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Edward Beecher Hooker and Alice, wife of John C. Day, are living. Of the others, one, Thomas, died soon after birth, and Mary, afterwards Mrs. Henry E. Burton, died in 1886, aged 40. We celebrated our golden wedding on the 5th of August, 1891, I shall speak of that occasion more fully in the body of the book.

I attended the district school of my native town until I was about ten, when I entered the Farmington Academy, kept by Simeon Hart, a noted teacher of the time, where I fitted for college, entering Yale college when I was sixteen. My prep- aration for college was greatly aided by the private instruction of my father, who was a rare classical scholar for that day, and who began to drill me in Latin and Greek at quite an early age. My college course, however, was never completed. I was taken ill before the close of my second year, and had a long course of typhoid fever, upon my recovery from which I began too early the attempt, by hard study, to overtake my class, the result being an injury to my eyes that compelled me to discontinue my studies, and has afflicted me all my life. The college, later, granted me a degree. My class graduated in 1837, and my name stands with the rest on the catalogue.

In my uncertainty what to do, and in the probability that I should have to follow an active outdoor life, and in the hope, too, of benefiting my general health, I went on two voyages, one to the Mediterranean and one to China, both before the mast. On our return voyage from China, when in the mid- Atlantic, near the latitude of the lower West India Islands, our vessel was overhauled and taken possession of by a Portu- guese pirate. I devote a chapter to this adventure in the body of the book.

After my two years of sea life I took up the study of law, and was admitted to the Hartford County Bar in 1841. I opened an office in Farmington, was married later in the same year, and resided there until the fall of 1851, when I removed to Hartford, where I have lived ever since.

In January, 1858, I was appointed by the judges of our Supreme Court the reporter of the court, which office I held until January 1, 1894, thirty-six years. With the surrender of this office I retired from all business, and have since been en-

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joying the quiet and peaceful life of one whose work is done, and who, in full readiness, is waiting for the summons to a higher life.

I will, in this introductory chapter, give a little account of old Farmington and of the people and their country habits as I saw them in niy boyhood. The changes in social conditions and habits since then are undoubtedly greater than all the changes from the early settlement of the country down to that time.

Those who have visited the village of Farmington have been struck by its exceeding beauty of situation. It lies along the lower slope of a mountain side, with a broad and green meadow of rich cultivated land below, through which winds a river of considerable size, with its banks fringed by a growth of trees. I think I am not extravagant in saying that few hills ever looked down upon a more lovely valley, and few valleys ever looked up to more beautiful hills. Here my eye learned very early to dwell with delight upon the view of mountain and meadow that constantly met it. My father was a great lover of beautiful scenery, and early cultivated in me a love of nature that has all my life been to me what a love of fine music is to a cultivated ear.

The beauty of the village is greatly increased by the fine trees along its principal streets. It is a pleasant reflection to me that a large part of these trees were planted by me or through my instrumentality in my boyhood and early man- hood. I do not include a few very large old trees that are still standing. I was an enthusiast with regard to such improve- ments, and persuaded other boys to join with me in much of the work, particularly that on Main street. All the trees on High street and the New Britain road were planted by me without their help.

The stately and venerable church still stands upon the vil- lage street, well along in years when I attended it as a boy, but hardly touched yet by decay. Social changes have affected it, but nature has dealt with it very kindly. It was built in 1771, and to this day, over one hundred and twenty-five years, the cedar shingles which were then put upon the roof are doing good service still. So much for honest material and honest

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builders. I am glad to be able to record the fact that my grandfather was one of the building committee.

The pews in my boyhood were all square, with high straight backs, very uncomfortable to hold one's self up against. There were no stoves or other mode of heating, but the house was in winter literally as cold as a barn. Every family carried a foot- stove, which was passed along from one to another, while heavy overcoats and shawls did what they could for our com- fort. It was my regular business, when I got old enough, to carry the footstove, and I once, in a crowded state of our pew. had to sit on it, absorbing for the time, and quite uncomfort- ably, the heat that was intended for the pew-full. The clergy- man often preached in his overcoat. One advantage of the chilling atmosphere was that he had to gesticulate a good deal to keep himself warm, thus making his delivery more impres- sive. We had at the time the high box pulpit, and it was prob- ably on one of the cold clays that a specially active and earnest preacher, who turned one way and the other in the narrow pul- pit as he vociferated toward the different quarters of the house, excited the wonder of a little girl who was taken to church for the first time, and who asked her mother on the way home why they didn't let that man out, when he was trying so hard to get out and was hollering so. There was also, while the old pulpit remained, a huge sounding-board right over it, which I used to look at with childish wonder, sometimes thinking it might come down on the preacher, but more often thinking of it as an image of heaven, or of some heavenly thing, placed there for its moral effect. It disappeared with the old pulpit. but whether it came down or went up I never quite knew. Modern slips also early took the place of the old pews. It was all well to have these changes made, but there was one that I look back upon with great regret. I remember well the crown, brass or gilded, that was on the top of the steeple. We were a colony of Great Britain when the church was built, and the people placed the crown there as a token of their loyalty, and there it had stood for nearly or quite fifty years after we had won our independence. After so long a time it had ceased to be an offensive reminder of royalty and had become only a very interesting relic, and it would have grown more and more in-

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teresting with the passing years, if the people of the town had. it there to-day they would not part with it for its weight in gold. But some foolish democratic whim tore it down. I forget what year it was, but I must have been ten years old, which would make it as late as 1826. But if the crown had to come down, it is a marvel that nobody felt an interest -in preserving it. It should have gone to the historical society. As it was, it dis- appeared and has never since been seen. The old pulpit I remember seeing in the rear of a house opposite to the old cemetery, where it was used for some domestic purpose, a hen- house, or something of the sort, and probably it has long ago gone for firewood.

The old church, then known to us only as the " meeting- house," was well filled every Sunday. People came from a great distance, and the teams which brought them were tied to posts on the edge of the green. The present horse sheds were built many years later. People came from what is now Plainville, from White Oak district, from Unionville, and from the Avon road, more than half the way to Avon. Avon was then a part of Farmington, and was called Northington. There were in the rear of the church two small one-story houses, be- longing to the ecclesiastical society, called originally " Sab- bath-Day Houses," but in my boyhood called " Sabba-day Houses," where the people from out of town used to go on Sunday noons to eat their lunches. There were open fireplaces and great wood fires, and it must have been not only very com- fortable after sitting all the forenoon in the freezing air of the church, but very pleasant socially, as the farmers and their wives met and exchanged gossip. These houses were aban- doned, after the church was warmed. For a while they were let to poor families; one, I remember, was occupied by a negro family for a while, but I do not remember what finally became of them.

Rev. Dr. Porter, then plain Mr. Porter, was the pastor of the church when I was born. He baptized me, as he did also my son. In the record of his baptisms stands, in 1816, " John, son of Edward Hooker," and in 1855, " Edward, son of John Hooker." When my son was baptized my wife and I were members of the Fourth Church in Hartford, but, with the ac-

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quiescence of our pastor there, we brought him to Farming- ton, that he might be baptized by our beloved Dr. Porter. It is a remarkable fact that Dr. Porter was a Farmington boy, and his first settlement was here in his native town, and here he continued his pastorate for over fifty years, dying here in a good old age, and buried here among his people. He was a great man; not an orator, but a thinker, a calm, clear-headed, self-sustained expounder of Christian truth. If he had been a lawyer he might have made a great chief justice.

He used to come to the district school that I attended and catechize us on Saturdays. We got so that we could reel off the greater part of the Assembly's Shorter Catechism, though we sometimes made blunders, as where one boy that I was told of, in answer to the question " What is baptism? " replied that it was " an outward and miserable sign of inward sanctifica- tion."

It was the day of doctrinal preaching, and I once heard Dr. Porter say to my father that he intended to preach one doctrinal sermon every Sunday. There were then two regular sermons in the forenoon and afternoon of Sunday, and an ex- temporaneous address in the evening; a pretty severe demand upon both body and brain of the preacher.

It was a beautiful incident of Dr. Porter's pastorate, that from his birth in Farmington, and his long settlement in the ministry there, he came to know the family histories, and he was often very felicitous in his remarks at funerals and wed- dings. At the latter he would often say to the bride, and per- haps to both, I married your father and mother, and at funerals he would have some most tender remembrances of the early life of the one who had passed away. I remember that, at the funeral of an old man who had been poor and thriftless and un- respected, but whom Dr. Porter had known from his boyhood, he gave a quiet reminiscent talk that could hardly have been surpassed for pathos and tenderness. He always at funerals found something interesting to say of everybody. He did not seem to fall back on his ingenuity, but on his early memories and lifelong acquaintance.

One remark of Dr. Porter at a prayer-meeting greatly im- pressed me at the time, and has dwelt with me as a comforter

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all my life. Our weekly church prayer-meetings were held on Thursday afternoons, the daytime being taken to enable the church members who lived at a distance to attend. I made it a rule to attend when I was able. But as my business in- creased, and very often called me away from home, my attend- ance became infrequent. At one of the meetings I expressed my regret that I was not able to attend the meetings more, but that it seemed out of the question for me to do so, upon which Dr. Porter got up and said, " There is a passage in the Psalms that our brother ought to bear in mind. It is, ' Blessed is he that condemneth not himself in that which he alloweth.' A great many people cannot get time for religious exercises with- out neglecting other imperative duties. A mother is busy from morning till late bedtime, attending to her children and her family duties, and cannot get the half-hour that she greatly de- sires for reading her Bible and for prayer. Well, don't let her worry about it. Let her do faithfully her family work, and if she can get no time for anything else, let her not condemn her- self, but make up her mind to allow these unavoidable duties to take all her time."

My father was very fond of Dr. Porter, and for a great part of his life was one of his deacons. He was himself worthy of a sympathetic and respectful notice, but, as his son, I will say only a few words about him, and those only with regard to matters that illustrate the early times in which I lived. He was very particular about all religious observances, always having family prayers in the morning and evening. He used, at the morning service, to read from Scott's commentaries on the Bible, taking each division of the comments on the chapter he read, namely, " notes " and " practical observations." This made the service rather long, and, as I thought it then, rather dull; but my young mind took in a great many religious im- pressions that I should be sorry to have lived without. We al- wavs kept Saturday night as a part of Sunday, and Sunday night as the beginning of week-day life, and a happy deliver- ance from the confinement and rigor of Sunday. I remember how I used to watch at the western window for the setting of the sun, and used to think it an unkind ordinance of nature that made the sun set so late in the lovely summer days, when we so wanted to be out.

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My father was an open-minded man, and washed to know the truth, especially in public affairs, and he took the Connecti- cut Courant and the Hartford Times, both weeklies, (there were no dailies then, not even in New York, I think,) and we, his children, grew up to read both papers to see what each side had to say. Perhaps this is the reason that I have never been able to be much of a partisan. I never cared much for names. I wanted the right thing done, and was always willing to help any party do it.

Among the old men whom I remember seeing in my boy- hood, no one was more notable than Gov. Treadwell. He lived in a red house close by the large rock in the front part of the Norton place. I remember once calling at his house with a line from my father, when I saw him at dinner, which he left for a few minutes to attend to me and my message. I could not have been over ten years old. I think he died very soon after.

As to remembering old people, I find that I have seen a person who must have seen a person who saw the first settlers. My grandfather on my mother's side, Henry Daggett, was born in 1740, and died at the age of 90 in 1830. He could easily have seen in his boyhood some very old person who in his boy- hood, had. seen the first settlers. This seems to bring them very near to us — but three lives between.

It was while I was a school boy that the Farmington Canal was devised and constructed. It ran from New Haven to Northampton in Massachusetts. I remember well Mr. James Hillhouse of New Haven, who was one of its principal pro- moters, going through Farmington with a large boat on wheels drawn by several pairs of horses, full of New Haven gentle- men, with a band of musicians and flags flying. I think they stopped over night at our village, and the next day went on to other towns on the route. This I suppose to have been before the canal was made, and to get up an enthusiasm for it. The canal was used quite largely by people who were passing be- tween New Haven and the towns on the route. I have gone to New Haven by it with my father when the boat was well filled with passengers. It was not long, however, before it was found to be poorly supported, and finally its bed was taken for the canal railroad, and the canal, as such, was abandoned.

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The digging of this canal brought the first Irishmen- that our state had known to do the work. I remember well the first one I saw. I was on my way to school when I met him. He stopped and said to me, in a brogue I could hardly under- stand, "Do you know who I am?" I told him I did not. " Well," said he, " I am a wild Irishman, just over." 1 told of this when I got home, as I would if I had seen a wild zebra in the street.

Among the interesting things that I remember is the post- master and postal service of my early life. Dea. Samuel Rich- ards was the postmaster, a picturesque object in the social land- scape and in my memory. He was tall and slim, and very straight, wearing the old knee-breeches that then lingered among the survivors of an earlier time. He was very precise in his manner, and punctilious in the discharge of his official, re- ligious, and social duties. He lived in a large house near the north end of the street, and the post-office was in his front hall. 1 often went there to cany or get letters. The letters that were waiting to be called for were stuck into tapes that were tacked crosswise upon the wall. I remember his telling my father that they hoped soon to have a mail twice a week to New York. I infer that there was then only a weekly mail there. There was then and for a long time after a mail every other day to New Haven. A stage started at Hartford and passed through Farm- ington, and went thence to New Haven, carrying the mail, going one day and returning the next. Postages were graded according to distance, and were a great burden upon business and friendly correspondence. To any western town (and even the middle states were then " the West "), the postage was twenty-five cents, with eighteen and three-fourths, twelve and one-half, and six and one-fourth for shorter distances. This continued down to 1840. The young lady to whom I was en- gaged to be married lived in Cincinnati, and we exchanged let- ters every week. Prepayment was not then required, so that I had to pay my own postage and hers. As each letter was twenty-five cents, it cost me half a dollar a week, where now the postage would be but four cents. Still, I think it was a good investment. A curious feature of the system then existing was that a separate postal charge was made for every piece of paper

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contained in the letter. You were constantly asked, when you brought a letter to be mailed, whether there was more than one piece of paper. It was impossible for the officials to discover, and so there was a great temptation to lie about it, and prob- ably a great deal of lying was done. The absurdity of the rule was in requiring two separate bits of paper, no matter how small, to pay double postage, and yet allowing very large sheets, no matter how large, to go for single postage. This led to a common device in scattered families, of starting large sheets with all the family news, and passing them along till they had gone the rounds of the family, each one adding its own news.

Among the things that greatly interested me as a boy were the annual militia trainings. These were held on the " green," the large open space in front of and about the " meeting-house." There was a very impressive looking company of " grena- diers," in brilliant uniforms, a company of troopers, and a large company of " militia," of all sorts of arms and all varieties and conditions of clothing. The training lasted all day. The sol- diers brought their own dinners, except that large pails of punch or some other very palatable preparation of liquor, were brought upon the ground, which we boys were always allowed a good drink of. This was before the temperance movement was started or had made much headway. While the troopers were eating their luncheons, we boys were allowed to get on their horses and gallop about the streets. They were generally old farm horses, and often jaded ones, but their gay trappings made them seem to us like veritable war horses.

I have spoken of the liquor-drinking habit of the mili- tiamen. It was the general habit. I remember well riding in a cart one day with our principal workman, when he took a swig from a rum bottle, which he always took with him when he went off for a day's work, and his saying, as he set the bottle clown, " What could we do without rum? A man can do twice as much work with it as he could without it."

There are few things in which a greater change has been made than in the modes of starting our fires, as well as of making a light. In my boyhood we had no matches but sul- phur ones, made at home, which we used with flint and tinder-

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box. We always took great pains to provide at night for a morning bed of coals in the kitchen fireplace. Our cook- ing was then, and for a long time after, done in an open fireplace, the baking being done in a large oven. If, as often happened, a family got out of live coals, some one went to a neighbor's with a fire shovel to get coals enough to start a fire. I remember the first matches that I ever saw. I was a school boy, and one of the older boys brought to one of our evening entertainments a new mode of striking a light, at which we all looked with the greatest curiosity. There was a case holding a quantity of matches, and a phial, into which the match was dipped, when it at once began to blaze. I doubt whether the telephone when it came seemed to the people a greater advance than those matches seemed on the old mode of making a light.

There was a very pleasant, but simple, social life in my early days in Farmington. Neighbors came in frequently to sit and chat of an evening, when apples and walnuts were al- ways brought out, together with cider, of which every cellar had a good supply. The monthly meetings at the village li- brary, held on Sunday evening, were a special time for the meeting of the elders, who spent the evening together in the librarian's parlor, while the kitchen was occupied by us boys. Family visits were common. Near relatives of my father and mother used to come every year, bringing their entire families, and staying several days, and we returned the visits in the same way.

I was born in the closing years of what Dr. Bushnell has called " The Age of Homespun," but clearly within that age. The people living in the village of Farmington were mostly farmers, and all of whatever calling were more or less engaged in farming. The lands that constituted the farms lay in part on the mountain and in part in the broad meadows. The latter were used mainly for hay and for planting; the mountain land was used for pasturage, orchards, and woodlands. The families made and consumed their own butter and cheese, and raised their own pork, and, to a considerable extent, their beef and mutton. My father kept a large flock of sheep, and the spring washing and shearing was quite an event for us boys. The wool was sent to the carding and fulling mills, and the cloth

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made up for our winter clothes. A tailoress came around regu- larly to make them up for us. We knew little of fashions, especially of any change in them, and it was not till near the time I went to college that I began to have tailor-made clothes. My father always had a tailor-made suit for Sundays, which would last him several years. Such a thing as ready-made suits was never heard of. The wool, when it had been carded, was brought back to the house to be spun. We kept a large spin- ning wheel in the kitchen or near it, at which a woman, hired for the purpose, spun the rolls into yarn, from which our stock- ings were knit by the women of the family. Knitting was a uni- versal industry among the women, and when they were spend- ing an afternoon or evening together they all brought their knitting. Quilting parties were also very frequent and very lively. The ladies of the first families used all to spin. My own mother, though well educated and refined, and coming from -one of the best families in New Haven, would frequently spend an hour at the spinning-wheel. Pumpkin pies were a great favorite. Large crops of pumpkins were raised in the meadow-s among the corn. I do not remember to have seen a squash pie, or even a winter squash, till I was a grown man. Anthracite coal was then unknown, and cooking stoves were a novelty and very rare. We had a large kitchen fireplace, and wood fires about the house in open fireplaces, consuming a great quantity of wood, all furnished by our woodland. My father's house was one of abundance, yet it could hardly be surpassed for simplicity of living.

There used to be several lawyers in the town, its commercial and legal business about the beginning of the century being very considerable. These had all gone before my clay, except Lemuel Whitman, a man of considerable legal and political intelligence and at one time a member of Congress, but, as he grew old, a cynical, unsocial man, who sat all day in his office reading the papers, not mingling at all in the affairs of the town, nor making himself useful in any way. He walked across the street to his office, and back to his house to eat and to sleep, taking, so far as one could see, no exercise at all. At last he died in a fit, in fact was found dead. At his funeral the late Rev. Mr. Fessenden made some remarks at the grave. He was

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not very adroit in getting upon his feet when he found himself off them. Not thinking much beforehand what to say, he fell into the old rut of such occasions, and, alluding to his very sudden death, spoke of him as "cut off in the midst of.his use —, of his use —, of his — of his — activity." Poor Mr. Fes- senden did not mend the matter much by substituting activity for usefulness, for there probably was not in the town a more useless or inactive man. I allow myself to tell this story be- cause not only is good and lovable Mr. Fessenden gone, but there is not a single member of Mr. Whitman's family left, either at Farmington, or, as I believe, anywhere.

I occasionally, when a boy, went into the town meetings, where the town affairs were often vigorously discussed and sometimes wrangled over. The selectmen were allowed one dollar a day for the time actually spent in the town business, and were held to a very strict account of what they had done to earn the money. I remember one of the farmers who was opposing some outlay which he thought was unnecessary, re- marking that " if you touch a man's pocket you touch him all over." Gen. Solomon Cowles often presided at these town meetings, and deserves a passing notice. He was a tall, fine- looking man, with white hair, and impressed one as a man quite above the ordinary until he opened his mouth to speak, when his pompous manner and misuse of language and absolute in- effectiveness of speech, disposed utterly of the impression which one had got from the first observation of him. He must have been at this time not far from eighty years old. At one of the town meetings he was appointed on a committee to at- tend to some public business, when he arose to ask to be ex- cused, and said that he was " getting very old and superani- mated." At an ecclesiastical society meeting over which he presided a motion was made for the placing of large blocks of stone at each end of the church for the women to step out upon from their wagons. The motion was not in writing and so he had to frame it for himself as he put it, which he did in these words, " Gentlemen, those of you who are in favor of erecting a mode of ladies getting out of wagons under the idea of a horseblock, will please to say ' aye'."

In looking back to my boyhood I should speak of the exist-

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ence of slavery in our southern states, and the apathy of our northern states about the matter, with the universal disregard of the rights of the colored people. Negro was always spelled then with two " g's." The black man seemed to have no rights as a man. He was often kindly regarded by humane people, but such a thing as his having the rights of a man was hardly thought of. In church he sat in the negroes' pew, a pew close by the door in the lower part of the house or in the gallery. I remember once when I was a small boy seeing the stage for New Haven come from the north and stop at Phelps's hotel (where Miss Porter's school is now) to take in passengers. There came in it a very decently-clad black man, on his way to New Haven. Capt. Goodrich, one of New Haven's aris- tocracy, was waiting at the hotel to take the stage. As he was about to get in he saw the black man inside. With an oath, he ordered him out, and commanded the driver to take him out. The driver compelled him to get out, and Capt. Goodrich got in and the stage drove off, leaving the black man standing by the hotel door. This man had as good a right to his passage as Capt. Goodrich, and his treatment was a high-handed outrage. We boys looked on, and could not help feeling a sympathy for the black man, but somehow it did not strike us that it was anything more than an unreasonable thing on Capt. Goodrich's part; that the rights of a man were assailed we hardly thought. After the stage had gone, Mr. Phelps feared that some blame would be attached to his acquiescence in or possible abetting of the act, and he got up a wagon and drove the man to New Haven. When the anti-slavery movement came along it met not only with ridicule, but with persecution. Its opponents did not entertain a doubt of its ultimate failure. As the New York Nation says of the time, it was a few fanatics on one side and all society on the other. Harrison Grey Otis, a Boston politician of the time, said, " There is not a possibility of this fanaticism making any headway. Why, look at it; all the journals of the country are against it, except one Boston paper that is pub- lished by a crank and a nigger." Yet that crank survived for many years the overthrow of slavery. We had here in quiet and orderly Farmington some outbreaks of the persecuting spirit. I was attending an anti-slavery meeting in our town hall when

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a stone as large as one's fist was thrown through the window be- hind the speaker, and, just missing his head, went across the hall, striking the wall on the other side, but fortunately hitting no one. It might have killed one whom it had chanced to hit. Farmington was a place where there was a good number of abolitionists, who harbored escaping slaves, so that many of the latter were seen here, and some of them settled here. There probably never were firmer or more determined people than these anti-slavery men; and the town had many as determined opponents of their cause. I was about that time superintendent of the noon branch of the Sabbath-school, and one Sunday a very respectable colored man came into the school. He was not a fugitive slave — I forget what brought him there. Not caring for the public sentiment, and wishing to do a kind thing, I asked him to go over to church with me and sit in my pew. He did so, but the moral shock was very great. One of the church members said I had done more to break up the church than any thing that had happened in its whole history. But it was not long after this that Dr. Porter exchanged one Sunday with Rev. Mr. Pennington of Hartford, a negro as black as a native of Guinea. Yet the church has survived both shocks.

I shall devote a chapter of my Reminiscences to this black preacher, who afterwards became Rev. Dr. Pennington. He was all the while a fugitive slave, though none of his Hartford people suspected it. He afterwards confided the fact to me, in order that I might negotiate with his old master for the pur- chase of his freedom, which, after a long delay, was accom- plished. The whole makes a very interesting chapter in the history of slavery.

It was while I was living at Farmington that the case of the Amistad occurred. A Cuban schooner of that name was trans- porting some forty freshly arrived slaves from Havana, Cuba, where they had been purchased by two Spanish planters named Ruiz and Montez, to their plantations on another part of the coast, when the slaves rose up and overpowered Ruiz and Montez, killed the captain, and took entire possession of the vessel. They knew nothing about navigation or geography, but did the best they could to work the vessel in a northerly direction. After about two weeks they were found by one of

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our revenue cutters at the east end of Long Island Sound, and were taken into New London. Here the negroes at once found friends and protectors, and, after being detained in prison sev- eral months, and finally declared free by the courts, they were brought to Farmington, where they became an object of great interest to the people for many miles about. Comfortable quar- ters were provided for them, with a large schoolroom, where they were taught the rudiments of knowledge and something of our language. Some of them were very bright and learned quite rapidly, and all were well behaved and orderly, and seemed to take much interest in the strange things which they saw, and were very grateful for the kindness shown them. They were put under no restraint, but were allowed to go about the streets. They came from Mendi, in Africa, where a mission was afterwards established, and most of the negroes returned there. They were mostly young men, with a few girls. The Mendi Mission was kept up for a long time by the American Missionary Association, but through the death of the mission- aries, under the sickly climate and from other causes, it gradu- ally lost ground, and the great expectations that were enter- tained with regard to it have never been realized.

I will close this hasty review of the observations and ex- periences of my early life by mentioning one later incident that it has always since been pleasant to me to remember. I have mentioned the fact that Rev. Dr. Porter was a native of Farm- ington, and was brought up there, and that his first settlement after completing his studies was over the church there, the pastorate of which he held for over fifty years, finally dying- there. It was a case almost without a parallel. What I am about to mention fits in so well with this unusual case that I feel fully justified in speaking of it.

When I left Farmington to reside in Hartford the church was considering the matter of employing an assistant pastor for Dr. Porter. At this time quite a number of the people of the town, with Miss Sarah Porter's name prominent among them, sent me an urgent written request that I should give up the idea of going and remain in Farmington, and one of the leading men of the church called on me to see whether I would consider a proposition from the church to give up the law and be or-

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dained as a clergyman, and be an assistant, and, finally, the suc- cessor of Rev. Dr. Porter in the pastorate of the church. He seemed to think I could be ordained at once, and not have to go through a theological course; and perhaps he was right, for to sit for many years under Dr. Porter's preaching, as I had done, was equivalent, I think, to a course of theological study. I did not, for what seemed to me to be decisive reasons, give any encouragement to the idea, but it is a curious incident of the matter, that if I had been settled over the church as its pas- tor, two Farmington boys would have had pastorates there, one succeeding the other, Dr. Porter for over fifty years, and I for fifty more. My life has been continued so long that I could probably have made up the fifty years.

NOTE: The case of the Amistad negros is one of so great interest that I append a more detailed account of it, which was published a few years later by a resident of Farmington who was farmiliar with the facts.

On the 26th of August, 1839, Lieutenant Gedney, U. S. N., in com- mand of the brig Washington, employed on the coast survey, boarded a mysterious schooner called the Amistad near the shore at Cullodon point, on the east end of Long Island. He found a large number of Afri- cans and two Spaniards, Pedro Montez and Jose Ruiz, one of whom an- nounced himself as the owner of the negroes, and claimed Lieutenant Gedney's protection.

The schooner was taken into the port of New London. After an ex- amination by Judge Judson of the United States District Court the Africans were committed for trial for murder on the high seas, at the Circuit Court to be held at Hartford, September 17th. There were 42 in number, viz.: 38 youths and men, three girls, and one boy. They were all sent to the jail in New Haven.

When it was ascertained that the negroes were recently from Africa, and had been illegally bought at Havana, Cuba, to be enslaved, and that they had risen upon their enslavers and recovered their liberty, much in- terest was excited in the public mind. It was seen at once that some- body ought to act for these strangers. Accordingly a few friends of freedom met at 143 Nassau street, New York, and Messrs. Simeon S. Jocelyn, Joshua Leavitt, and Lewis Tappan were appointed a committee to receive donations and employ counsel; and they immediately made an appeal for funds and engaged the professional services of Messrs. Seth P. Staples, Theodore Sedgwick, Jr., and Roger S. Baldwin. An Afri- can interpreter was secured, and Messrs. Leonard Bacon, H. G. Ludlow, and Amos Townsend, Jr., of New Haven secured suitable instruction for these benighted pagans.

At the Circuit Court at Hartford, September 18, 1839, Judge Thomp- son stated that the killing of the captain of the Amistad was not a crime against the law of nations, connected as it was with the slave trade.

The Africans were then taken back to the jail at New Haven, for the District Court, to be held in November, to decide the question whether they

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were entitled to their liberty. And that court decreed that the Africans should be delivered to the executive of the United States to be sent back to Africa.

The Hon. John Quincy Adams had, at the solicitation of the commit- tee, consented to act as senior counsel, and the cause was finally argued by him and Mr. Baldwin before the Supreme Court of the United States at Washington, February and March, 1841; and apart of a letter ad- dressed to one of the committee gives.the result:

"WASHIINGTON, March 9, 1841."

To Lewis Tappan, Esquire, New York:

"The captives are free! They are to be discharged from the custody of the marshal, free. ;Not unto us — not unto us,' &c. But thanks in the name of humanity and of justice to you.

"J. Q. ADAMS."

The Africans were removed to Farmington, Conn., to the residence of Austin F. Williams, where they remained under the instruction of Pro- fessor George E. Day, until they left this country.

Accompanied by Mr. Tappan, eight or ten of these negroes were taken to several of the principal towns in Massachusetts and Connecticut, where public meetings were held and collections made. The proficiency which had been made by these strangers under such unpropitious circum- stances in reading, spelling, arithmetic, &c., greatly interested the com- munities. At last, a passage having been secured for them in a vessel bound for Sierra Leone, a farewell public meeting was held in Broadway Tabernacle, New York, Lord's day evening, November 27, 1841, when, after devotional exercises, instructions were given to the missionaries under appointment, the Rev. William Raymond and wife and the Rev. James Steele, who were to accompany the freed Africans back to their native land. Parting counsels were given to these returning Mendians, some of whom took part in the exercises, and this was the preparation for the mission work at Mendi, in Africa.

The first public movement made with reference to doing something to carry the Gospel to Africa, and for the aid of colored people in America, was by the Rev. James W. C. Pennington, the colored pastor of the First Colored Congregational Church, Hartford, Conn., who called a meeting in his own church, May 5, 1841, at which a committee was appointed to call a general meeting of the friends of missions, which was held in Hartford, August 18, 1841, to consider the subject of missions to Africa. This was the origin of associated society work for Africa, and some of the ante- cedents of the American Missionary Association, which has done so great and good a work for the freedmen, Chinese, and Indians.