated on the boundary line between East Windsor, now South Windsor, and East Hartford. As the greater part of the house was in Windsor, Fitch claimed that town as his birthplace. He was sent to school at the age of four years and immediately showed a liking for study and books. A few months later his mother died and this greatest of his misfortunes was rapidly followed by others. His father married Miss Abigail Church of Hartford. When he was in Hartford, " courting", the home was left in charge of the children. On one of these frequent visits to Hartford, John and his younger sister Chloe were in the house and his older brother and sister, Augustus and Sarah, were at the barn milking. Chloe, wishing to show John a present she had received, lighted a candle and accidentally set on fire two bundles of flax, which burnt with a fierce blaze. Young as John was, he saw the danger and courageously tried to move the

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burning flax to the fireplace. This he succeeded in doing, by resting the bundles on his knees. His hands were burnt and his hair blazing. He extinguished the blaze in his hair and then carried the other bundle, which was burning even more fiercely, to the fireplace and stamped the fire out.

In the mean time, Chloe had run to the barn to call her brother Augustus. Notwithstanding that the little fellow's (he was not yet seven) feet, hands and head were burnt and that he was suffering greatly, Augustus, without a word or question, gave the little hero a beating. He complained of his brother's treatment to his father, upon his return from the business of courting, but his father treated it with indifference and coldness. In later life, when writing to his friend; perhaps his only faithful friend; the Rev. Nathaniel Irwin, of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, he referred to that act of barbarous cruelty and said: " This sir, being what I may call the first act of my life, seemed to forebode the future rewards I was to receive for my labors through life, which have generally corresponded exactly with that".

When John was about seven, his father married his spinster and brought her home. John attended school till he was ten, but was obliged to help his father with the work, and at especially busy times was taken out of school that he might help. His earnest desire for an education increased. His father was stingy, stern, and entirely unsympathetic. When ten years old John was taken from school to work on the farm, notwithstanding that he was so young and small, even for his age, that he had not the strength to do much. His father was one of those hell-fire-and-damnation Presbyterians who thought it a sin to pick up an apple from the ground and eat it on Sunday, but saw no sin in depriving an ambitious boy of an education, nor did he think it wrong to make him do work that was far beyond his strength. He was permitted, however, to study at home, before and after working hours.

When he was eleven years old he earnestly wished to own Salmon's Geography. As his father refused to buy it for him, John asked and obtained permission to raise potatoes on a small patch of ground so that he could buy the book with the proceeds of the sale of the potatoes. He worked on holidays, at noon and

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at night, on his patch and finally sold his crop for ten shillings. The money was given to a neighboring merchant who was going to New York, and the precious book was finally his, but his delight was somewhat lessened by the fact that the book cost twelve shillings and that his father required him to return a quantity of seed-potatoes equal to what he had let him have. Good fortune enabled him to soon pay these debts and then he mastered his geography.

That same year, his eleventh, John had a flattering experience with Governor Roger Wolcott, who was a neighbor of the Fitch family. John's father had taught him as much about surveying as he himself knew (as it cost nothing), and as he was proficient beyond his years at arithmetic, Governor Wolcott borrowed him to help make some surveys. The Governor found the boy even brighter than he thought him. He treated John with kindness and even respect, but when the work was finished, he not only failed to give him anything for his services, but also forgot to thank him.

When he was thirteen, his father opened his heart and permitted him to again attend school, for six weeks. In that time he acquired as much knowledge of mathematics as the teacher was competent to impart. His father was gratified and again opened his heart by buying him a few simple surveying instruments, and at the end of two weeks he had also acquired all the knowledge on this subject that the teacher possessed. This ended his " schooling ". His father felt that he had performed his full duty by his son, from the standpoint of a hell-fire-and-damnation Presbyterian of those days. When he was fifteen, his father sold his services to Roswell Mills, who kept a general country store in Simsbury, for eleven shillings a month. When he was seventeen, he became heartily sick of the life on the farm and so decided to go to sea. He told his father of his determination and received a Presbyterian blessing and twenty shillings from him.

The voyage to Newport and Providence lasted five weeks and ended his life as a sailor. His next venture was to apprentice himself to Benjamin Cheney a self-alleged clockmaker who knew little of the trade. Cheney cheated John shamefully. The little he knew about clocks was never imparted to John. He was never given enough to eat and was obliged to work on the farm instead

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of at his trade. When John insisted upon being- taught to make and repair clocks, Cheney gave him some tinkering brass-work to do, which bore about as close a relation to the trade of clock-making as John's father's religion did to Christianity. Finally John refused to do any more farm work, so Cheney gave him his freedom, as he found he could get no more work out .of him, and advised his going to his brother, Timothy Cheney, who was a " really and truly " clockmaker. He did so, but he was not permitted to learn anything of the trade but was kept at brass-work. Cheney even kept his tools locked up so John could not see and become familiar with them.

At the age of twenty-one, he started in business for himself as a brass-worker, with debts to the sum of £20, a much greater sum then than it is now. But by industry and economy he paid his debts and had £50 over in two years, and had acquired some knowledge of clockmaking through his own unassisted efforts. John was interested in many things and always succeeded in accomplishing whatever he put his mind and hands to, except the making of money. On December 29, 1767, he married Lucy Roberts, of Simsbury, whose father was a man of some prominence in that place and possessed of considerable property. Lucy was " something of an old maid " and very much the nagger, scold, and all-round termigant. John was even-tempered and forbearing. Pie warned his wife, that unless she changed he would have to leave her, but she, thinking he was talking for effect, did not mend her ways. In all other respects she was a good woman. Their first child, a son, named Shaler, was born on November 3, 1768. On January 18, 1769, unable to longer stand his wife's scolding and nagging, he left her, taking only some clothing and less than eight dollars, all his other property being left for his wife and child. Some months after he left home his daughter was born.

Then began a long series of wanderings during which Mr. Fitch applied his unusual mechanical genius and skill, and his brilliant intellect, to many occupations for providing the means for living. His letters to his friend, the Rev. Mr. Irwin, show that the necessity for separating from his wife and child — he knew nothing of the approaching birth of his daughter — was a source of sorrow and regret. More than once he was on the

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point of returning, but something always prevented it. On one occasion, when his wanderings had taken him to the village of Woodbridge, now a part of Railway, New Jersey, he had determined to return to his home. He stopped at the house of Benjamin Alford to purchase something to eat. The front door was open and inside was an old man who was being given a tongue-lashing by an old woman, presumably his wife. The sound of scolding was too familiar, so he continued his wanderings.

In May, 1769, he arrived in Trenton and found employment with Matthew Clunn making brass buttons and later, with James Wilson, a young and wealthy silversmith, where John lived upon threepence a day. In September of the same year, he started out peddling brass sleeve-buttons and cleaning clocks. After two weeks he had sold out his stock and became convinced that there was money in the occupation. He returned to Trenton and made more sleeve-buttons and thus began his only profitable business. Wilson getting into financial difficulties, Fitch bought him out. He was enabled to borrow the money for this purpose because his honesty and strict attention to business were proven. Finally, he employed Wilson and other workmen and built up a business larger than any of the kind in Philadelphia. When the Revolutionary War broke out, he had accumulated the very considerable fortune of £800.

Mr. Fitch being a Connecticut Yankee was, of course, a patriot. Early in the trouble with Great Britain he petitioned for the command of a company, in the Jersey line, and was assured that he would receive it. Nothing shows more strikingly Mr. Fitch's gentle courtesy and high sense of justice than his conduct after receiving his commission as first lieutenant. William Tucker, an old resident of Trenton, was second lieutenant. Fitch thought it not right that he, a comparative stranger, should outrank a lifelong resident, so he proposed an exchange of titles and was actually reduced to a second lieutenancy. Although John Fitch's life was largely made up of just such acts of generosity and justice, he was always misunderstood, insulted and imposed upon. His courage and patriotism were shown, after he was requested to become an armorer, or gunsmith, by refusing to take advantage of the exemption from military

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service, which exemption was offered to all gunsmiths, and continuing with his company. Later, his fearless stand in the interests of some poor soldiers was the cause of further trouble for him. A former acquaintance, Alexander Chambers, who was commissary, refused to provide some poor soldiers with blankets which they greatly needed. Fitch stuck to his demand and finally, through higher authority, succeeded in obtaining them. Chambers became his enemy and his sneaking, venomous animosity eventually drove Fitch out of the Continental army and deprived his country of one of its best soldiers. The strangest part of it all is, that although his superior officers knew of the underhand work, they did nothing about it. It almost seems as if he, in some mysterious and unconscious way, acted as a South Pole or repelling force to other men's better natures. It is evident that he was not sufficiently vain and self-conceited for his good. Had he possessed even a small portion of the pride, vainglory and egotism of his famous fellow-townsmen, Timothy and Jonathan Edwards, the world would have treated him better. In twentieth century American, it is called " Front".

Lieutenant Tucker was promoted to a captaincy and Lieutenant Fitch was entitled to become first lieutenant, but through Chambers he was humiliated and deprived of his rightful promotion. Even General Dickinson, who had knowledge of Chambers' animosity and the power to see that justice was done, utterly failed in his duty in the matter. All this time Mr. Fitch was in charge of the armory and he and his men were providing the soldiers with arms. For the good of the cause and his country which he so dearly loved, Fitch worked from dawn till dark, including Sundays, so that the supply of arms could be kept up with the demand. Here again did his ill luck pursue him, for he was expelled by the Methodists from their society for " breaking the Sabbath day". So far as is known, no biblical student has discovered just what locality in space such hypocrites will occupy after death. The final act of injustice, which drove him from the army, occurred in the autumn of 1776. A call for three companies from his battalion had been made, and Colonel Smith appointed Lieutenant Fitch to the command of one of them. Through Chambers and two men named Green and Smith, Fitch was again humiliated and degraded, and Ralph Jones, a subor-

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dinate officer, was given the captaincy. In this case Colonel Smith failed as completely in his duty as did General Dickinson. Had the case been reversed, Fitch .would have refused to accept-the appointment that rightfully belonged to another.

When the British occupied Trenton, Fitch went to Bucks County, Pennsylvania, where he devoted as much time as possible to study, he having purchased a share in the library in' Warminster. From Trenton he had taken as many of his tools, and most valued possessions, as could be loaded on a small wagon. After the battles of Trenton and Princeton, he returned to his home to collect his property. Pie found much of it gone or destroyed, but what was left he took back to Warminster, Bucks County, and resumed his trade of silversmith, in a part of a wheelwright's shop owned by " Cobe" (James) Scout. Again the approach of the British made flight necessary, after burying a considerable quantity of gold and silver at night on the Garrison place. He then supplied the army with various luxuries, especially with beer, from which he cleared from $6 to $18 in gold a week, which was, all things considered, about equal to from $25 to $75 now. In June, 1778, this business ceased and he returned to Bucks County only to find that a negro had seen him bury the gold and silver and had stolen it, and given nearly all of it to a young white man of good family, whose father eventually paid Fitch nearly the full value of the metal. He then resumed his trade with $40,000 in Continental money in hand, which he had made as sutler, but it was worth only $1,000 in gold or silver, and finally depreciated in value to but $100 in hard money. That he might save this money, he decided to invest it in land-warrants in Virginia. In the spring of 1780, he went to Philadelphia and obtained a letter of introduction from Dr. John Ewing, Provost of the University of Pennsylvania, to Dr. James Madison, President of William and Mary College, in Richmond, who later became the Bishop of Virginia. With this, and other letters from prominent persons, he started on foot for Richmond, where his letters procured for him the appointment of deputy-surveyor. With William Tucker, whom he employed as an assistant, he started and arrived at Wheeling Island, in the Ohio River, in the spring of 1780, where they found eleven boats ready to go down the river. On one of them he and Tucker took

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passage and after a trip full of danger and excitement, including a desperate fight with Indians, they arrived at Kentucky where the survey was to be made. On one of the boats was a Baptist minister by the name of Earned, between whom and Fitch a strong friendship was formed. Mr. Earned was poor so Fitch, ever on the watch to do good, offered him an interest in his land investments. Mr. Earned was appreciative and accepted with gratitude. The Rev. Mr. Earned, being an experienced woodsman, selected desirable tracts and Fitch and Tucker surveyed them. In Mr. Earned, Fitch found a man who appreciated his good heart and was very grateful for his generous treatment. They were exploring and surveying for a year and in the spring of 1781, Fitch returned to Virginia to have his surveys recorded, leaving Mr. Earned in Kentucky with the expectation of rejoining him the following spring, but he never saw him again. He heard of him, however, in 1790, and that he had prospered and was worth £50,000.

In the summer of 1781, Fitch returned to Bucks County and disposed of his possessions for £150 in full-value money — gold and silver — with the intention of going down the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers to New Orleans. In the mean time, Mr. Earned was still in Kentucky looking after their mutual interests. In March, 1782, Fitch arrived at Fort Pitt, where he invested his money and, with four other men, chartered a boat for the journey. The journey was never finished. Through the mismanagement and cowardice of the captain and crew, they were captured on March 22, by Indians and every dollar invested was lost, with the greater part of their clothing. Although they were not cruelly treated by their captors, they had an exciting and varied experience and suffered from exposure and hardship. Fitch and two of his companions were eventually taken from their Indian captors, by a trader named Saunders, and turned over to the commander of the fort at Detroit, where they were still prisoners, but of the British instead of Indians. Finally, on Christmas, 1782, they arrived in New York, after nine months of captivity by Indians and British, during which they had adventures, excitement, and hardships enough to fill several volumes in the telling.

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The following letter written to his little son in 1781, who was then in his thirteenth year, shows that John Fitch yearned for his family and that his separation was still a source of sadness and regret:

My darling boy — Believe me, when I took you in my arms and kissed you for the last time, and took my farewell, you may be assured that I felt every emotion that it Is possible for a tender father to feel. How my heart dissolved into tears, and how my sinews wanted strength, I can better feel than express. Be assured, your father loves you, and that there is nothing would make him more happy than to take you under his parental care.

This was written just before his capture by Indians. A few days after his return from captivity in Western Ohio in 1784, he wrote as follows.

Heaven forbid that I should endeavor to raise an irreverent thought in your heart against your mother. But our separation, you may be assured, was no trifling matter to me. There was nothing that I more ardently wished for, at the time, than that Heaven would call me to the world of spirits. You, my child, staggered every resolution and weighed more to me than a mountain of diamonds. Finally, I resolved, and re-resolved, and then resolved again, and gave you a sacrifice to the world more unwillingly than the patriarch of old.

Soon after peace had been declared with Great Britain, he organized a land company. It was composed of his friend, the Rev. Nathaniel Irwin, Dr. John Ewing, W. C. Houston, Jonathan Dickinson, Sergeant Potts and Stacy Potts, of Trenton; and Colonel Joshua Anderson, of Bucks County, each of whom put in £20 for the expense of exploration and survey, in western Ohio. The company being- satisfied with the results, another surveying trip was made the following spring, in 1785. Through an act of Congress this enterprise was a total failure. On a Sunday in April, 1785, as Mr. Fitch and James Ogilbee were returning from hearing the Rev. Mr. Irwin preach, the idea first occurred to F,itch which culminated in the world's first steamboat. Mr. Fitch was somewhat crippled by rheumatism, due to his exposure while a captive of Indians. A Mr. and Mrs. Sinton passed them rapidly, in a " chair" to which a fine horse was attached. The difference between his slow progress and their speed,

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suggested the idea that some force could be found that might be applied to vehicles and thus make traveling easy and rapid, without the necessity for keeping a horse. At this time he was entirely ignorant that a steam engine had ever been thought of or invented. His Yankee mind had already noted the expansive qualities of steam, so, when he arrived at his home, he began to make drawings of a steam propelled carriage. At the end of a week he realized that the rough, unimproved roads of that period made such a vehicle impossible. Had American roads been fairly good, he might have been the father of the automobile. As it happened, the smoothness of water turned his thoughts to that as a highway and the application of steam power to a boat.

He spent two or three weeks making drawings which he showed to his friend, the Rev. Mr. Irwin, who became greatly interested. Mr. Irwin took down from its shelf, Benjamin Martin's Philosophia Brittanica, published in 1747, and showed Fitch the description of a steam engine. It was then that Fitch confessed: " Although it was not to my credit, I did not know that there was a steam engine on earth, when I proposed to gain a force by steam ".

He immediately began to construct a model with side paddle-wheels, similar to those now used. The machinery was made of brass and the completed model was tried on a small stream and proved an entire success. By 1788, he had obtained protection by patent from four states and in 1791, from the United States, for the application of steam as a motive power for marine purposes.

Fitch met with the same ridicule and heart-breaking opposition by the skeptical, as did George W. Featherstonhaugh thirty years later, in regard to steam railroads, in Schenectady, Albany and New York. Mr. Fitch did not give up the ship. He bore ridicule as best he could and met the opposition of the ignorant and doubtful with explanation and intelligent reasoning. He finally induced twenty persons to put $50 each into the enterprise, thus forming a company. His first boat was built in Philadelphia, in 1787. The boat was launched and tried over a course of a measured mile and its speed was found to be eight miles an hour. Sometime later, an all-day run was made and eighty miles were covered.

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The success of the steamboat and the possibilities it opened, so greatly delighted the Governor and Council of Pennsylvania, that they presented Mr. Fitch with a handsome silk flag for his boat. At about this time Mr. Henry Vail, of Troy, the American Consul at L'Orient, who was also one of the company, requested Mr. Fitch to visit France for the purpose of introducing his steamboat invention to that country. The company of persons who had subscribed the money for making experiments and building the boat sent Mr. Fitch to France. France was enjoying one of its periodical revolutions, so nothing was done about steamboats and Mr. Fitch returned to America, greatly disappointed. It seems, that sometime afterward, when Robert Fulton was in France, Consul Vail showed to Fulton, Mr. Fitch's papers and the drawings of his invention. This was an odd thing to do and it shows that Robert Fulton's steamboat was really John Fitch's invention.

Fitch, like the majority of men who are a century ahead of their fellows, struggled against dense ignorance, but he left nothing undone, in his efforts to gain the confidence of someone, so that he might obtain the money required for the perfecting of his boat. Fitch had faith in his invention; he knew that a little money would enable him to make the changes and experiments necessary for success; he knew that if he could not accomplish it, that before long someone else would, so it must have been heart-breaking work for him. He tried to induce Rittenhouse, one of the company, to purchase his land in Kentucky so that the money for perfecting the steamboat could be had, but without the hoped for result.

Fitch predicted that in time, the mode of crossing the Atlantic would be in steamboats; and on another occasion, when conversing with one of the mechanics who had worked on his boat, a number of other persons being present, he said:

" Well, gentlemen, although I shall not live to see the time, you will, when steamboats will be preferred to all other means of conveyance, especially for passengers and they will be particularly useful on the Mississippi."

After Mr. Fitch left, one of those present remarked:

" Poor fellow. It is a pity that he is crazy."

An absolute knowledge that his ideas were practical and the disappointment and humiliation that he could not obtain the

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money to prove it, so preyed upon his mind that he sought relief from his thoughts in inebriation. Mr. Fitch, the man who invented the steamboat many years before Robert Fulton saw his — Fitch's plans — and twenty years before Fulton brought out his boat, drowned himself in the Alleghany river.

John Fitch died a suicide in July, 1798, in Bardstown, Kentucky, after fifty years of struggling against the worst and most cruel and tireless enemies a man can have, his fellow men. From the time he saved the home from fire, in his sixth year, when his elder brother, finding him with head, hands and feet blistered by the flames, gave him a beating and his father refused to redress the act of barbarity, to the day of his death, he was subjected to just such injustice, misunderstanding, insult and cruelty. It is not possible to doubt that he was in some way lacking in qualities which, had he possessed them, would have made such treatment impossible. Had he possessed more self-esteem, vanity and domineering pride, he might have avoided all the unhappy things that filled his life.

His personal appearance has been described by an early writer as follows:

He stood six foot two in his stocking-feet, was what was called thin and spare, face slim, complexion tawny, hair very black, and a dark eye, peculiarly piercing. His countenance was pleasing, and somewhat smiling. In point of morals and conduct, he was perfectly upright, sincere, and honorable in his dealings, and was never known to tell a wilful falsehood, or, indeed, to use any guile.

For thirty years there was no settlement on the east side of the river, the reason no doubt being, that the passage of the Connecticut was laborious in summer and difficult, or impossible, in winter; that the meadows on that side of the river being lower, were subject to floods and, too, there were the Podunk Indians to be considered, who occupied the land on the east side of the river.

The Bissell family is regarded by historians as the pioneer family of the east side. In 1648, it was granted a monopoly of the ferry, still called Bissell's Ferry, between Windsor and the hamlet of East Windsor, in the Town of South Windsor. There is a tradition in regard to this grant, that is interesting, if not founded upon fact, as Stiles claims. This tradition is, that John Bissell was sent by the Colony to England, in 1636, to purchase

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and bring back a supply of cattle as the previous winter had been so severe that many of their cattle had died. Mr. Bissell returned with seventeen cows and a bull and as an equivalent for his services he was granted the monopoly of the ferry across the Connecticut.

There was a house near Bissell's Ferry previous to 1662, for in a deed from John Bissell to his son Nathaniel, to property on the east side, near the ferry, mention is made of a house already standing there. Stiles says that John Bissell, Sr., probably moved from Windsor to the east side in 1662. Ten years later, there was a desire on the part of the people on the east side to organize a distinct and separate town. Three years later, in 1675, King Philip's War caused the greatest consternation on the east side, cut off as it was from the larger settlement on the west side of the river in Windsor and from help, should the fierce Podunks make the war an excuse for an attempt to exterminate the small settlement. For this reason, several families moved across to Windsor and a little later, all the inhabitants were ordered to move over with their cattle and grain and other possessions. The order also required that certain houses should be fortified and garrisoned for the safety of such persons as were obliged to remain. At the close of King Philip's War the people returned, and the settlement became fixed.

The necessity of crossing the river to attend Church in Windsor caused the people, in 1680, to petition the Legislature for the formation of a separate town, so that they could settle a minister of their own, but nothing came of it. Eleven years later they again presented a similar petition, but nothing was done till 1694, the delay being probably caused by the people of Windsor objecting to anything of the kind, as it would take just so many persons from the Windsor Church and so increase the cost of supporting the minister in Windsor, for the people of that town.

On May 10, 1694, the Rev. Timothy Edwards began preaching as a candidate and in March, 1695, he was ordained. Mr. Edwards prepared for college in the Grammar School in Hartford, then under the instruction of the Rev. Peletier Grover, of Springfield. He entered Harvard College and was graduated in 1691, receiving the two degrees of Bachelor and Master of Arts on the same day, an honor earned by his scholarship. There can

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be no doubt that the people respected and admired Mr. Edwards, but it is hardly possible to suppose that they loved him, or even had affection for him. He was too thoroughly the master, the judge, the keeper of the congregation's conscience. It was not till 1735, that he plainly showed, no doubt unconsciously, his Roman Catholic tendency in matters of Church government. In that year in a sermon he laid down the law, that it belonged to the pastor to JUDGE and determine what complaints or accusations should be brought before the Church, and what should not, and that the votes of the members to convict or restore an offender would be of no force or validity WITHOUT the CONCURRENCE or APPROBATION of THE PASTOR.

The chief difference — perhaps the only difference — between the Church in England and the Church in America was in Church government. The principle of Congregationalism was the right possessed by each separate Church to govern itself, but Mr. Edwards declared that the power was in the pastor. The people were surprised and grieved, but the crisis did not come till Mr. Edwards debarred Joseph Diggins from owning his covenant and having his child baptized, " until he was willing to publicly confess himself guilty of a scandalous offence", with which Mr. Edwards had charged him. The step between the condemnation of the Roman Priest and the secret confession, and the condemnation of Mr. Edwards and the public confession, was not a long one. Joseph Diggins' offence was, that he married the girl of his choice, against the wishes of her father, William Stoughton. Had Mr. Edwards been a priest, and his Church of the Roman Communion, his decree of excommunication would have been quite natural; as both Edwards and his Church were Protestant, it savors of the busy-body and looks very much like an insolent interference by an outsider, in something that was a personal and private matter between the Diggins and Stoughton families.

Diggins denied the doing of wrong and demanded a trial by the Church. Again did Mr. Edwards exhibit his Roman regard for the power of the minister, by refusing the trial and saying; that he had a negative on the Church, and that until he had changed his opinion in regard to the guilt of Diggins, the Church need not trouble itself.

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The sorrow of the people may be imagined. In England they had suffered persecution; they had been fined, imprisoned and their estates had been confiscated because they dared to object to just such a form of Church government as Mr. Edwards was forcing upon them. They had spent years in thought — with prayers for guidance — in building up the Congregational form of Church government. Finally, they had abandoned their homes in England, to make new homes in a wilderness, so that they could have a Church which satisfied all their desires. After sacrificing everything to build up the substantial, dignified Congregational Church, on a foundation of self-government, the Rev. Timothy Edwards filled his lungs with warm air and puffing it out again, from between his lips, blew down what they had sacrificed so much for, and had been so many years in building, as a child blows down a house of cards. That is, he intended to do so, and he thought that he had done so, but the Church survived both himself and his son.

The foundation of self-sacrifice, upon which they had built their Congregational system of Church government, was so solid and substantial, that even a much more violent tornado than passed from between the lips of the Rev. Timothy Edwards, in South Windsor, or between those of his illustrious son, the Rev. Jonathan Edwards, in Northampton, would not have caused a window to rattle.

After Mr. Edwards had demolished Congregationalism and declared his infallibility — by telling the people that so long as he considered Diggins guilty, he was guilty, notwithstanding what the church thought on the subject — the case remained where it was till October, 1738, when a council was called which decided to give Diggins a trial. Sometime later, Mr. Edwards called a Church meeting and entered a formal protest against Diggins and charged him with breaking the Fifth and Eighth Commandments.

The case was tried and Diggins was acquitted. Mr. Edwards and two of the members dissented from this verdict, and called a council. It met on June 12, and 18, 1739, and while it sustained the decision of the Church in the Diggins case, it commended Mr. Edwards for his tenderness, prudence, faithfulness and caution, and so great was their Christian charity for the mis-

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guided, egotistical old man, that never a word was uttered of criticism or censure for the man who had wilfully and stubbornly tried to demolish the Church, that he might gratify and tickle his self-esteem. The council further said, that if he cannot without scruples admit Joseph Diggins, the brethren a