In olde Connecticut; being a record of quaint, curious and romantic happenings there in colonie times and later

THE GRAFTON HISTORICAL SERIES

Edited by HENRY R. STILES, A.M., M.D.

The Grafton Historical Series
Edited by Henry R. Stiles, M.D., A.M.

In Olde Connecticut

By Charles Burr Todd
12mo. Cloth, $1.25 net (postage lOo. )

In Prett

Historic Hadley
By Alice Morehouse Walker

King Philip's War

By George W. Ellis and
John B. Morris

IN

OLDE CONNECTICUT

BEING A RECORD OF QUAINT, CURIOUS

AND ROMANTIC HAPPENINGS THERE

IN COLONIE TIMES AND LATER

CHARLES BURR TODD

Author of " The True Aaron Burr," " The History of Redding
Connecticut "

THE GRAFTON PRESS

PUBLISHERS NEW YORK

Copyright, 1906,
BY THE GRAFTON PRESS.

Editor's Introduction to the Series

The ' ' return to the soil " of the well-to-do,
which has been one of the most noteworthy ten-
dencies of American life during the last decade,
has been accompanied, naturally enough, by an
increased interest in old ways and days, old houses,
old china, old furniture and old fabrics. The in-
evitable result of this American renaissance has
been a growing desire to know the humorous,
pathetic and dramatic legends, traditions and his-
torical incidents which are associated with them,
in order to put them, so to speak, into their
proper setting.

The episodes, legends and traditions which the
more formal historians, for the most part, have
considered beneath their notice are hidden away
in letters, diaries, journals and scrap books ; docu-
ments in files of old newspapers, the logbooks of
vessels, the entries in family Bibles, the inscrip-
tions in moss-grown cemeteries and the records of
town meetings. They are to be found for the
searching in the dark corners of garrets and the
secret drawers of old secretaries. They are to be
gleaned from the confidences of the local anti-
quarian, the recollections of the proverbial " old-

2012517

vi Introduction

est inhabitant," the chatter of the good wives at
the village sewing-circle, the " yarnings " of the
worthies of the village grocery store, and from the
speeches and the sallies of the " Old Home Week
Reunion." To collect and combine into a coher-
ent whole these varied historical data is the pur-
pose of the series of which this book is the initial
volume.

It will attempt an adequate presentation of the
picturesque in American history. It will rehabil-
itate the life of our ancestors with a vividness
rivalling that of the historical novel, and with a
fidelity to fact of which the former is, in the very
nature of the case, incapable. By so doing it will
give body to our sentiment for the fact, provide
an effective background for our Americanism and
add a welcome perspective to our patriotism. It
will aid us powerfully as a nation to assign a rea-
son for the faith that is in us.

The main-travelled road is all well enough in
its way for the person whose sole aim is to reach
a given destination with the greatest possible ex-
pedition ; but it is only by forsaking the main-
travelled road, now and then, for the bypaths of
the meadows, the pastures and the woods, that
one may hope to become intimately acquainted

Introduction vii

with all the resources and beauties of the region
through which it leads. The byways of history
are vastly more charming than its highways and
every whit as significant in the last analysis.

" The stone which the builders refused is become
the head stone of the corner.'1''

HENRY REED STILES, A.M., M.D.

HILL- VIEW, NEW YORK.

FOREWORD

fT^O the sons and daughters of Connecticut
who love her history and traditions this
little book is dedicated. Many of the uncon-
sidered trifles, curious episodes, bits of quaint
and curious lore here brought together were dug
out of mines never before explored by the literary
craftsman. They were first printed in various
respectable journals such as Lippincott's Maga-
zine, The Youth's Companion, The Magazine of
American History, The New York Evening Post,
etc., but are now for the first time collected and

issued in book form.

C. B. T.
REDDING, CONN., February 6, 1906.

CONTENTS

I THE HISTORIC BURR MANSION AT

FAIRFIELD 1

II THE BURNING OF FAIRFIELD BY

THE BRITISH . . . .11

III WHALEBOAT PRIVATEERSMEN OF

THE REVOLUTION . . .21

IV SAYBROOK AND GUILFORD . . 52

V KlLLINGWORTH AND ITS BlRDS . 61

VI NEW LONDON, AN OLD TIME SEAPORT 70

VII GROTON AND MYSTIC . . .98

VIII FISHER'S ISLAND . . . .115

IX THE FROGS OF WINDHAM . . 128

X LEBANON, THE HOME OF JONATHAN

TRUMBULL .... 133

XI MOUNT TOM, A HAUNTED HILL . 142

XII A REVOLUTIONARY NEWGATE . 153

XIII CONNECTICUT'S DECLARATION OF

INDEPENDENCE .... 177

XIV ANCIENT LITCHFIELD . . . 186
XV MINING IN CONNECTICUT . . 196

XVI THE PEQUOT INDIANS . . .208

x Table of Contents

XVII GREENFIELD HILL, A ONCE FAMOUS

VILLAGE 217

XVIII THE BEGINNINGS OF A GREAT

RAILROAD 225

XIX THE PROBATE JUDGE AND THE

TOWN CLERK . 235

IN OLDE CONNECTICUT

IN OLDE CONNECTICUT

CHAPTER I

THE HISTORIC BURR MANSION AT FAIRFIELD

1HAVE dwelt for some weeks near the site of
the old Burr mansion house in this beautiful
Connecticut village, and in these few days have
become all that the most zealous antiquary could
require. I have passed whole days in delving
amid the musty records of the town and parish
religiously preserved in the vaults of the town
hall. I have held frequent chats with ancient
gentlemen whose, recollections extend beyond the
Revolution to the palmy days of this village, and
I have enjoyed the friendship and confidence of
the Oldest Inhabitant, whose reminiscences go
back to the founding of the village itself, which
occurred soon after the pious and utter extermina-
tion of the bloodthirsty Pequots in a neighboring
swamp. Most freely have been placed before me

2 In Olde Connecticut

family papers and legends sacredly preserved, and
the result is a mass of materials, legendary and
historic, which the public, if it has the least flavor
of antiquity in its composition, will be interested
in knowing, and which I shall impart as freely,
if not as gracefully, as it was delivered.

Every New England village with any preten-
sions at all to antiquity has its ancient mansion
house about which local traditions cluster, and
whose very walls are permeated with the subtle
aroma of the past. Fairfield was no exception to
this rule, and its Burr mansion house has as good
a title to historic fame, perhaps, as any of the
oldtime dwellings of Middlesex.

Tradition says that it was built about 1700 by
Chief Justice Peter Burr, one of the earliest
graduates of Harvard, Chief Justice of Connecti-
cut, and who once lacked but a few votes of be-
coming its Governor. The house stood some-
what back from the village main street on a
slight eminence beneath a canopy of elms, and,
with its dormer windows, its projecting gables
and ivy-covered wings, presented quite the ap-
pearance of a manorial structure, the effect of
which was increased on entering its wide hall
with its heavy oaken stairway, or in wandering

Historic Burr Mansion at Fairfield 3

about its chambers with their lofty walls, tiled
fireplaces and heavy oak panelings.

At the time of the Revolution, the period to
which our recollections are limited, this mansion
was owned by Thaddeus Burr, Esq., a grandson
of Judge Peter Burr, a gentleman of culture and
ample estate, and who like many of the colonial
gentry exercised an ample hospitality.

The ancient chronicles record with pride that
General Washington in his journeyings from
New York to Boston was his frequent guest.
Franklin, Lafayette, Otis, Samuel Adams, Quincy,
Watson, Governor Tryon, Dr. Dwight, the poet
Barlow, are on the house's bead-roll of famous
guests. There Trumbull and Copley dreamed
and painted, the latter doing full length portraits
of his host and hostess which are still preserved
in the family. Governor Hancock was married
there, his foster mother, Madam Hancock, died
there. Colonel Aaron Burr passed many of his
youthful days there as the guest of his cousin (not
uncle as Parton has it), Thaddeus Burr.

This fact is recorded by the old chroniclers with
special pride, nor was it difficult to discover the
reason. Burr's family was of the bluest blood of
New England and had been seated in Fairfield

4 In Olde Connecticut

for generations. His father, the Rev. Aaron
Burr, the famous divine and real founder of
Princeton College, was a native of Fairfield, Judge
Peter Burr, before mentioned, was his granduncle.
Colonel Andrew Burr, who led the Connecticut
regiment in the brilliant attack on Louisbourg
in 1745, was a cousin, and his family for genera-
tions had filled the various offices of state from
deacon in the Puritan churches to magistrates,
deputies and judges of the courts. Nor can one
of those imbued in the ancient traditions of the
village be made to admit that Burr was any other
than a bitterly persecuted man, who, as has been
said, suffered the fate of those who come into
the world a hundred years before their time, and
who was crushed by bigots, by the Federalists
whom his defection to democrary had incensed,
and by the powerful Virginia clique which his
election to the Presidency had raised up against
him.

To this mansion of historic fame, in May, 1775,
came Miss Dorothy Quincy, daughter of Edmund
Quincy of Boston, who had moved for three years
as the belle of the polite circles of that town, and
who was now the affianced bride of Governor
John Hancock. A few weeks before she had

Historic Burr Mansion at Fairfield 5

witnessed the battle of Lexington from the cham-
ber window of the house where she was visiting,
spiritedly refusing Governor Hancock's command
to return to Boston and, after the battle, had fled
with Hancock and Samuel Adams to the protec-
tion of her father's old friend in Fairfield, Thad-
deus Burr. She was accompanied, we learn, by
a chaperone in the person of Madam Hancock,
widow of Thomas Hancock, the great Boston
merchant, and uncle and foster father of John
Hancock. The beauty, wit, grace and dignity
of this lady the gossips never weary of descanting
on, and it is plainly to be seen that they regard
her residence in their village as an event which
added measurably to its historic fame.

Some two or three days after Miss Dolly's
advent, a young cavalier rode into the village from
the West and alighted at the old mansion house.
He was dressed in the height of fashion. His
sword clanked in its scabbard at his side, and the
village critics observed that he rode with the style
and bearing of a prince; this cavalier was Aaron
Burr, then a youth of twenty years, in the first
flush and beauty of manhood, who had come on
a visit to his favorite kinsman Thaddeus Burr.
When the young people were presented in the

6 In Olde Connecticut

parlors of the mansion house that evening, it is
said their surprise and pleasure were mutual, and
it is more than hinted by the gossips that conse-
quences destructive of Governor Hancock's peace
of mind might have ensued had not the sage
counsels of the elders prevailed over youthful
passion and folly. It is at least true that Miss
Dolly wrote a letter to a bosom friend not long
after in which she spoke of Burr as a handsome
young man with a pretty fortune, and complained
of the extreme caution of her aunt who would not
allow them to pass a moment alone in each other's
society. It has been said of Aaron Burr, with
hundreds of other unkind things, that he never
refused a flirtation, yet his conduct on this occa-
sion was honorable in the extreme. Whether it
was, as cousin Thaddeus is said to have hinted,
that he could not afford to have so powerful a
man as Governor Hancock for his enemy, or
whether, as is more probable, thoughts of war
filled his mind to the exclusion of those of love,
certain it is that on this occasion he fled from
temptation and, making a hasty departure from
the mansion house, he set off for Litchfield where
he entered upon his legal studies with his brother-
in-law Judge Tappan Reeve. Nor did he re-

Historic Burr Mansion at Fairfield 7

visit the mansion house that summer except
briefly in July when with his friend Ogden he
passed through the town on his way to the con-
tinental camp before Boston. Miss Dorothy,
however, passed the stirring days of that eventful
summer in the ancient village whiling away the
time as best she might. She rode, she sang, she
boated; she accompanied the young people to
their "feasts of shells," on the neighboring
beaches; she conducted harmless flirtations with
the village youths, her aunt having relaxed her
vigilance after Burr's departure; she wrote letters
to her Boston intimates, some of which still re-
main, and every fortnight the lumbering mail
coach brought her a packet from Philadelphia,
addressed in the sturdy, upright and downright
characters of John Hancock; for that worthy,
after a brief stay in the village, had gone on with
Adams and others to hold the first continental
Congress in Philadelphia. One of these letters
was shown me, having been preserved as a most
precious relic. It is addressed to "My Dear
Dolly" and is superscribed "For Miss Dorothy
Quincy at the house of Thaddeus Burr in Fair-
field." It was a cold, formal, unloverlike epistle,
and from the nature of girls was no doubt very

8 In Olde Connecticut

unsatisfactory to the fair one for whom it was
intended.

In this way the summer days passed, and when
the autumn purple and gold began to gather on
the Fairfield elms a grand wedding was celebrated
in the old mansion house — no less an affair than
the marriage of Governor John Hancock, Presi-
dent of the Continental Congress, to Miss Dorothy
Quincy, daughter of Edmund Quincy of Boston.
One can but admire the thoroughness of detail,
the nicety of finish, the old-fashioned enthu-
siasm, with which the village chroniclers describe
the event. We see Governor Hancock, attended
by a retinue of distinguished men — gentlemen,
delegates, and others returning to their homes —
ride up from the West, followed shortly after by
a more glittering train from the East with pranc-
ing steeds and costly equipage and attended by
gay cavaliers on horseback — the friends of the
bride. There is Edmund Quincy, and there are
Edmund Quincy's friends of Boston, grave, sober
men and matrons of high degree, with gallant
young cavaliers attending on stately maidens —
near and dear friends of Miss Dolly, and all of
the bluest blood of that ancient town. To swell
this train of beauty and worth Hartford and New

Historic Burr Mansion at Fairfield 9

Haven, even then the seats of a cultured and re-
fined society, had contributed their quota; and
it is even said that later in the day the Governor
and his staff added the grace of their presence to
the festive scene.

At nightfall, when the mansion was brilliantly
illuminated, the mild radiance of the lamps
beamed on a courtly throng, and on costumes
that would have made their wearers presentable
at the court of King George himself. Indeed, at
this period of their narrative the chroniclers grow
a little wearisome detailing so minutely as they
do the elaborate toilets of the ladies, the coiffures
sprinkled with diamond dust, the long-waisted
gowns, the shimmer of silks and satins, the rib-
bons, laces and ruffles, the priceless gems that
gleamed on shapely wrists and snowy shoulders.

Nor were the gentlemen forgotten, for just as
minutely were described the glossy queues, the
plum-colored coats and velvet small-clothes, the
white silk stockings, the elaborate ruffles at wrist
and throat, which formed the costumes of the
male portion of that august assemblage.

In the midst of this grand array, before Par-
son Andrew Eliot of the Fairfield church, the
stern-browed Governor and the blushing Dorothy

10 In Olde Connecticut

plighted their mutual vows after the simple ritual
of the Puritan faith.

With the blessing of Parson Eliot the old
chronicler closes his account of the wedding, but
it is said that the merrymaking was only kept
up until the morning, and that the next day the
whole bridal train set out for Boston, leaving the
old mansion to its wonted composure and quiet.
This was the last merrymaking ever held within
its walls.

During the four years of war which followed
it was the scene of many secret conclaves of the
patriot leaders, and in the British descent on
Fairfield in 1779 the house was burned in the
general conflagration of the village — a very partic-
ular account of which, by the way, is given in the
"Travels" of the venerable Dr. Dwight.

CHAPTER II

THE BURNING OF FAIRFIELD BY THE BRITISH

TN 1879 Fairfield celebrated in a fitting man-
-*• ner the centennial anniversary of the burn-
ing of the settlement by the British on the seventh
and eighth of July, 1779. To Governor Tryon
belongs the inception and success of that enter-
prise, and on him the stigma of the disgraceful
deed will ever rest. Tryon, it may not be gen-
erally known, had a special grudge against Con-
necticut, the sturdy little colony having opposed
and thwarted him in a variety of ways. Her
dragoons had scattered the types of his newspaper
organ through the streets of New York; her " Sons
of Liberty" had plotted against him even in his
own city, and she had treated with contempt his
proclamations inviting her to return to her alle-
giance, even printing them in her gazettes as speci-
mens of the Governor's pleasant humor. When
an expedition was fitted out to humble her it was
natural that a man like the Governor should be

12 In Olde Connecticut

selected as the director of its movements. Rea-
sons also existed for making Fairfield a special
object of attack. The village had always wielded
great political influence, which it had steadily
exerted in favor of rebellion; one of her sons,
General Silliman, was then in command of one of
Washington's brigades; another, Colonel Abra-
ham Gould, had fallen two years before in the
skirmish at Ridgefield, a rebel in arms ; Mr. Thad-
deus Burr, a resident enjoying great prominence in
the colony, was then publishing addresses inciting
the people to resistance, and there were a score of
families in the town who were among the most
bitter and influential foes of the British Crown.
One who depends upon the historians for his
knowledge of the attack will find it dismissed
with only a meager notice, but from a private
letter written by the Rev. Andrew Eliot of the
church at Fairfield, who was an eyewitness of
the scene, a very clear and circumstantial account
of the outrage may be gleaned. Mr. Eliot was a
son of the celebrated Rev. Andrew Eliot, so long
pastor of the Old North Church of Boston; he
was an able divine and good man; it would be
hard to find a more interesting bit of history than
his simple, yet vivid narrative of the burning of

Burning of Fairfield by the British 13

Fairfield. The letter containing it is addressed
to his brother, the Rev. John Eliot, in Boston,
and is dated at Fairfield seven days after the
events narrated occurred. It is given below al-
most entire: —

"It was in the beginning of wheat harvest, a
season of exceeding labor and festivity; a season
which promised the greatest plenty that has been
known for many years within the memory of
man. Never did our fields bear so numerous a
load, never were our prospects with regard to
sustenance so bright.

" The British fleet and army with the American
refugees that had possessed and plundered New
Haven set sail from that distressed place on the
sixth about four o'clock. Next morning the ap-
proach of the fleet was announced by the firing
of a small gun we have on Grover's Hill, contigu-
ous to the Sound. They seemed, however, to be
passing by and at about seven o'clock we with
pleasure beheld them all to the westward of us
steering, as we thought, for New York. A very
thick fog came over, which entirely deprived us
of a sight of them until between the hours of nine
and ten o'clock when the mist clearing away we
beheld the whole fleet under our western shore,

14 In Olde Connecticut

and some of them close in under Kensie's Point.
They presently came to anchor and lay until four
in the afternoon when they began to land their
troops a little to the eastward of Kensie's Point
at a place called the Pines. From thence the
troops marched along the beach until they came
to a lane opposite the center of the town, through
which they proceeded, and in about one hour
paraded in three divisions on the green, between
the meetinghouse and courthouse. From there
they detached guards and, dividing into small
parties, proceeded to their infernal business.
Their commanding officers were Sir George Col-
lier by sea and Generals Tryon and Garth by
land.

" The approach of the fleet was so sudden that
but few men could be collected, though alarm guns
were fired immediately on the dissipation of the
fog.

" There was no thought of opposing their land-
ing as our forces were nothing to theirs; our little
party, however, posted themselves so as to annoy
them to the best advantage. The town was al-
most cleared of inhabitants; a few women, some
of whom were of the most respectable families and
characters, tarried with a view of saving their

Burning of Fairfield by the British 15

property. They imagined that their sex and
character would avail to such a purpose; they
put some confidence in the generosity of an enemy
who were once famed for generosity and polite-
ness, and thought that kind treatment and sub-
missive behavior would secure them against harsh
treatment and rough usage. Alas! they were
miserably mistaken, and bitterly repented their
confidence and presumption.

"The Hessians were first let loose for rapine
and plunder; they entered houses, attacking the
persons of Whigs and Tories indiscriminately;
breaking open desks, trunks and closets, and
taking away everything of value. They robbed
the women of their buckles, rings, bonnets, aprons
and handkerchiefs; they abused them with the
foulest and most profane language, and threat-
ened their lives without the least regard to their
earnest cries and entreaties; looking-glasses, china,
and all kinds of furniture were soon dashed to
pieces. Another party that came on were the
American refugees, who, in revenge for their
confiscated estates, carried on the same direful
business. They were not, however, so abusive to
the women as the former party, but appeared
very furious against the town and country. The

16 In Olde Connecticut

Britons by what I could learn were least invet-
erate; some of the officers seemed to pity the
misfortunes of the country, but in excuse said
they had no other way to regain their authority
over us. Individuals among the British troops
were, however, exceedingly abusive, especially to
women. Some were forced to submit to the
most indelicate and rough treatment in defence
of their virtue, and now bear the bruises of horrid
conflict.

"About an hour before sunset the conflagra-
tion began at the house of Mr. Isaac Jennings,
which was consumed with the neighboring build-
ings. In the evening the house of Elijah Abell,
Esq., Sheriff of the county, was consumed with
a few others, and in the night several buildings
on the main street. General Tryon was in various
parts of the town plot, with the good women beg-
ging and entreating him to save their houses.
Mr. Sayre, the Church of England missionary,
joined with them in these entreaties. He begged
the General to spare the town, but was denied.
He then begged that some few houses might be
spared as a shelter for those who could procure
habitations nowhere else; this was denied also.
At length Mr. Tryon consented to save the houses

Burning of Fairfield by the British 17

of Mr. Burr and of the writer of this epistle;
both had been plundered long ere this. He said
likewise that the houses for public worship should
be spared. He was far from being in good tem-
per while in the town. General Garth, at the
other end of the town, treated the inhabitants
with as much humanity as his errand would
admit. . . . All the town from the bridge by
Colonel Gould's to the Mill River, a few houses
excepted, was a heap of ruins.

" About eight o'clock next morning the enemy
sounded a retreat. We had some satisfaction
amidst our sorrow and distress to see that the
meetinghouse and a few other buildings re-
mained, but the rear guard composed of banditti,
the vilest ever let loose among men, set fire to
everything that General Tryon had left, the
large and elegant meetinghouse, the minister's
house, Mr. Burr's and several other houses that
had received protection. They tore the protec-
tion to pieces, damned Tryon, abused the women
most shamefully, and then ran off in a most dis-
graceful manner. Happily our people came in
and extinguished the flames in several houses, so
that we are not entirely destitute. The rear
guard which behaved in so scandalous a manner
B

18 In Olde Connecticut

were chiefly German troops called Yagers.
They carry a small rifle, and fight in a skulking
manner, like our Indians.

"Our fort yet stands; the enemy sent a row
galley to silence it, and there was constant fir-
ing between them all night; one or two attempts
to take it were made by parties of troops, but it
was most bravely and obstinately defended by
Lieutenant Isaac Jarvis of this town, who had
but twenty-three men beside himself. Many
were killed on both sides; the number cannot be
ascertained. They carried off some prisoners,
but no persons of distinction. Our friend
Joseph Bartram was shot through the breast.
Old Mr. Solomon Sturgis, an Irish servant
of Mr. Penfield's, and a negro man belong-
ing to Mr. Lewis were put to death by the
bayonet.

"The distress of this poor people is inexpres-
sible; a most pleasant and delightful town in
flames; what a scene did the eighth of July
present ! But I must forbear. Everything I have
written you may depend upon as a fact. My pen
has not been guided by prejudice, whether my
feelings are, and should you publish this letter
every reader may be assured that there is not the

Burning of Fairfield by the British 19

least deviation from what actually took place upon
this melancholy occasion. Yours, etc.,

"ANDREW ELIOT."

A picturesque though somewhat grandiloquent
account of the burning is given in those delight-
ful chronicles the "Travels of Dr. Dwight," a
few paragraphs of which will prove an interest-
ing supplement to Mr. Eliot's narrative. After
describing the attack, the capture of the town
and the burning of the Burr mansion, which he
says was done by order of Governor Tryon, he
proceeds thus:

" While the town was in flames a thunderstorm
overspread the heavens, just as night came on.
The conflagration of nearly two hundred houses
illuminated the earth, the skirts of the clouds,
and the waves of the Sound with a union of
gloom and grandeur at once inexpressibly awful
and magnificent. The sky speedily was hung
with the deepest darkness wherever the clouds
were not tinged by the melancholy luster of the
flames. At intervals the light played with a
livid and terrible splendor; the thunder rolled
above; beneath, the roaring of the flames filled
up the intervals with a deep and hollow sound,

20 In Olde Connecticut

which seemed to be the protracted murmur of
the thunder reverberated from one end of heaven
to the other; add to this the convulsion of the
elements, and these dreadful effects of vindictive
and wanton devastation, the trembling of the
earth, the sharp sound of muskets occasionally
discharged, the groans, here and there, of the
wounded and the dying, and the shouts of tri-
umph; then place before your eyes crowds of
miserable sufferers, mingled with bodies of militia
from the neighboring hills, taking a farewell pros-
pect of their property and dwellings, their happi-
ness and their hopes, and you will find a just but
imperfect picture of the burning of Fairfield. It
needed no great effort of the imagination to be-
lieve that the final day had arrived, and that amid
the funereal darkness the morning would speedily
dawn to which no night would ever succeed, the
graves yield up their inhabitants, and the trial
commence at which was finally to be settled the
destiny of man."

CHAPTER III

WHALEBOAT PRIVATEERSMEN OF THE REVOLUTION*

THERE was one phase of our revolutionary
struggle peculiar in itself, and as interesting
as a romance because of the skill, heroism and
enterprise it developed, which historians have
failed to limn in striking and positive colors,

* As showing the solicitude of the patriot leaders for this
arm of the service, note the following letter from General
Putnam written at his camp in Redding to Lieut. Col. Gray
in command of the whaleboats:

" Head Qtrs Reading

" 25th Jany 1779
"SIR

" Some time ago Genl Parsons directed you at my request to
have the whaleboats repaired and put in the best situation for
use. I now desire that you will make me a Return of the
number of Boats fit for service under your care and as soon
as conveniently may be.

" Inclosed is a letter for Gen. Silliman which you will for-
ward by Express

" I am Sir

" Your Most Obdt Servant

"ISRAEL PUTNAM
" Lieut. Col. Gray "

22 In Olde Connecticut

partly, perhaps, because the necessary data were
difficult to obtain, and partly because the subject
was not deemed of sufficient importance to justify
so great an expenditure of labor. I refer to the
whaleboat warfare waged chiefly between the To-
ries of Long Island and the Whigs of the seaboard
towns of Connecticut, and carried on across the
waters of the narrow Sound that separated the
hostile parties. This warfare began with the out-
break of hostilities in 1775, continued to the peace
of 1783, and affected the entire coasts of both
communities, from Stamford to New London on
the Connecticut shore, and from Throgg's Neck
to Sag Harbor on the Long Island coast. The
Cowboys and Skinners of the lower Hudson were
organized gangs of plunderers who harried friend
and foe impartially. The warfare between Staten
Island and the New Jersey shore was largely a
neighborhood skirmish, the partisan warfare at
the South a conflict of clans; but the whaleboat
service of the Sound combined the characteristics
of all three, and to these added several peculiar
features of its own, such as spying on the enemy,
trading in goods declared contraband by the Brit-
ish, and abducting prominent gentlemen to be held
as hostages or for exchange. As for the origin of

Whaleboat Privateersmen 23

this peculiar service, it is found in the political
condition of the two communities at the outbreak
of hostilities, and in the organizations known as
whaling companies, which could be employed only
in a predatory, intermittent warfare. Connecti-
cut was intensely Puritan and Republican; Long
Island, settled by the conservative Dutch and by
English gentlemen whose sympathies were en-
tirely with the mother country, was as intensely
monarchial and loyal. The guns of Lexington
made these two communities bitter enemies.

The whaling companies of which mention has
been made had existed all along shore, on both
sides of the Sound, from the earliest times, and
were very perfect organizations in their way.
They were originally formed for the capture of
whales, at one time as plentiful in the Sound as
later in Delagoa Bay or on the Brazil Banks.
Even the Indians were engaged in their pursuit,
and a law was passed as early as 1708 for their
protection from any molestation or detention while
thus employed. A company comprised from
twelve to thirty men, each owning its boats and
whaling gear, and prosecuting its enterprise inde-
pendently of the others. The business long neg-
lected was renewed by Robert Murray and the

24 In Olde Connecticut

brothers Franklin, who fitted out a sloop in 1768.
In 1772 the vessels were exempted from tonnage
dues, and in 1774 the United Whaling Company
was formed with Philip Livingston for its presi-
dent. It seems to have been closed in July, 1776,
by such of the members as remained in the city
of New York. The business had nearly died out
at the beginning of the Revolution, yet the com-
pany organizations were still retained, and the
outbreak of hostilities found little squads of men
all along the shore thoroughly equipped and drilled
for partisan service. No general combination
seems to have been effected; the Tories usually
acting under commissions from the British au-
thorities, and the Whigs as a part of the militia
of their State. The objects of the different expe-
ditions, as before hinted, were various; sometimes
they took the form of reprisals on the enemy,
sometimes they carried spies, who penetrated the
hostile ranks, and returned with valuable infor-
mation. Again, they captured prominent persons,
who were held as hostages or as prisoners of war.
Sometimes they were expeditions against the en-
emy's war vessels, garrisoned posts or military
supplies, and not infrequently, it is to be feared,
they degenerated into mere plundering excursions.

Whaleboat Privateersmen 25

Having thus glanced at the preexisting condi-
tions of the warfare, it will be interesting to con-
sider in detail some of the more noteworthy
exploits of these hardy privateersmen. First, and
perhaps the most remarkable of these, was the
expedition of the lamented Captain Nathan Hale,
whose tragic story, often told, seems to gain fresh
interest with each recital. Washington, it will be
remembered, after his retreat from Long Island,
desired a thoroughly competent person to visit the
enemy's camp and report his numbers and plans
in full. Captain Hale, young, talented, but two
years out of college, the idol of the army, volun-
teered his services. "I have been nearly a year
in the service without doing anything of moment
for my country, and now that an opportunity offers
I dare not refuse," he said in answer to the re-
monstrances of his friends. Washington accepted
the sacrifice, and the chivalrous young patriot at
once began preparations for the enterprise. To
cross over directly from New York to Brooklyn
into the enemy's camp would court discovery, but
to pass eastward into some of the Connecticut
towns, thence across the Sound by means of the
whaleboat service, and so approach the hostile
camp from among its friends, offered a fair pros-

26 In Olde Connecticut

pect of success; and this plan Captain Hale
adopted. He chose Fairfield, Conn., as his point
of departure. This town was then one of the first
importance, and exerted as much influence in
State affairs as either New Haven or Hartford.
It was the center of the republican cause in West-
ern Connecticut, and, as will be seen, the nucleus
of the whaleboat service, expeditions radiating
from it in all directions except landward, like
spokes from a hub. The ancient town was al-
ready in arms, its two militia companies were
fully armed and equipped, a patrol of twenty sea-
men guarded the coast nightly from sunset to sun-
rise against Tory incursions, and two whaleboat
crews had already been out spying the enemy's
movements and harrassing him whenever an op-
portunity offered. Captain Hale arrived in the
town on the 14th of September, 1776, bearing a
letter from General Washington, instructing any
of the American armed vessels to speed his pas-
sage across the Sound. Presenting this letter to
the town Committee of Safety, a whaleboat and
its crew were at once put in requisition, and that
same night he was safely and secretly conveyed to
the island, and reached Huntington early next
morning, from which place he succeeded in pen-

Whaleboat Privateersmen 27

etrating the British lines. His subsequent move-
ments and sad fate are too well known to need
recapitulation here. After this episode no further
action of importance is found in the annals of the
service until the August of 1777. In the begin-
ning of that year a company of Tories, under Col-
onel Richard Hewlett, took possession of the old
Presbyterian Church in Brookhaven on Long Is-
land, nearly opposite Fairfield, and proceeded to
fortify it, surrounding it with a stockade and other
defensive works. Early in August Colonel Abra-
ham Parsons, who later rose to the command of
a brigade in General Putnam's division, began
collecting a force in Fairfield for the reduction of
this novel fortress. Having mustered one hun-
dred and fifty men, provided with muskets and
one brass six-pounder, he embarked from Black
Rock Harbor in Fairfield in a sloop and six whale-
boats for the purpose of capturing the Tory strong-
hold. It was the evening of the 14th of August,
1777, and before daybreak next morning they had
landed at Crane Neck Bend, near the village.
Here leaving their boats they marched quickly to
the church, dragging the six-pounder through the
sands. Arrived at a proper distance, the de-
tachment halted, and a flag of truce was sent to

28 In Olde Connecticut

Colonel Hewlett, demanding an unconditional sur-
render. This being refused, fire was opened at
once, and returned in a spirited manner by the
besieged. Before anything could be accomplished,
however, word was brought that a British fleet
was sailing down the Sound, and fearing that his
retreat might be cut off, Colonel Parsons ordered
his detachment to the boats. They re-embarked
in good order and reached Black Rock the same
evening, bringing with them no trophies except a
few of the enemy's horses and some military stores.
For the next year and a half the whaleboat service
was chiefly employed in spying on the enemy, cut-
ting off his unarmed vessels, making plundering
incursions into his lines, and harrassing him in
much the same manner that the gad-fly torments
the ox. Indeed, such was their enterprise, that
no royalist on Long Island considered himself safe
without an armed guard, and most of the British
officers on the island repaired to New York and
Brooklyn for protection.

In the spring of 1779 Sir Henry Clinton deter-
mined to pay off the Connecticut privateersmen
in their own coin. General Gold Selleck Silliman,
a descendant of an old Connecticut family, was
then living at Holland Hill, a fine old country seat

Whale boat Privateersmen 29

in the town of Fair-field, about two miles out of
the village. He was one of the most prominent
Whigs in his section. After the battle of Long
Island, and before the army moved from New
York, General Washington had given him the
command of a brigade. Later Governor Trum-
bull had made him his deputy in consultations
with the Commander-in-Chief, and there is still
extant a long letter from Washington to him, on
matters connected with the army, written while
he was acting in this capacity. He had been
trained to the law, and as a delegate to the Con-
tinental Congress had done good service for the
people. At the time of which I write he was a
member of the town's Committee of Inspection
and Correspondence, and had been appointed by
the Governor and Council commander of all the
State forces in the vicinity of Fairficld, his house
at Holland Hill being retained as his headquarters.
General Clinton now determined on his capture.
He selected a man named Glover, a Tory refugee,
formerly of Newtown, who had once worked for
the General and knew him well, with eight other
refugees, for this purpose. The party left Lloyd-
Neck, L. I., in a whaleboat on the evening of the
first of May, and reached Fairfield about mid-

30 In Olde Connecticut

night, when, leaving one man to guard the boat,
the others surrounded the Silliman mansion and
began rapping for admission. The journal of
Mrs. Silliman contains so graphic an account of
the attack and abduction that it is given in her
own words:

" At a midnight hour, when we were all asleep,
the house was attacked. I was first awakened by
the General's calling out, 'Who's there ? ' At that
instant there was a banging at both doors, they
intending to break them down or burst them open
— and this was done with great stones as big al-
most as they could lift, which they left at the door.
My dear companion then sprang up, caught his
gun and ran to the front of the house and, as the
moon shone brightly, saw them through the win-
dow and attempted to fire, but his gun only
flashed and missed fire. At that instant the en-
emy burst in a window, sash and all, jumped in,
seized him and said he was their prisoner, and
must go with them. He asked if he might dress
himself. They said yes, if he would be quick.
They followed him into the bedroom, where I and
my dear little boy lay, with their guns and bayo-
nets fixed; their appearance was dreadful; it was
then their prisoner addressed them in mild terms

Whaleboat Privateersmen 31

and begged them to leave the room, and told them
their being there would frighten his wife. They
then withdrew for a moment or two, and then re-
turned, when he asked them out again and shut
the door. After that I heard them breaking the
windows, which they wantonly did with the
breeches of their guns. They then asked him for
his money; he told them he had none but conti-
nental, and that would do them no good. Then
they wished his papers. He said his public papers
were all sent abroad, and his private papers would
be of no use to them. Then some wanted one
thing and some another. He told them mildly he
hoped he was in the hands of gentlemen, and that
it was not their purpose to plunder. With these
arguments he quieted them so that they plundered
but little. They then told him he must go. He
asked if he might take leave of his wife. They
said yes if he would make haste — he then came in
and dropped a bundle of his most valuable private
papers under something on the table, took leave
of me with great seeming fortitude and composure,
and went away with them. As soon as I heard
the door shut I arose and went to the bedroom
of our son William, and found he was gone, al-
though I did not hear any of them taking him. I

32 In Olde Connecticut

then went to the door and saw them bearing away
their prisoners. I then went to inform those at
the next house, when they fired a gun, which
frightened the enemy very much, as they had not
got above a quarter of a mile from our house.
They took them down about two miles to their
whaleboat, where they had left one man, and pro-
ceeded on their journey to Long Island. I heard
nothing more from them in three weeks. After
three weeks I received a letter from the General
informing me where he was. I think they were
then at Flatbush on Long Island. In that he told
me where to send my letters to him for inspection,
as no letters were suffered to pass without. . . .
Nine men came over in the boat. They embarked
between the hours of one and two o'clock Sabbath
morning, and had a boisterous time over. They
took a fusee, a pair of elegant pistols inlaid with
silver, and an elegant sword which one of them
who had worked at our house took much pleasure
in flourishing about, and he it was who piloted
them. On arriving at (Lloyd-Neck) Long Island
they were hailed by Colonel Simcoe, who com-
manded there: 'Have you got him?' 'Yes.'
'Have you lost any men ? ' 'No. ' 'That's well, '
said Simcoe. 'Your Sillimans and your Washing-

Whaleboat Privateersmen 33

tons are not worth a man. ' He then ordered his
men to the guard house with the prisoner. Said
the General ' Am I going to the guard house ? '
' Yes ! ' When they came there, he said to the Ad-
jutant, ' Is it thus you treat prisoners of my rank ? '
He said, ' We do not look on you as we should on
a continental General. ' ' But how will you view
me when an exchange is talked of?' 'I under-
stand you, Sir, ' and walked out, as I suppose, to
report to his commanding officer. Soon after a
horse and carriage was sent to bring them to New
York, guarded by a corps of dragoons. On his
arrival all flocked to see the rebel. They gave him
good lodgings until he was ordered to Flatbush,
where he remained until exchanged for Judge
Jones. "

This bold abduction excited the liveliest commo-
tion, not only in the town, but throughout the
State, and led to redoubled vigilance on the part
of the coast guard, which had somewhat slackened
in watchfulness as the days passed on and no en-
emy appeared. Negotiations were at once opened
with the enemy for an exchange of their prisoner,
but it was soon found that the Americans had no
one in their possession whom the British would
consider an equivalent for the General. In no-
C

34 In Olde Connecticut

wise disconcerted, however, the hardy privateers-
men determined on capturing some person of equal
rank, and began casting about for a prisoner.
There was then living at Fort Neck, a village in
the town of Oyster Bay, Long Island, the Hon.
Thomas Jones, a Justice of the Supreme Court of
the Province of New York, a staunch royalist; this
gentleman was selected as a proper subject for
their enterprise. Through the golden autumn
days a plan was slowly matured in the village.
Captain David Hawley, one of the most skillful
captains in the service, aided by Captains Lock-
wood and Jones, quietly enlisted twenty-five of the
bravest men in their commands, and on the even-
ing of the 4th of November, 1779, set off in whale-
boats from Newfield (now Bridgeport) Harbor.
A few hours brought them across the Sound, and
into Stony Brook Creek near Smithtown, where
they disembarked and at once set out for the
Judge's residence, fifty-two miles distant. They
arrived there about nine o'clock on the evening
of the 6th. A merry party had assembled at the
mansion, music and dancing were in progress, and
the noise effectually prevented the approach of
the party from being heard. Captain Hawley
knocked at the door, but perceiving that no one

Whaleboat Privateersmen 35

heard him, forced it, entered and found Judge
Jones standing in the hall. Telling the Judge
that he was his prisoner, he forced him to depart
with him, together with a young man named Hew-
lett. According to the journal above quoted, the
party met with several adventures on their return
to the boats. At one place they had to pass a
guard of soldiers posted near the road. Here
the Judge hemmed very loud, whereupon Captain
Hawley forbade him to repeat the sound. He,
however, repeated it, but on being told that a repe-
tition would be attended by fatal consequences
he desisted, and the picket was passed in safety.
When day broke the adventurers concealed them-
selves in a thick forest until nightfall, and then
resumed their journey. They reached their boats
on the third night, and crossed to Black Rock with
their prisoners, having met with no mishaps ex-
cept the loss of six men, who, having lagged be-
hind on the third night, were captured by the
light horse which closely pursued them. Mrs.
Silliman, a most amiable and accomplished lady,
hearing of the Judge's arrival, sent him an invi-
tation to breakfast, which he accepted, and during
his stay in Fairfield he was the guest of the man-
sion, its fair mistress doing all in her power to

36 In Olde Connecticut

make his situation agreeable; yet we are told that
he remained distant, reserved and sullen. After
several days he was removed to Middletown on
the Connecticut, and negotiations were again
opened for an exchange. It was six months, how-
ever, before the British would accept the terms
proposed; but at length, in May, 1780, they agreed
that if a certain notorious refugee, named Wash-
burn, could be included in the exchange, they
would release General Silliman for Judge Jones,
and his son for Mr. Hewlett. A very pleasant
incident of the transfer of the prisoners is re-
corded. The vessel bearing General Silliman met
the one conveying Judge Jones in the middle of
the Sound, whereupon the vessels were brought
to, and the gentlemen dined amicably together,
after which they proceeded to their respective
homes.

A little more than a year elapsed, and then the
village was stirred by the departure of another ex-
pedition, bound on a still more hazardous service.
It consisted of eighty men, part of them dis-
mounted dragoons from Colonel Sheldon's regi-
ment, and was under the command of Major,
afterwards Colonel, Benjamin Tallmadge, who will
be remembered as attending Major Andre at the

Whaleboat Privateersmen 37

scaffold, and afterwards as a representative in
Congress from Connecticut for sixteen years. The
object of the expedition was Fort St. George,
erected on a point projecting into the Great South
Bay, at Mastic, L. I. The party embarked at
Fairfield, November 21, 1780, at 4 p. M., in eight
whaleboats. "They crossed the Sound in four
hours, and landed at Oldman's at nine o'clock.
The troops had marched about five miles, when,
it beginning to rain, they returned and took shelter
under their boats, and lay concealed in the bushes
all that night and the next day. At evening, the
rain abating, the troops were again put in motion,
and at three o'clock in the morning were within
two miles of the fort. Here he divided his men
into three parties, ordering each to attack the fort
at the same time at different points. The order
was so well executed that the three divisions ar-
rived nearly at the same time. It was a triangular
inclosure of several acres, thoroughly stockaded,
well barricaded houses at two of the angles, and
at the third a fort, with a deep ditch and wall,
encircled by an abatis of sharpened pickets pro-
jecting at an angle of forty-five degrees. The
stockade was cut down, the column led through
the grand parade, and in ten minutes the main

38 In Olde Connecticut

fort was carried by the bayonet. The vessels near
the fort, laden with stores, attempted to escape,
but the guns of the fort being brought to bear upon
them, they were secured and burnt, as were the
works and stores. The number of prisoners was
fifty-four, of whom seven were wounded. While
they marched to the boats under an escort, Major
Tallmadge proceeded with the remainder of the
detachment, destroyed about three hundred tons
of hay collected at Coram, and returned to the
place of debarkation just as the party with the
prisoners arrived, and reached Fairfield by eleven
o'clock the same evening, having accomplished the
enterprise, including a march of forty miles by
land and as much by water, without the loss of
a man. "

For this exploit Major Tallmadge was honored
with an autograph letter of thanks from General
Washington, and with a complimentary resolution
from Congress. It was not the first nor the last
time that this gallant officer made use of the
whaleboat service to annoy the enemy. Very
early in the war he had opened a secret corre-
spondence for Washington with the Whigs of Long
Island, and kept one or more boats constantly em-
ployed in this service. In 1777 a band of Tory

Whaleboat Privateersmen 39

marauders had established themselves, under the
protection of a strongly fortified post erected by
the British, on a promonotory between Hunting-
ton and Oyster Bay, whence they would steal
out in their boats and commit depredations
on the Connecticut coast. Tallmadge, learning
of the retreat of this horde of bandits, determined
to break it up, and on the 5th of September, 1777,
embarked with 130 men at Shippan's Point, near
Stamford, at eight o'clock in the evening, landed
at Lloyd's Neck, captured the entire party, and
returned to Stamford before morning dawned; and
again in October, 1781, he embarked his forces at
Norwalk and captured and burned Fort Slongo
at Tredwell's Bank, near Smithtown, bringing off
a number of prisoners and a piece of artillery.

Captain Caleb Brewster of Fairfield was an-
other Continental officer who figures largely in
the records of the whaleboat service. In 1781 he
captured an armed boat with her crew on the
Sound, and brought both safely into Fairfield, and
on the 7th of December, 1782, was the hero of
one of the most famous and desperate encounters
of the privateersmen, which is still spoken of in
Fairfield as the "boat fight." On the morning
of that day several of the enemy's armed boats

40 In Olde Connecticut

were seen proceeding down the Sound, and Cap-
tain Brewster, with his hardy veterans, at once put
out from Fairfield to intercept them. Forcing his
boats into the midst of the enemy's fleet, a hand
to hand conflict ensued, so deadly that in twenty
minutes nearly every man on both sides was either
killed or wounded, the gallant captain himself be-
ing pierced by a rifle ball through the shoulder.
Two of the enemy's boats were captured in this
affair, the others succeeding in making their es-
cape. This gallant act brought the captain the
plaudits of his countrymen, and a pension for life
from Congress. In a year his wound had so far
recovered that he was ready for active service
again, and took command of an expedition for
capturing the Fox, a British armed vessel that had
been stationed in the Sound to prevent the roam-
ing of the privateersmen, and had long been a
source of annoyance to them. On a dark night —
the 9th of March, 1783— the boats left Fairfield,
and stealing upon the Fox as she lay at anchor,
captain and men leaped on board with fixed bay-
onets, and in two minutes the vessel was at their
mercy. Captain Johnson of the Fox and two of
his men were killed and several wounded, while
of the patriots not a person was injured. After

Whale boat Privateersmen 41

the war Captain Brewster was commander of the
revenue cutter of the district of New York for a
number of years. He died at Black Rock, Fair-
field, February 13, 1827, aged seventy-nine years.
But the operations of the whaleboatmen were
not always of an offensive character; they were
sometimes obliged to act on the defensive — but
generally, even in such cases, with credit to them-
selves. Early in March, 1780, a band of seven
men, commanded by one Alexander Graham, a
deserter from the American army, but who then
bore a commission from General Howe, authoriz-
ing him to recruit Connecticut Tories for the Brit-
ish army, landed on the coast at or near Branford,
and marched inland to the house of Captain Eben-
ezer Dayton in Bethany, a merchant, who had
been obliged to flee from Long Island to escape
the persecutions of the Tories. In the absence of
the Captain they broke into the house, and de-
stroyed or carried off nearly five thousand pounds
worth of property. From this place they pro-
ceeded to Middlebury where they were secreted
in the cellar of a Tory family for several days,
and afterward to Oxford, where they lay several
days longer in a barn. At length, leaving their
retreat here, they passed through Derby, and down

42 In Olde Connecticut

the Housatonic to Stratford, where they took a
whaleboat and set out for Long Island. Their
passage through Derby had been discovered, how-
ever, and two whaleboats with their crews, under
command of Captains Clark and Harvey, started
in pursuit, and after a brisk chase succeeded in
overhauling the marauders just as they were en-
tering the British lines. They were brought back
in triumph, tried and condemned — Graham, the
commander, to be hanged, and the others to the
tender mercies of the old Newgate.

No unimportant place in the annals of the whale-
boat service of the Revolution belongs to Captain
Marriner of Harlem and Captain Hyler of New
Brunswick. In an old time-stained copy of the
" Naval Magazine," printed nearly sixty years ago,
is to be found a very interesting and gossipy ac-
count of these famous chieftains, communicated
by General Jeremiah Johnson, himself a revolu-
tionary veteran and privy to the facts which he
relates. I give the article nearly entire:

" Hyler and Marriner cruised between Egg Har-
bor and Staten Island. Hyler took several ships
and levied contributions on the New York fisher-
men on the fishing banks. He frequently visited
Long Island. He took a Hessian Major at night

Whaleboat Privateersmen 43

from the house of Michael Bergen at Gowanus,
when his soldiers were encamped near the house.
He surprised and took a sergeant's guard at Ca-
narsie from the house of their Captain, Schenck.
The guards were at supper, and their muskets
standing in the hall, when Hyler entered with his
men. He seized the arms, and, after jesting with
the guards, he borrowed the silver spoons for his
family; took a few other articles, with all the mus-
kets, and made one prisoner. He sent the guard
to report themselves to Colonel Axtell, and re-
turned to New Jersey. Captain Hyler also paid a
visit to Colonel Lott at Flatlands. The Colonel
was known to be rich; his money and his person
were the objects desired. He was surprised in his
house and taken. His cupboard was searched for
money, and some silver found; and, on further
search, two bags supposed to contain guineas were
discovered. These, with the silver, the Colonel
and two of his negroes, were taken to New Bruns-
wick. In the morning, on the passage up the
Raritan, the captain and crew agreed to count
and divide the guineas. The bags were opened,
when, to the mortification of the crew, they found
the bags contained only halfpennies belonging to
the church of Flatlands; and the Colonel also dis-

44 In Olde Connecticut

covered that his guineas were safe at home. The
crew were disappointed in their Scotch prize.
They, however, determined to make the most of
the adventure; they took the Colonel and his ne-
groes to New Brunswick, where they compelled
him to ransom his negroes, and then permitted
him to return home on parole. Captain Hyler also
took a corvette of twenty guns about nine o'clock
at night in Coney Island Bay. The ship lay at
anchor, bound for Halifax, to complete her crew.
The night was dark; one of the boats with muf-
fled oars was rowed up close under the stern of
the ship, where the officers were to be seen at a
game of cards in the cabin, and no watch on deck.
The spy-boat then fell astern to her consort and
reported, when orders were passed to board. The
boats were rowed up silently — the ship boarded
instantly on both sides — and not a man was in-
jured. The officers were confined in the cabin
and the crew below. The Captain ordered the
officers and crew to be taken out of the ship, well
fettered and placed in the whaleboats. After-
wards a few articles were taken from the ship and
she was set on fire, when Captain Hyler left her
with his prisoners from New Brunswick.

"My informant, one of the men who took the

Whaleboat Privateersmen 45

ship, stated that the captain of the corvette wept
as they were crossing the Bay, and reproached
himself for permitting one of his Majesty's ships
to be surprised and taken by ' two d — d egg shells, '
and he added that there were $40,000 on board
the burning vessel, which Captain Hyler and his
crew deserved for their gallant enterprise. The
booty however was lost.

"After the notorious refugee Lippincott had
barbarously murdered Captain Huddy at Sandy
Hook, General Washington was very anxious to
have the murderer secured. He had been de-
manded from the British General and his surrender
refused. Retaliation was decided on by General
Washington. Young Asgill was to be the innocent
victim to atone for the death of Captain Huddy.
He was saved by the mediation of the Queen of
France. Captain Hyler determined to take Lippin-
cott. On inquiry he found that he resided in a
well known house in Broad street, New York.
Dressed and equipped like a man-of-war press-
gang, he left the Kills with one boat after dark,
and arrived at Whitehall about nine o'clock. Here
he left his boat in charge of three men, and then
passed to the residence of Lippincott, where he
inquired for him, and found he was absent and

46 In Olde Connecticut

gone to a cockpit. Captain Hyler thus failed in
the object of his pursuit and visit to the city. He
returned to his boat with his press-gang, and left
Whitehall; but finding a sloop lying at anchor off
the Battery from the West Indies laden with rum,
he took the vessel, cut her cable, set her sails, and
with a northeast wind sailed to Elizabethtown
Point, and before daylight had landed from her,
and secured, forty hogsheads of rum. He then
burned the sloop to prevent her recapture.

" Captain Marriner resided many years at Har-
lem and on Ward's Island after the war. He was
a man of eccentric character, witty and ingenious,
and abounding in anecdotes; but he had his faults.
He had been taken by the British, was on parole
in King's County, and quartered with Rem Van-
pelt of New Utrecht. The prisoners among the
officers had the liberty of the four southern towns
of the county. Many of them frequented Dr. Van
Buren's Tavern in Flatbush. Here our captain's
sarcastic wit in conversation with Major Sher-
brook of the British army led to abusive language
from the Major to the prisoner. After some time
Marriner was exchanged, when he determined to
capture Major Sherbrook. Colonel Matthews
(Mayor of New York), Colonel Axtell and a Major

Whaleboat Privateersmen 47

Bache, who all resided in Flatbush, were noted
and abusive Tories, and obnoxious to the Ameri-
can officers. For the purpose of carrying his de-
sign into execution, he repaired to New Brunswick
and procured a whaleboat. This he manned with
a crew of well armed volunteers, with whom he
proceeded to New Utrecht, and landed on the
beach at Bath, about half -past nine o'clock in the
evening. Leaving two men in charge of the boat,
with the rest of the crew he marched unmolested
to Flatbush church, where he divided his men into
four squads, assigning a house to each; each party
or squad was provided with a heavy post to break
in the doors. All was silent in the village. Cap-
tain Marriner selected the house of George Mar-
tence, where his friend, the Major, quartered, for
himself; the other parties proceeded to their as-
signed houses. Time was given to each to arrive
at its destination; and it was agreed that when
Marriner struck his door the others were to break
in theirs, and repair to the church with their
prisoners. The doors were broken at the same
time. Marriner found the Major behind a large
chimney in the garret where he had hidden him-
self; and where he surrendered in the presence of
his landlady who lit the way for Marriner. The

48 In Olde Connecticut

Major was permitted to take his small-clothes in
his hand, and thus was marched to the church
where the parties assembled. Mr. Bache was
taken. Cols. Axtell and Matthews being at New
York escaped capture. The parties marched with
their prisoners unmolested to their boat and re-
turned safe to New Brunswick. This event took
place about midsummer on a fair moonlight night.

"Captain Marriner also paid Simon Cortelyou
of New Utrecht a visit; and took him to New
Brunswick as a return for his uncivil conduct to
the American prisoners. He took his tankard and
several articles also which he neglected to return.
After Captain Marriner's visit to Flatbush, four
inhabitants of New Utrecht were taken separately,
and separately imprisoned in the Provost, in New
York, on suspicion of having been connected with
Marriner in his enterprise, viz., Colonel Van Brunt,
his brother Adrian Van Brunt, Rem Vanpelt, and
his brother Art Vanpelt. "

As the war progressed, the boldness and adven-
turous spirit of the privateersmen increased, until
towards the close, the entrances to New York were
in a state of blockade, which even armed vessels did
not always attempt to force singly. The Narrows
and the Sound swarmed with whaleboats. The

Whaleboat Privateersmen 49

fishing industry on which the inhabitants of New
York greatly depended for food, and which was a
main source of supply to the beleaguered garrison,
was almost wholly broken up. The fisheries had
always been a matter of concern to the merchants,
and annual bounties were paid to the vessels bring-
ing in the largest quantities of deep-sea fish.

The Shrewsbury banks, a favorite fishing
ground, and the main source of supply to the New
York market, were jealously watched. In the safe
cover of the Shrewsbury River, Hyler lay in wait to
pounce upon the adventurous or unwary who cast
a line or dragged a net within its assumed juris-
diction. Unlike the British Admiral on the sta-
tion, he granted no passes for illicit trade, but took
his toll in another fashion. On one occasion it
is related of him that he captured two fishing ves-
sels which he ransomed at one hundred dollars
each, and within the week recaptured one of the
same boats, which had again ventured within his
reach. Such was the frequency of these captures
that the Tory merchants who revived the Chamber
of Commerce during the war, made application
to Admiral Arbuthnot for " the protection of the
fishermen employed on the banks of Shrewsbury. "
The Admiral purchased a vessel mounting twelve
D

50 In Olde Connecticut

carriage guns and requested that the city would
man her, but the seamen placed little faith in the
promises from British naval officers, and hesitated
to enter a service, the exit of which was as hopeless
as from the Inferno of Dante. The " hot press "
was the terror of American sailors before and after
the war; indeed, till Hull and Decatur and Preble
laid an injunction upon it at the cannon's mouth.
In 1782 similar application was made to Admi-
ral Graves, who had succeeded Arbuthnot on the
station, and the intervention of General Robertson,
the military commandant of the city, was invoked
" to encourage the fishermen to take fish for a sup-
ply to this garrison, and that its commerce may not
be annoyed by the privateersmen and whaleboats
that infest the narrows. " The newspapers of
1781 are full of Hyler's exploits, which sometimes
reached higher game than fishing smacks. In
June, he and an associate, Captain Story, in two
whaleboats boarded and took the schooner Skip
Jack (which mounted six carriage guns besides
swivels), at high noon, and burned her in sight of
the guard ship and the men of war on the station,
and on the same cruise carried off three small
trading vessels laden with contraband cattle on
the way from the Jersey Tories to New York.

Whaleboat Privateersmen 51

Captain Adam Hyler was of New Brunswick.
He died in the fall of 1782 and was honorably
mentioned in the " New Jersey Gazette," for
"his many heroic and enterprising acts in an-
noying and distressing the enemy. "

The whaleboats used on their excursions were
formidable enemies. They were upwards of
thirty-five feet long, were rowed with eight oars,
carried two heavy sails and were armed with a
large swivel. They depended on neither wind
nor tide for their progress in pursuit or flight.

After the war Captain Marriner resumed his
avocation of tavern keeper, in the course of which
he occupied several houses in the village of Har-
lem, which were in turn a favorite resort of the
politicians and military men of the city. He was
also largely patronized by the disciples of Izaak
Walton, who angled for bass or dropped their line
for the tautog in the stirring waters of Hell Gate
and its vicinity. Marriner also figures in history
as the caterer who provided the dinner for General
Washington and his suite, on their visit to the
ruins of Fort Washington in 1790. The Com-
mander-in-Chief refers to the affair in his journal,
under date of July 10 of that year.

CHAPTER IV

SAYBROOK AND GUILFORD, 1880

OLD SAYBROOK is almost the only Con-
necticut town that boasts nobility for its
founders, and a real lord and lady for its first gov-
ernors. Almost two hundred and fifty years ago,
we learn from the old chroniclers, Lord Say and
Seal, Lord Brook, Colonel Fenwick, and " other
gentlemen of distinction in England, " procured a
patent of the territory " lying west from Narragan-
sett River, a hundred and twenty miles on the sea-
coast, and from thence in latitude and breadth
aforesaid to the South Sea. " A quaint old docu-
ment, it is said, was this patent, which, after
defining in obsolete legal terms, the metes and
bounds of the grant, its " privileges and appurte-
nances" of woods, uplands, arable lands, mead-
ows, pastures, ponds, havens, ports, waters,
rivers, adjoining islands, fishings, huntings, fowl-
ings, mines, minerals, quarries and precious
stones, closed as follows:

Saybrook and Guilford, 1880 53

"According to the tenour of his majestie's
manor of East Greenwich, in the county of Kent
in ye kingdom of England, in free and common
soccage, and not in cappitu nor by Knight serv-
ice; they yielding and paying therefor to our sov-
ereign Lord the King, his heirs and successors,
only the fifth part of all the Oar of Gold and Silver
which from time to time, and at all times hereafter
shall be gotten, had or otherwise obtained. "

The first step of the patentees was to plant a
settlement in their new possessions, and early in
1635 they deputed John Winthrop, son of the
famous Governor Winthrop, to build a fort on
Saybrook Point, which should serve as a nucleus
for the proposed settlement, and the site of which
is still pointed out to the tourist, on a little emi-
nence commanding the mouth of the Connecticut
River. This fort is a central form in the history
of the State. The waves of Pequot and Narra-
gansett warfare rolled about it for almost half a
century; several times it was beseiged, and a hun-
dred moving tales of ambush and rally, of cap-
ture, torture and individual murder are related
by the antiquarians of the village concerning it.
Only a few days after the fort was begun a Dutch
vessel from New Netherlands came hither with

54 In Olde Connecticut

the view to taking possession of the river, but was
driven off by the guns of the fort. From its walls
Captain Mason and his men on a May day in
1637 set out for the destruction of Pequot fort and
nation at Groton, and here Governor Andros in
1675 made his first attempt against the chartered
rights of the colony by sailing up from New York
with an armed force and demanding the surrender
of the fort.

In 1639 Colonel George Fenwick arrived and
continued to act as Governor of the plantation un-
til it was sold to the colony of Connecticut in
1644, the noble owners of the patent having re-
linquished their former plan of improving their
grant in person. Colonel Fenwick was accom-
panied by his wife, Lady Anne Butler, daughter
of an English nobleman, the first lady of rank
who appears in the colonies, and whose story
forms one of the most romantic and interesting
episodes in the history of Saybrook. With true
wifely devotion she refused to allow her husband
to depart for the New World alone, and leaving
behind the comforts and refinements of life in the
English upper class she followed him hither, and
shared with him the perils of Indian warfare and
the privations of the wilderness. The brave lady's

Saybrook and Guilford, 1880 55

love and devotion cost her dear; she died in 1648,
nine years after her arrival, and was buried a few
yards southwest of the fort, on a slight eminence
known to this day as Tomb Hill. The bereaved
husband erected a monument to mark her grave,
and soon after sailed away to England, where he
figured in history as one of the judges of the un-
fortunate King Charles the First. For more than
two hundred years the brave lady's tomb remained
amid the bleakness and barrenness of the Point.
At length the line of the Connecticut Valley Rail-
road was laid out directly through it and, yielding
to the exigencies of modern progress, the interest-
ing relic was removed. In opening the grave a
floss of her bright golden hair was found perfectly
preserved; it is now owned by a conductor on the
Valley Railroad whose antiquarian tastes led him
to appropriate that which no one else valued.
The tourist now looks in the village cemetery for
the poor lady's cenotaph, a shapeless monument,
rudely carved from the red sandstone of the valley,
and from some unexplained cause bearing no in-
scription whatever, probably because the hard,
stern, Puritan spirit forbade to a woman the glow-
ing panegyric necessary in order to do justice to
her virtues. This part of Saybrook is now called

56 In Olde Connecticut

Fenwick, I suppose in her honor, and the large
summer hotel built here in 1871 received its name,
Fenwick Hall, probably for the same reason.

But Saybrook once barely missed an honor
greater than any which have been narrated. Over
on the south end of the Point — a region of shifting
sands and bunches of beach grass, that at the
touch of the sea breeze vibrates with the tunes of
a hundred ^Eolian harps, and which is now occu-
pied only by the hotels and the great lighthouse —
a city was once laid out, with streets and squares,
a park, a public mart, and wharfs for the shipping;
then the colonists began to whisper of the arrival
of distinguished strangers, and to scan the distant
sea line for an expected sail. The strangers thus
looked for, the old chronicles go on to say, were
Cromwell, Pym, Hasselrig and Hampden, the four
most illustrious commoners in English annals, who
at one time had made all preparations to emigrate
to the New World, once actually embarking for
the voyage, but were driven back by adverse winds,
and from some unknown cause were led to aban-
don their project; and so the colonists were dis-
appointed and the city lots left to return to their
original barrenness.

It was at Saybrook that Yale College had its

Saybrook and Guilford, 1880 57

birth, and the first fifteen Commencements of the
institution were held here; and in this village, in
the autumn of 1708, assembled the convention of
Puritan ministers which adopted the famous Say-
brook Platform. It may be readily imagined that
the latter was one of the great events of the village.
The state of the church at that time was such
as to awaken the gravest apprehensions. The
liberal doctrines of Roger Williams — the most
trenchant foe that Calvinism ever encountered —
were advancing from the East. Antinomianism,
the Anabaptist and Pedobaptist heresies were
prevalent. Quakers had been harbored in the
colony, and to add to the pressure of foes without
there were strifes and wranglings among the
churches themselves; and so the Puritan leaders
called a convention of the entire church to meet
at Saybrook. The delegates came on horseback
from every part of the colony — from Hartford,
Simsbury and the East, from Litchfield, Fairfield
and the towns and villages between. It was the
season of Commencement in the college. The
morning after their arrival the convention met.
How readily the imagination recalls the scene!
The throng of strangers, the pleasant air of bustle
and excitement in the village, and then, at the

58 In Olde Connecticut

stroke of the bell in the ancient church, grave,
sober-suited figures come forth from the doors of
the villagers. As in a pageant they pass down the
village street. On some of the faces under the
broad-brimmed hats rests an almost divine benev-
olence, on others a grim austerity lowers; there is
an earnestness and glow about them that attracts,
and a severe dignity that repels. How rebukingly
they gaze upon the idle dreamer and scribbler
under the elms! How with a look they would
have crushed the petted and perfumed striplings
of the modern pulpit !

The church doors close upon the retreating
forms, and there is framed the platform that is to
be the sheet-anchor of the Congregational churches
for almost twice a hundred years.

At the risk of prolixity I must speak of another
excursion that I made to Guilford, sixteen miles
distant. The ancient village is dear to all lovers
of poetry as the birthplace of one of the earliest
and sweetest of American poets, Fitz-Greene Hal-
leek. Here, in 1790, the poet was born, and here
he served as a clerk in the village store until called
to a position in the counting-room of the Astors;
and here, after writing a grand lyric and passing

Saybrook and Guilford, 1880 59

almost half a century in the gay city, courted and
caressed by its highest society, he returned, as old
age crept on, to bear its burdens and share its
pleasures with the friends of his childhood, under
the same old elms that had sheltered him in in-
fancy, and here he continued to live until his death
in 1867. The poet's grave and monument are
shown in the neat Alderbrook Cemetery on the
Madison road, about a mile west of the village.
The monument is of granite, and bears on its
north panel the simple inscription:

Fitz-Greene Halleck,
1790_1867.

with a couplet from his " Marco Bozarris, "

" One of the few, the immortal names
That are not born to die."

On the east panel:

Maria Halleck, 1788—1870.
Nathaniel E. Halleck, 1792—1793.

On the west panel:

Israel Halleck, 1754—1839.
Mary Eliot Halleck, 1762—1819.

On the south panel is a monogram showing the
harp and pen united.

60 In Olde Connecticut

It is probable that the poet received his poetic
instinct from his mother. The Hallecks, I am
told, were of Dutch extraction, and were a cold,
phlegmatic race. The Eliots are an old Connec-
ticut family, the same that produced the famous
Apostle to the Indians, and are described as quick,
fanciful and imaginative.

CHAPTER V

KILLINGWORTH AND ITS BIRDS

WE were seated on the sunny side of a big
bowlder in a huckleberry patch. Below, the
bushy hill dropped down to some rocky meadows
and cornfields, while southward, over many rocky
hills and bushy plains, we saw the blue waves of
the Sound, populous with sails, and crossed here
and there by the steeple of some ancient hamlet
or summer village on the shore.

" Why do you call it Killingworth ? " I asked.

"It was Kenilworth originally," he replied,
"named after the English Kenilworth, in War-
wick, from which it is said the early settlers came.
It was founded by its Indian name, Hammonasset,
and so continued to be known until 1667, when it
was changed to Kenilworth. In October, 1663,
I may explain, the General Court of Connecticut
issued its fiat that ' there should be a town at Ham-
monasset, ' and that same month twelve planters
took up their abode here, in obedience, as we sup-

62 In Olde Connecticut

pose, to the dictum of the Connecticut lawgivers.
How Kenilworth was gradually changed to Kil-
lingworth in the vernacular, and then in the writ-
ten records, until it was adopted as the town's
official name, would make a curious study for a
philologist. "

We had spent the morning driving leisurely
through the old town of Killingworth, over brown
heathery hills, through patches of forest showing
more russet than gold now, beside the winding
Indian River, and through thrifty, well-kept farms.
In Killingworth village, about five miles from the
sea, we had lingered longest. We found here a
fine old street, of noble width, a mile and a half
long, lined with substantial dwellings and country
seats, some of them with that air of antiquity
which assures one that generations have come and
gone under their roof-trees. We strolled about
the village pelted by the falling leaves, and came
at length to the burying-ground, whose molder-
ing Hie jacets suggested to my friend much in-
teresting gossip of some of the once famous char-
acters of the place. He began by reading from
a mossy monument:

"In memory of Dr. Benjamin Gale, who after
a life of usefulness in his profession and a labori-

Killingworth and Its Birds 63

ous study of the prophecies, fell asleep May 6,
A. D. 1790, set. seventy-five, fully expecting to rise
again under the Messiah, and to reign with him
on earth. ' I know that my Redeemer liveth and
that he shall stand at the latter day upon the earth
and my eyes shall behold him. '

"Dr. Gale," said my friend, "was one of the
first of that peculiar sect whose vagaries concern-
ing the second coming of Christ have made much
amusement for the thoughtless. His zeal carried
him to great lengths on some occasions, tales of
which still linger about the village. He was not
so well balanced a man as his contemporary, the
Rev. Jared Eliot, D.D. This gentleman was a
grandson of the famous apostle to the Indians,
and besides being an able divine was an excellent
physician, an adept in all the natural sciences so far
as they were then known, and who wrote several
treatises on agriculture for the benefit of farmers.
Perhaps his most important discovery was that
the fine black sand found on the shores of the
Sound, and in greater abundance on Block Island,
was in effect iron ore; after many attempts he
succeeded, in 1761, in smelting some of it, for
which he was honored with a medal by the London
Society for the Encouragement of the Arts.

64 In Olde Connecticut

"A man of as great inventive powers as Con-
necticut ever produced was born and reared in
this village. The story of Abel Buell reads like
a romance. A few years previous to the Revolu-
tion, he was apprenticed to Ebenezer Chittenden,
the old goldsmith in whose shop on the main street
yonder were made solid gold and silver ware of all
sorts for the village dames. The boy's taste and
skill is said early to have made him a favorite with
his master. At nineteen he married; at twenty
he was detected altering the five-pound notes of
the colony into those of larger denominations.
The neighbors, it seemed, had frequently seen a
light in his window at uncanny hours, and finally
a village Paul Pry procured a ladder and climbing
up to his window detected him in the very act.
So cleverly was the work done by this amateur,
that the raised notes could only be detected by
comparing them with the stubs on the colony book.
Then, of course, there arose a hubbub. Matthew
Griswold, afterward the famous governor and
statesman, was then King's Attorney, and con-
ducted the prosecution; but the prisoner's youth
and previous good conduct pleaded so powerfully
for him, that the case was pressed as slightly as
possible, and a light sentence, for those days, was

Killingworth and Its Birds 65

passed. He was condemned to be imprisoned,
cropped, and branded. This sentence, too, was
very lightly carried into effect in the following
manner: A small piece of his ear was cut off,
which was kept warm on the tip of his tongue till
it could be placed on the ear, where it soon grew
again. The branding was done high up on the
forehead, and consisted in holding a hot iron,
shaped like the letter F (Forger) against the skin,
until the culprit could say " God save the King. "
"Buell was imprisoned first at Norwich, but
after a while the influence of his friends secured
him the limits here at Killingworth. He improved
the opportunity to make ' a lapidary machine, ' the
first, it is said, ever constructed in this country,
and by means of it produced a beautiful ring, con-
sisting of a large stone set about a number of
smaller ones, which he presented to Matthew
Griswold as a token of respect and gratitude.
This ring, it is said, procured him his pardon —
at least, he was soon a free man. Soon after,
about 1770, he removed to New Haven, probably
in order to begin unknown a new career. Ber-
nard Romans, the earliest American map-maker,
was then engaged on his map of North America,
and at once enlisted Buell in his service. The

E

66 In Olde Connecticut

west coast of Florida was entirely unknown then,
being still under Spanish rule, and Buell was sent
to Pensacola to survey and map it. According to
Buell's story, the Spanish Governor received his
mission with suspicion, and quietly laid a trap for
him. One day a merchant whose acquaintance
he had made, after complimenting his skill, asked
him to show him how to break the Governor's
seal, open the letter, and then seal it up again so
as to escape detection. Buell unsuspiciously com-
plied, and was summarily arrested and imprisoned
on an island. Here, however, he succeeded in
building a boat, and with a boy for his sole com-
panion put to sea, and after a voyage of several
days succeeded in reaching one of our southern
ports. The map was engraved by Buell and
Amos Doolittle, and printed at New Haven during
the Revolution from types cast by Buell himself.
His work on the map led the Legislature to restore
him his civil rights, and after the close of the war
he was employed in coining copper pennies for the
new Government. A machine he constructed for
this work, capable of coining one hundred and
twenty a minute, is said to have been the progen-
itor of those now in use. He was in England early
in 1800, and in one of the interior towns found

Killingworth and Its Birds 67

the city fathers in a high state of excitement over
an iron bridge recently built, which, through some
error of construction, was rendered useless. Buell
stopped a few days, and, by introducing some
slight changes, remedied the whole matter. He
received for his skill, it is said, a purse of £100.
He died friendless and alone in the New Haven
Almshouse in 1825. "

Seated in the huckleberry patch we made some
inquiry whether the old town was the scene of one
of Longfellow's most charming poems. All read-
ers of the poet are familiar with his "Birds of
Killingworth, " one of the tales told at the Way-
side Inn. The legend, it will be remembered, is
that the farmers of Killingworth in town meeting
assembled put a price on the heads of birds. The
poem describes the convening of the town meeting,
the preceptor's fruitless plea for the birds, the
scenes of destruction that followed the passage of
the act, and its sad results, which ended finally
in the revocation of the cruel edict; the whole be-
ing prettily interwoven with the love of the pre-
ceptor for " fair Almira in the upper class, " and
its fortunate issue. We asked our friend if the
poem was founded on a literal fact, and as he
could give us no satisfaction, we applied some

68 In Olde Connecticut

time after by letter to Mr. Henry Hull, the ven-
erable town clerk of Killingworth. Mr. Hull's
reply was as follows:

" I received your letter in due time, and as soon
as I could, looked in the record of town votes,
supposing the town gave a bounty for killing cer-
tain birds and animals, but I did not find any
vote. One thing I know by actual knowledge:
When I was young, say fourteen years, the men
in the northern part of the town did yearly in the
spring, choose two leaders, and then the two sides
formed. Their rules were: The side that got
beaten should pay the bills. Their special game
was the hawk, the owl, the crow, the blackbird,
and any other bird considered to be mischievous
in pulling up corn and the like. Also the squirrels,
except gray squirrels, and all other animals that
were considered to be mischievous. Some years
each side would bring them in by the bushel; it
was followed up only a few years, for the birds
began to grow scarce. This was probably the
basis for Mr. Longfellow's poem. "

This letter was sent to Mr. Ernest Longfellow,
with a request for information on the subject,
and elicited the following reply from Mr. Samuel
Longfellow, the brother of the poet:

Killingworth and Its Birds 69

"CAMBRIDGE, October 21.
"DEAR SIR: My nephew has handed me your
letter enclosing Mr. Hull's in regard to my broth-
er's poem, ' The Birds of Killingworth. ' I can-
not say whether the writer of the poem had ever
heard the story of the crusade against the birds,
which Mr. Hull relates. I found among his pa-
pers a newspaper cutting — a report of a debate
in the Connecticut Legislature upon a bill offering
a bounty upon the heads of birds believed to be
injurious to the farmers, in which debate a mem-
ber from Killingworth took part. The name may
have taken his fancy, and upon this slight hint
he may have built up his story. You will observe
that in the poem he throws back the time to a
hundred years ago. But I cannot speak with cer-
tainty upon this matter. "

CHAPTER VI

NEW LONDON, AN OLD NEW ENGLAND SEAPORT*

AS one glides into the quaint old port of New
London, in Southeastern Connecticut, over
one of the many coves that form a feature of its
harbor, one may get a glimpse, between the an-
tiquated warehouses, of several old hulks fast to
their piers, and as disconsolate in appearance as
anything well can be whose work in life is accom-
plished. Nature is slowly breaking them up, —
doing what their owners lack the courage to do.
Their spars, broken from their fastenings, hang
at every conceivable angle above the decks; their
cordage is frayed and rotten; flakes of paint have
peeled from their seamy sides, and down in their
great empty holds the bilge-water ripples an ac-
companiment to the murmur of the waves that lap
their sides as the tides come and go. These are
the whaleships, the agents that brought prosperity
and even opulence to the little provincial town.
* From " Lippincott's Magazine." January, 1888.

New London 71

M are Liberum is the legend on the city seal, and
never was a more expressive motto penned. The
town is one of the favored few so situated that
they must seek their fortune on the seas or not
at all. It is prettily built on a bluff or headland
having a little plateau at the base, which is in-
dented with several small bays or coves, thus giv-
ing it a magnificent water front. On the east is
the Thames (river it is called, but really an estuary
of the Sound), extending inland fourteen miles to
the busy city of Norwich, and navigable half its
length for vessels drawing twenty-five feet of water.
The harbor is the best on the coast, sheltered,
capacious, with no bar, no swift currents, no ice,
and furnished with a natural breakwater in the
hills and vales of Fisher's Island, eight miles from
its mouth.

But two avenues of employment were open to
the early colonists, — agriculture and commerce.
Debarred the first by the rocky and sterile nature
of their soil, the men of New London turned with
generous confidence to their neighbor, the gray old
sea. Unlike the men of Nantucket, however, they
were seamen from the first, not mere fishermen.
With the aid of good Master Coit they built pin-
naces and shallops of twenty and thirty tons' bur-

72 In Olde Connecticut

den, and set out on trading voyages along the
coast. They even rounded the Cape of the Cod,
and sailed proudly into the port of Boston with
their cargoes of peltries and wampum, to be ex*
changed for clothing, household goods, powder
and lead. A little later, grown bolder, they ex-
tended their voyages to Newfoundland, and de-
lighted the blue-nosed Gauls of Reynolds' and
Petty Harbor with their stores of country-cured
beef and pork and other provisions. Their en-
terprise also led them southward. They early
made voyages to New York, stopping for traffic
at every considerable town along the coast, and
even ventured as far down the stormy coasts
as Virginia and the " Menbadoes " in quest of
tobacco, dry hides and buckskins. But these
were mere efforts of the fledgling trying its
wings, skirmishings along the outskirts of the
great field which later they were to occupy in
force.

Toward the close of the sixteenth century Mas-
ter Coit was succeeded in his shipyard by his son
James, and his two sons-in-law, Hugh Mould and
John Stevens. These master builders constructed
three fine barques. With the largest of these, the
"Endeavor," under his command, a brave sea-

New London 73

man, Captain Samuel Chester, bearing in mind,
no doubt, the couplet, that

Little ships should keep near shore,
But larger craft may venture more,

determined on a voyage to the West Indies. Very
quietly he laid in a cargo of provisions, pork and
beef well cured, cooper's stock, and several tough,
hardy ponies, bought from the neighboring farm-
ers, which he judged would find a ready sale on
the plantations; then, with his papers duly signed
by Master John Smith, the first customs collector
of the port, he sailed away around the Fisher's
Island headlands and out to sea. Twenty-eight
days sufficed to lay his vessel alongside the quay
in the tropical island of Barbadoes, — an island
prolific of flowers, fruits, and sweets, the lower-
most of the pretty group of the Caribbees.

Captain Chester found the planters quite ready
to open a trade with his colony, and was home
again in less than two months, the hold of his
little vessel well filled with sugar and molasses,
and, half hidden by the barrels and hogsheads, a
cask of rum, shipped by the dons with a view to
opening up a trade in the article. Unfortunately
for them, however, the magistrates of Connecticut

74 In Olde Connecticut

had observed the bad effects of the Barbadoes ar-
ticle on the people of the Massachusetts Planta-
tion and, shortly before the "Endeavor's" arrival,
had sent down to Master Smith an order sternly
interdicting the landing of "Barbadoes liquor,
commonly called rum, kill-devil, and the like,"
in any place in their jurisdiction, under pain
of forfeiture to the commonwealth. Captain
Chester had, therefore, the pleasure of deliver-
ing the precious cask to the authorities, and
probably of seeing it knocked down to the high-
est bidder on government account, although he
lived to see the obnoxious article the most impor-
tant and lucrative item in the trade of the two
colonies.

As the barrels and hogsheads, bubbling over
with sweetness, trundled up from the "Endeav-
or's" hold, they opened the eyes of the shrewd,
calculating skippers who crowded the wharf, and
of the portly, linen-clad merchants whose office
windows overlooked the busy scene. From this
moment a spirit of unrest, of shadowy hopes and
ambitions, seized upon the little community.
People began to talk in warehouse, office, store,
of the fortunes to be made in the West India trade,
and several firms were not slow to embark in it.

New London 75

Captain John Jeffrey, a master shipbuilder, was
induced to come over from Portsmouth, England.
Land for a shipyard was given him in Groton, on
the opposite bank of the Thames, and both yards
were kept busy supplying the eager demands of
the merchants. Docks were constructed, and
great barn-like warehouses, which still remain to
show how well men builded in those days, were
erected, while streets blocked with drays and piers
cumbered with merchandise attested the growing
commerce of the town.

The palmy days of the West India trade ex-
tended from 1720 nearly to the period of the Rev-
olution. The annals of few seaport towns portray
such pleasant scenes of bustle and animation as
were to be witnessed in the port during this era
of prosperity. A glance at the map will show that
north and west of the town is a large extent of
country, of which it is the natural outlet. Its
cargoes for export were mostly drawn from this
region, which also absorbed the larger share of
its imports. These goods were transported to
and from the town in heavy, capacious goods-
wagons drawn by horses, and sometimes, if the
distance was short, by oxen. It was no uncom-
mon sight of a summer morning — four vessels

76 In Olde Connecticut

perhaps then loading at the docks for Barbadoes
or Martinique* — for a hundred of these creaking,
lumbering vehicles to pass in procession down the
village street, each drawn by its team of four or
six horses, attended by suffocating clouds of dust,
and presided over by a red-shirted, sombrero-
crowned teamster, bronzed and muscular, and
armed with a long whip, which ever and anon he
flourished about the ears of the leaders with a re-
port like that of a pistol. The wagons were laden
with as varied a stock of commodities as their
points of departure had been different. There
were wheat and pease in bags, and kiln-dried corn
in barrels, tierces of hams, barrels of pork and
beef, pots of butter, round, savory cheeses from
the green pastures of Lebanon and Colchester, and
— pleasing break in the uniformity of the line —
piles of pipe-staves of aromatic spruce, and hickory
hoops neatly shaven in remote country work-

* In proof that my picture is not overdrawn I cite the
following extract from the annals of the port: "On the
7th June, 1717, Prentiss, Christophers, and Picket, in
their several vessels, arrived from Barbadoes. They left
the harbor together, arrived out the same day, sailed again
on their return voyage the same day, and made Montauk
Point together."

New London 77

Although the wagons now appeared in contin-
uous line, they had begun their voyaging at widely
scattered points. Some bore the products of Put-
nam's rocky farm at Pomf ret ; others had gathered
their stores along the shores of Gardner's Lake
and the romantic banks of the Yantic; one had
rumbled down from Norwich, perhaps from the
near vicinity of the little drug store where Bene-
dict Arnold weighed out potions and meditated a
military career; while its neighbor had journeyed
from Coventry, and was laden, perhaps, with the
products of the pleasant homestead which nour-
ished Captain Nathan Hale through infancy and
youth and imparted the elements of such noble
manhood. There were few towns in what are
now Tolland, Windham and New London coun-
ties but had their representatives in the group.
Behind the wagoners frequently came the drovers,
with horses and cattle for the plantations. The
passing of this motley procession, the creaking,
lumbering vehicles, the oaths and gesticulations
of the drivers, the clouds of dust, and the occa-
sional stampede of frightened colts or steers, at-
tracted groups of sightseers, and presented ele-
ments of the picturesque that one might go far
in these degenerate days and not witness. The

78 In Olde Connecticut

teamsters formed a not inconsiderable guild at this
time. In connection with the drovers they had a
tavern of their own near the water front, at which
they always put up, and where their teams were
stabled. Their cargoes sold and unladen, they
would assemble at the tavern and indulge in merry
carousals, and after large quantities of vile tobacco
and viler Barbadoes liquor had been consumed
would parade the streets in noisy bands, to the
no small dismay of the order-loving citizens. On
these occasions, if they fell in with an officer from
one of his Majesty's cruisers lying in the harbor
home-faring from a visit to some fair Juliet of the
town, it generally happened that he found himself
and his smart uniform rolled in the gutter. But
such breaches of the peace were neither frequent
nor flagrant. In the morning, their orgies ended,
they shipped their cargoes of sugar, molasses and
rum, and returned to their distant homes in much
the same manner as they had come.

But the golden days of the West India traffic
passed with the closing of the colonial era, never
to return. The war of the Revolution closed the
port and put a stop to all commercial operations.
The town was vastly patriotic during the war, but
fought best where she was most at home, — on the

New London 79

seas. Her ships were turned into privateers, and,
manned by her seamen, — accounted the best and
bravest privateersmen that ever floated, — scoured
the ocean in all directions in search of the enemy's
merchantmen. Many were their adventures, trag-
ical and otherwise, many their deeds of prowess;
and were it not that the writer's pen is set to record
the more peaceful exploits of the merchant marine,
he could a hundred moving tales relate in which
they figured as chief actors, — tales of attack and
repulse, chase, flight, capture, reprisal and strat-
agems innumerable, — and how now and then a
privateer sailed proudly into the home port, the
captured enemy vessel following in her wake with
the British lion on her ensign, floating heels up-
ward, and the docks lined with eager patriots,
who greeted the conquering heroes with salvos of
huzzas.

The period that followed the war extending
down as late as the year 1819 is one not pleasant
to contemplate; those loyal to the city speak of
it with a species of pain, and gladly pass it by to
present brighter phases of its history. For this
entire period, with the exception of transient
bursts of activity in 1795 and 1805, the business of
the port was at a standstill. There was literally

80 In Olde Connecticut

no inducement for ventures on the ocean. Be-
cause France and England chose to be at war,
neutral commerce must perforce be swept from
the seas, and, in the case of American commerce,
at least, this dictum of the powers was fully carried
out by the almost insane acts of our own Govern-
ment. New London suffered in those days more
than many of her sister ports, her trade having
been largely with the rival powers and their de-
pendencies. The quiet of a rural town settled
upon her streets, the brown sea-moss gathered on
the unused wharves, great ships lay idly at their
moorings until they fell to pieces with age, the rat
and cockroach domiciled in the empty warehouses ;
only the croakers were busy going about the streets
and writing "Ichabod!" on the walls.

The first faint waves of the whaling excitement
reached the town in 1819; why at this particular
juncture rather than before it is difficult to deter-
mine. Undoubtedly destiny controlled the mat-
ter, for the opportunity had long lain in the city's
grasp. Whales had been seen in the Sound from
the earliest times, and captured by boats from the
shore. Those curious in the matter will find in
the records of a General Court held at Hartford,
in May, 1647, an order giving Mr. Whiting and

New London 81

others the exclusive privilege of catching whales
''within these liberties" for the period of seven
years.* In 1785, Sag Harbor, on the Long Island
coast, sent the brig " Lucy, " McKay master, and
the brig "Ann," Havens master, on a whaling
voyage. The "Lucy" returned, May 15, with
three hundred and sixty barrels of oil on board;
the "Ann" June 4, with three hundred barrels.
The success of this venture created quite a ripple
of excitement in nautical circles. Thomas Allen,
the eccentric genius who compiled the marine lists
of the " New London Gazette," appended to his an-
nouncement of their return the following stirring
piece of advice: "Now, my horse jockeys, beat
your horses and cattle into spears, lances, harpoons
and whaling-gear, and let us all strike out. Many
spouts ahead; whales are plenty, and to be had
for the catching. " But the shrewd old veterans
of the West India trade still declined the hazard-
ous enterprise. In 1805 a spirited attempt was

*An old diary of the date of 1718, still preserved in the
city, contains the following item: " Jan. 13, Comfort Davis
hath hired my whale-boat to go a-whaling to Fisher's Is-
land till the 20th of next month, to pay 20 shillings for
her hire, and if he stays longer 30 shillings. If she be
lost, and they get nothing, he is to pay me £3, and if they
get a fish, £3 10s."

82 In Olde Connecticut

made to open the whale-fishery and make it one of
the industries of the port. Early in that year the
New London Company, of which Dr. S. H. Lee
was the controlling spirit, purchased of Captain
John Barber his new vessel, the " Dauphin," which
had been built with special reference to the whale-
fishery. Shortly after, the company purchased
the ship " Leonidas, " of New York. Both vessels
sailed in 1806, and returned full in 1807. Several
other voyages were made by them with equal suc-
cess; but the Embargo Act and the war which
shortly followed summarily ended this and all other
traffic. The business revived in 1819, influenced,
no doubt, by the high price to which whale-oil ad-
vanced, following its general use for illuminating
purposes, and from this period became the one en-
grossing, hazardous, lucrative pursuit of the port.
Two men were the pioneers of the trade in New
London — Thomas N. Williams and Daniel Des-
lon, the former's name still borne by one of the
only two firms in the city that continue in the bus-
iness. Both were experienced merchants and
practical seamen. Williams sent out the brig
"Mary," Captain Davis, and Deslon the brig
" Mary Ann, " Captain Englis, and the ship " Car-
rier, " Captain Alexander Douglas (all three com-

New London 83

manders had made voyages during the temporary
revival of business in 1805-08). The "Mary"
sailed down the Atlantic coast, cruised about the
Brazil Banks, and was back in ten months and
twenty days with seven hundred and forty-four
barrels of whale-oil and seventy-eight of sperm on
board. The "Carrier" returned about the same
time with nine hundred and twenty-eight. These
voyages were counted fairly successful; but when
the "Mary" returned from her second voyage,
after a year's absence, with two thousand barrels
on board, the possibilities of the whale-fishery
fairly dawned on the minds of merchant and skip-
per, and much the same scenes of excitement were
witnessed as had occurred at the founding of the
West India trade, nearly a century before. The
shipyards were unequal to the demands made
upon them by the eager merchants, and agents
were sent into the neighboring ports as far west-
ward as New York to purchase ships. The skip-
per on the Sound in those days, when asked his
destination, would generally answer, "New Lon-
don and a market, " but it was his craft, and not
her cargo, for which the market was sought. Ves-
sels of pretty much every description were pur-
chased if they had the two requisites of stout

84 In Olde Connecticut

timbers, and good carrying capacity, and no more
novel and interesting sight could be witnessed than
a whaling-fleet in those days, made up, as it was,
of every class of vessels known to nautical science,
from the stately three-decked ship to the dimin-
utive but rakish schooner.

By 1830 six heavy firms and fifty vessels were
actively engaged in the industry, and the town
once more began to assume the appearance of an
active commercial center. The streets were again
vocal with the din of traffic. The great ware-
houses were filled with bales of whalebone and
boxes of pure white, odorless spermaceti. On the
docks thousands of barrels of oil were piled tier
above tier, the upper layer being covered with sea-
weed and kept moist by daily douches of sea-
water; this, it was early discovered, being the best
method of preserving the oleaginous product.
Heavy farm wagons laden with provisions again
rattled into the town; and all day long the din of
the anvil and tap of the cooper's adze were to be
heard in the long, low shops that covered every
available inch of ground along the docks, where
the stout oaken casks with hoops of iron which
were to hold the precious product were manufac-
tured, hundreds in a day.

New London 85

The whaling industry was far more beneficial
to the town in general than the West India trade
which it supplanted. The latter made a few rich,
but added little to the general wealth of the town
and nothing to its population; in addition, it made
the vile liquors of the tropics almost as free as
water, introduced a looseness of morals from
which the port suffered for years. The whaling
system, on the other hand, was cooperative in
spirit and practice, and its immense profits were
divided equitably among those engaged in it.
The owner was careful to see that the right de-
scription of vessel was furnished, and that she was
properly equipped and provisioned. The cooper
put no defective stock in his barrels; the black-
smith tested his iron before using it. The captain
on the quarter-deck, mate, sailing-master, boat-
steerer, cook in the galley, sailor before the mast,
each felt that on his individual skill, energy, and
fidelity depended in a measure the success of the
voyage and the magnitude of the "share" that
would fall to him at its close; and this spirit of
self-interest placed the town in the front rank of
the oil-producing ports, and poured two millions
of dollars into its coffers annually for a term of
years.

86 In Olde Connecticut

The stores of a vessel of the first class fitted for
a two years' voyage consisted of two hundred and
fifty barrels of pork, two hundred barrels of beef,
and fifty of flour, with bread, rice, corn, vinegar,
codfish, pease and molasses in proportion. Her
equipment comprised lances, harpoons, spades,
several hundred fathoms of line, and between
two and three thousand empty barrels. She was
manned by from thirty to thirty-five men, who
were generally selected by the captain. She also
carried a carpenter, a cooper, and occasionally,
if one presented himself, a surgeon, but ordinarily
the captain's medicine chest was the only resource
in case of sickness. In shaping their courses the
vessels always followed the movements of their
prey. Early voyages extended no farther than
the Brazil Banks, as by the time these were ex-
hausted the vessel was "full;" later the cold, bar-
ren shores of Desolation Island, Delagoa Bay, the
west coast of Patagonia, the islands of the Pacific,
the Kamtchatkan Sea, Baffin's Bay, and the icy
waters of the Arctic yielded fruitful harvests to
the bold voyagers. A favorite two years' voyage
in later times was to proceed first to the Gulf of
Guinea, thence around the Cape of Good Hope,
through the Indian and Pacific Oceans to the Sea

New London 87

of Kamtchatka, which was the half way station
in this circumnavigation of the globe. From this
point the vessel proceeded south through the
Pacific, touching at the Sandwich and Society
Islands, coasted along the Patagonian shore,
rounded Cape Horn, and then proceeded home-
ward ina the Brazil Banks and the West Indies.
When, after all this weary round, she entered the
familiar harbor, if she counted two thousand bar-
rels of oil in her hold her voyage was considered
a successful one; if three thousand, a fortunate
one.* On being laid alongside the dock a careful
inventory of her cargo was taken, as to both qual-
ity and quantity; it was then divided in the fol-
lowing proportions: to the captain, one-sixteenth;
the first mate, one twenty -fifth; the second mate,
one-fortieth; the third mate, one sixty-fifth; the
boat-steerer, one seventy-fifth; and each seaman,
one one hundred and twenty-fifth; the remainder
going to the owners, from which, however, they

* Even the latter figure was sometimes exceeded. Cap-
tain James Smith, in three successive voyages to the Island
of Desolation, in 1840-42-44, made four thousand barrels
each time, and the ship " Robert Bowne " is recorded as
coming into port in 1848 with four thousand eight hundred
and fifty barrels on board. But these were exceptional

88 In Olde Connecticut

must deduct the cost of equipment, insurance and
other expenses. Whale-oil has been known to
sell in the port as high as forty cents per gallon,
and as low as eighteen and one-half; but, placing
the average price at thirty cents, and the average
" catch " at two thousand five hundred barrels, we
find that the ordinary seamen received $190 as his
share; the boat-steerer, $316.50; the mates, $365,
$475, and $950, respectively; and the captain,
$1,484 ; leaving to the owners $14,440. If to these
figures we add as much more for sperm-oil, sper-
maceti and whalebone, we have a handsome re-
turn for the outfit and labor.

When a town has a hundred vessels and two
thousand men — half its population — at sea, it be-
comes weatherwise; the volumes it chiefly con-
sults are the sky, the winds, the sea, and the
clouds; then the cry of the sea-gull forebodes a
storm; seaweed and kelp, borne in by the tides,
are harbingers of wreck; each trivial incident pos-
sesses a deep significance; and though cheerful-
ness and even mirth may seem to prevail, a latent
element of dread, a feeling that disaster is about
to fall upon the town, lurks in every breast. After
a storm, wan women climb the hills and scan the
sea-line with anxious eyes; the wise old sea-dogs

New London 89

who linger about the taverns in various stages
of dismemberment shake their heads; and news
from Race Rock, Point Judith, and Montauk is
awaited with feverish anxiety. The most stren-
uous efforts were made in those days to obtain
early intelligence of the approach of vessels mak-
ing the harbor. Each of the eight principal
shipping firms had its own code of signals. Keen
eyes were ever on the watch, and when a home-
faring vessel pushed her bows around the head-
lands of Fisher's Island with her signals at the
peak, her name, condition and owners were at
once known to the eager watchers. If she flew
the blue crest of Williams & Havens, it was known
to half the town in a few moments that their good
ship the " Leonidas, " last reported at Fayal, and
daily expected, was making the harbor; or if she
flew the red pennant of Benjamin Brown's Sons,
it could be no other than their ship the " Clematis,"
which had sailed round the world in ten months
and twenty-nine days. News of the arrival of a
ship spread rapidly through the town, — if long
overdue or reported lost it was announced by joy-
ous peals of the church bells, — and long before
the vessel reached her pier the wharves were
crowded with women and children half frantic

90 In Olde Connecticut

with joy at the prospect of meeting dear ones after
years of absence. And when at last the vessel
was made fast, and wives and mothers were locked
in the embrace of manly arms, even a pessimist
must have been impressed with the capacity for
happiness exhibited at times by the great heart of
humanity. There was a dark side to the picture,
however, and far too frequently the smothered
groan or the cry of despair was heard, as a
familiar face was not found amid the throng, and
some sympathizing comrade related the particu-
lars of the death of husband or son, perhaps from
fever in the tropics, or amid Arctic ice, or in the
casualties attending the capture of their prey. It
was rarely that a ship came in with the roll of
her crew intact. In the oldest churchyard are
some pathetic memorials of the dangers of the
traffic. It is a pretty place, this churchyard, on
the crest of the hill on which the city is built, al-
beit sadly neglected now, with lush grass covering
the graves and its stones scarred and broken by
the elements.* Here, side by side with governors,
senators, judges, generals, the fathers of the com-
monwealth, rests the dust of many of these toilers

* This in 1888. The ground is now kept in excellent
order.

New London 91

of the sea; nor are the tombstones rare that bear
inscriptions like the following: "In memory of
Pyram Adams, Esq., who died July 1, 1776, aged
64 years, and of his three sons, William, who died
at St. Pierre's, Martinico, Apr. 4, 1778, aged 33
years; Alexander, who was lost at sea in the year
1782, aged 35 years; and Thomas, who died in
the island of St. Helena, Sept. 8, 1815, aged 55
years. " How many of the warm young lives of
the town were sacrificed in the traffic cannot be
computed. The two other churchyards within
the city limits, and the pretty Cedar Grove Cem-
etery, a mile outside, hold the dust of many, but
the large majority " dropped in their heavy-shotted
hammock-shrouds" into their ocean sepulcher,
and their names are borne by no mortuary piles.
To-day the tide of the city's prosperity is again
at its ebb, and the stranger who sojourns here is
surprised to find, amid the evidences of former
business activity, the quiet and retirement of an
inland country town, albeit there are sanguine
ones who hold that the flood will return again,
and that a brilliant commercial future yet awaits
the port. No old continental town with a thou-
sand years of history could be more attractive to
the man of vivid fancy and antiquarian tendencies.

92 In Olde Connecticut

Even to make the tour of the docks intelli-
gently, mastering all they teach, would require
weeks. The shipping offices, the warehouses, the
junk shops, the government pier, with the "Re-
lief" lightship alongside, its lighthouse stores and
other impedimenta scattered about, and the genial,
generous old tar in charge, who lets one into all
the secrets of Uncle Sam's coast service with a
freedom simply astonishing in a government
official, the gray old hulks swinging to the tide,
the fishing-smacks and the fishermen with their
weird tales of the sea, the custom house, a massive
stone building, presided over by a gallant Major
of the late war, wherein the drowsy air of a by-
gone period prevails and two ancient clerks trans-
act all the routine business, — each is a study in
itself, and presents new phases and possibilities
as one advances.

Another point of interest is the Old Mill, in a
secluded dell forming part of the old Winthrop
estate, where Jordan's Brook comes tumbling and
foaming down amid bowlders, to plunge at last
into the Mill Cove. This mill was built by one
Richard Manwaring in 1712, and, after grinding
steadily for a century and a half, now rests from
its labors, having become the property of a gentle-

New London 93

man who will preserve it, with all its appointments
complete, as a relic of the olden time.

The shipping office of to-day gives little hint of
the activity that once prevailed there. It occu-
pies a long, low building adjoining the warehouses
of the firm, with its rear windows looking out on
the company's docks. Three desks accommodate
the clerical force now employed; its walls are hung
with lithographs depicting various nautical scenes,
— the company's vessels, the pursuit and killing
of the whale, the capture of seals and sea elephants
in which latter industry the firm has still several
vessels employed.

In its rear, almost poking her bowsprit into the
window, is a whaling barque " Nile, " a veteran
of 1840, a ship with a history exceeded by none
in the merchant service, her owner asserts with a
touch of pardonable pride. She is of the shape
and rig in vogue forty years ago, — square at the
bows, wide amidships, lined with six feet of solid
oak forward as a protection against Arctic ice,
three-decked, capacious and clumsy. She es-
caped the fate of others of her class, that went
to form the bottom blockade of Charleston Harbor
in 1861, by being in commission at the time and
absent on a whaling cruise. In the summer of

94 In Olde Connecticut

1865 she was out on the northwest coast after
whales in company with a score or more of craft
of her calling from New London, Nantucket, New
Bedford, and other towns along shore. Early one
fine morning the "Shenandoah" was discovered
in the midst of the fleet, burning and pillaging
indiscriminately. Six vessels were burned as they
lay powerless to escape the swift steamer, and
their crews and such parts of their cargo as were
deemed sufficiently valuable transferred to the
privateer, which then approached the " Nile. "
She was not, however, destroyed, but a bond was
exacted from her captain declaring the fact of her
capture on the high seas and acknowledging her
to be the property of the Confederate States of
America. One hundred and twenty men, the
crews of the burned vessels, were then transferred
to the "Nile," and she was released, while the
"Shenandoah" stood on her course in quest of
other quarry. The " Nile," with her castaways on
board, made the best of her way to San Francisco,
and there had the satisfaction of learning that the
war had come to an end some months before.

The quarter of the city of which we write is the
favorite resort of the veteran shipmasters of the
port, although but four or five of those who were

New London 95

active in the stirring days of 1830-40 remain to
tell the tale. Although safely moored in a snug
harbor, the worthy old tars find that time hangs
heavy on their hands. They read the shipping-
lists in the newspapers, walk about the streets and
docks, meet in store or office, and live over old
times. They are fond of lounging in the cool
corridors of the custom house, and of picking up
there such items of marine intelligence as may be
floating about; but after all is said and done there
are hours that are tedious for lack of employment.
I know of no class of men more capable of satis-
fying an omnivorous thirst for information. Hav-
ing visited in the course of their business all coun-
tries and seas, and studied with Yankee inquisi-
tiveness and acuteness every object or incident
that presented itself, they have almost insensibly
become possessed of a fund of knowledge that
many a scholar would give years to obtain. Let
not the tyro, however, imagine it an easy thing to
unlock these stores. A becoming humility must
be observed, with due deference to the other's
opinion, and instant appreciation of such bits of
anecdote as are doled out, before that generous
confidence can be established which will lead the
veteran to display to advantage his unlimited pow-

96 In Olde Connecticut

ers of narration. Various expedients are adopted
to pass away the time. One is a grocer, and
weighs out coffee and samples sugar as calmly as
once he rode the billowy waste or poised the lance
for the death-thrust. Another has a little office
down by the docks, in the rear of a hardware
store, with a junk shop underneath, and writes
policies of insurance for such patrons as call upon
him. He is surrounded by the insignia of his
former calling, — the log-book of his first voyage,
maps and charts, nautical instruments, the signal
code of the port, — and, as his window looks out
on the harbor and on the blue Fisher's Island
headlands, which his ship has rounded scores of
times in making the port, it is fair to assume that
reminiscences of a well-spent seafaring life of fifty
years occupy by far the largest share of the worthy
captain's thoughts.

The log-book of the ship "Wabash, " which
sailed from New London, July 23, 1829, lies be-
fore us, — a quaint volume with covers of parch-
ment and leaves formed of the coarse, thick paper
in use fifty years ago and still affected by gentle-
men of antiquarian tendencies. In its pages are
entered day by day the minutiae of the voyage, —
wind, weather, bearings, discovery of a wreck,

New London 97

calling at forts, provisions purchased or con-
sumed, sickness, death, mutiny, desertion, — while
every capture of a whale is celebrated by a pen-
and-ink drawing of the monster in his dying agony.
So the record continues for weeks and months
and years, until the world has been circumnavi-
gated and the vessel again enters the home port.

CHAPTER VII

GROTON AND MYSTIC

GROTON BANK, Groton Centre, Poquon-
nock, Noank, West Mystic, Mystic, Head-of-
Mystic, Fort Hill, Pequot Hill, Porter's Rocks-
all are localities more or less notable in the town
of Groton, which lies across the Thames from
New London, and covers a territory nearly eight
miles square. It is a land of breezy ridges and
sunny valleys, with stern, precipitous granite
ledges facing the Sound and walling in the valleys,
a region almost undiscovered by the tourist, but
well worthy his attention, as much for its natural
beauty as for its historical interest. Originally
it was a part of New London, known locally as
the "east side," but its inhabitants in 1705 suc-
ceeded in inducing the General Court to incorpo-
rate them as a separate town, which town they
named Groton in honor of Governor Winthrop's
English home in Suffolk County.

Our first expedition into Groton was in search

Groton and Mystic 99

of the town records; to our surprise and pleasure
we found them lodged in one of the oldest houses
in America, and one which is perhaps the best
specimen of colonial architecture extant. It is
known as the old Avery mansion, and was built
in 1656 by Judge James Avery, one of the original
settlers of Groton. It is a house of character.
Even the casual passer-by notices it, and wishes
to stop and inquire as to its history. It is bal-
lasted by two heavy stone chimneys, its frame is
of white oak, heavy enough to furnish forth two
modern houses, its roofs are high and steep, the
upper story projecting over the lower as in the
blockhouses of colonial Indian warfare. In two
large safes in the front parlor the town records
are kept. This parlor is a study. Its ceiling is
low, and in the center is a huge beam, white-
washed, and still bearing the marks of the hewer's
broad ax. The sills — 8X8 beams — are placed
above the flooring, and are as sound in appearance
as when laid more than two hundred and thirty
years ago. The present owner is the ninth Avery
to whom the old house has descended from eldest
son to eldest son, with the broad green fields ad-
joining it. We found the aged Town Clerk, Mr.
James Avery, busy transcribing the generations

100 In Olde Connecticut

that had swarmed from the old hive for a gene-
alogy of the Averys now being compiled in Roch-
ester, New York.

If these old white-oak timbers could speak, we
should hear about the funeral of the first James
Avery in 1681, who, having been a magistrate on
the bench and representative to the General Court,
was buried suitably to his rank. We should have
details of the grand funeral — the name of the per-
son " appointed to look to the burning of the wine
and beating of the cider for the occasion " — of the
gallons of wine, the barrels of cider, the hundred-
weights of sugar, the gloves and gold rings fur-
nished the pallbearers, and the white kid gloves
for the attending ministers. For a funeral cost
something in those days — often as much as £200.

In 1718 the old house saw the first innovation
of moment. Tea was brought over from the set-
tlement at New London, and passed from hand to
hand as the family and a few neighbors sat around
the capacious fireplace. Madame Avery was
skilled in all manner of cooking, but she admitted
that she knew not how to prepare this bitter herb
for the table. At last the council decided that it
should be cooked and served with boiled pork, as
greens; but there were many wry faces when the

Groton and Mystic 101

dish came to be eaten. At last they learned to
steep it, as they did their boneset and other medi-
cinal herbs, and to disguise it with milk and sugar,
but it was months before the family came to enjoy
the strange beverage. Two years later they had
their first sight of wheat flour; rye and Indian
corn having been before that the staple bread-
stuffs. Then, in 1730, they were thrown into
spasms of curiosity at seeing a horse and wagon
driven up the lawn. Hitherto the only means of
locomotion had been on horseback, the lady sitting
behind her cavalier on a pillion, with her arm
about his waist. A little later, in 1733, the family
gathered at the breakfast table, and inspected,
tasted and passed judgment upon two or three
Irish potatoes which had been raised in the garden
in beds, much as we now raise carrots and beets.
In 1734 the old timbers might have lost their iden-
tity by being smothered in paint, which that year
was used for the first time in this country; as a
matter of fact, however, the old house waited a
century longer before receiving its first coat of
paint. In 1740 the first sleigh drove up to the
door, and the Avery boys and girls, of whom al-
ways there was a houseful, tumbled in for their
first sleigh ride. By and by war came, and the

102 In Olde Connecticut

Averys that had gone out from the old hive made
a good showing in the ranks. The thunder of the
guns on the day Fort Griswold was defended was
plainly heard here, and in the afternoon a breath-
less horseman came riding up with news — nine
Averys had been killed in defense of the fort and
many more wounded, among the latter Col. Parke
Avery, then living in the old house; and very soon
a long line of wagons came over the hill, bearing
the wounded to be tenderly nursed back to health
and vigor by the patriotic women of the home-
stead. It was in 1783 that the first wall paper
made its appearance, and years after that before
its white and sanded floors were made acquainted
with carpets. The old house has recently had a
very narrow escape from destruction, for the new
line of the New York, Providence and Boston
Railroad, now building to connect with the new
bridge across the Thames, passes within a few
feet of its western gable, and had not the engineers
deflected their line a trifle, would have passed
through it. It is a pity that none of the old family
furniture has been preserved. "My mother had
fourteen children, " said Mr. Avery, speaking of
this matter, "and every time they came to visit
me they would take away some article of furni-

Groton and Mystic 103

ture, saying that if they gave me the old house,
they must have the furniture — so it is all gone. "
The ancient records of Groton found in the old
house are interesting, but not so much so as the
story of the man who indicted them. This first
Town Clerk was named John Davie, an educated
man, graduated at Harvard in 1681. His writing
in the town books is in a firm, clear, clerkly hand,
and the ink has faded but little during the nearly
two hundred years it has been spread upon the
page. Soon after his graduation he married a
Hartford woman, daughter of John Richards and
sister to Governor Saltonstall's wife, and settled
down to the life of a farmer here on Poquonnock
Plains. Six children were born to him here, as he
has recorded in the town register. One day he
was hoeing corn on the plains in company with
John Packer, a neighbor, both men in homespun
and barefooted, with their sleeves rolled up to their
elbows and their trousers up to their knees, when
a stranger, clad in the latest London fashion, ap-
peared, and asked the official if he was John
Davie. " Yes, " was the reply. " Then I salute
you Sir John Davie of Greedy Court, Devon, " he
replied. Tradition says that the new Baronet fin-
ished his row — he was hoeing on a wager with his

104 In Olde Connecticut

fellow-worker — then accompanied his visitor to
the brown homestead, treated him to cake and
wine, and learned the whole story — how his uncle,
Sir John Davie, Bart., had died without male
issue, leaving him sole heir. In a short time the
Poquonnock farmer exchanged the brown farm-
house for baronial halls. He never forgot his na-
tive land, however, and always retained his inter-
est in Groton. He aided the settlers to build their
new church, and when it was finished presented
it with a silver communion set. He also made
gifts to his relatives, and was one of the early
benefactors of Yale College. We remarked on
hearing this story that it read like a romance; it
is, however, sober truth.

They tell a story here of the war of 1812
worth relating: One day Commodore Hardy in
the "Ramilies" and Sir Hugh Pigott in the
" Orpheus " hove in sight, and the people came to
the conclusion that New London was to be at-
tacked. Major Smith at once manned Fort Gris-
wold with volunteers from the vicinity, while the
women and children fled into the interior. At the
last moment the Major found he had no wadding
for his cannon, and sent out a squad in search of
flannel for that purpose. Unfortunately all the

Groton and Mystic 105

houses and stores were closed, and they could
secure none. Returning, they met on the street
Mrs. Anna Bailey, who, on hearing their story,
dropped her flannel petticoat, and told them to
give it to the British at the cannon's mouth. The
officers and garrison were g-reatly elated by the
lady's spirit, and Hardy would no doubt have
fared ill had he attacked. When the danger was
over, Commodore Decatur gave a grand ball, at
which Mrs. Bailey was the heroine of the occasion.
Later her fame spread throughout the country,
and she was visited by Lafayette, Monroe, Jack-
son, and other notables. " Mother Bailey " died
in 1851 aged ninety-two years.

Mystic village is the point at which one should
station himself in order to discover the picturesque
and untraveled ways of the ancient town of Groton
and possess himself of her more interesting history.
It lies between the Pequot and Narragansett coun-
tries (the village includes the old Pequot fort where
Captain Mason gained his victory over that war-
like tribe), and in various directions are localities
famed in the border warfare of colonial times.
The mouth of the Mystic just beyond the town
is studded with islands. Fisher's Island lies just
across the narrow Fisher's Island Sound. The

106 In Olde Connecticut

river for three miles above the village is a broad
and deep estuary, at places expanding into bays,
and above this its bed, quite to its sources in
the Lantern Hill range, is charmingly romantic
and picturesque. North and East lie those vast
stretches of sunken lands which once formed the
refuge of the Indians when hard pressed. They
are a strange feature of the landscape — in places
showing ponds of inky-black water, again quiv-
ering jelly-like masses of bogs, in other places
thickets of bushes and aquatic plants.

We have communed with local antiquaries in
regard to the origin of the name Mystic, with no
satisfactory results, however, and are left to form
our own conjectures. Perhaps the play of the
fogs around the hills and rocky islets — a curtain
that rises and falls, advances and recedes, pro-
ducing the fleeting scenes of the phantasmagoria —
suggested it; perhaps the name came from the
sorceries of Indian medicine-men; perhaps from
some sect of mystics that originated here. But
however the name came, it is pretty sure to stick.
The people are pleased with it; it is novel and
distinctive, gives them an individuality, so to
speak. The old port is quiet now. Occasion-
ally a collier sails in or a fishing steamer puts to

Groton and Mystic 107

sea. Thirty years ago it was a busy, bustling
center of the shipbuilding industry. Some of the
old ways and sail lofts remain, and now and then
you meet a veteran of the shipyards who is not
averse to giving you reminiscences of better days
when Mystic was famous the world over for her
ships, when vessels were advertised as Mystic-
built bottoms because of their high reputation.

The first Mystic shipbuilders were Messrs.
Greenman & Co., who began in 1827 in a small
way at " head of Mystic. " This firm began with
smacks and schooners, then built brigs, barks
and clippers for the Southern and California trade
— 125 vessels in all. The business so increased
that by 1852-55 there were five shipyards in op-
eration, and nearly 500 men — calkers, joiners,
carpenters, blacksmiths — went down to the yards
to work of a morning. Of these firms, besides
the Greenmans above mentioned, the most im-
portant were Irons & Grinnell, who began oper-
ations in 1840, and built in all 620 vessels; Charles
Mallory & Co., who began in 1849, and built
52 vessels, and Hill & Grinnell, who succeeded
the old firm of Irons & Grinnell on the death of
Irons in 1858, and built 16 vessels, including 5
Spanish gunboats.

108 In Olde Connecticut

The type of vessel that gave distinction to Mys-
tic was that known as the " half clipper. " The
first clippers intended for the California trade
were built for speed chiefly. Freights were high
and carrying capacity was not so much considered.
But in a few years freights fell, and a demand
arose for vessels that were both swift and capa-
cious. Mr. M. C. Hill, then foreman for Charles
Mallory & Co., originated the model of the hair
clipper. The old gentleman is still living in Mys-
tic, and gave us some interesting reminiscences
of his craft in the days when it made the name of
Mystic familiar in uttermost ports.

" The first shipyard here, " he began, " was that
of Greenman & Co. I well remember when the
five shipyards were in operation, with half a score
of ships on the stocks, and 500 men busy upon
them. The most famous ships ? Well, there was
the ' Pampero,' the first California clipper, built
in Mallory's yard by myself; the ' Andrew Jack-
son, ' built by Irons & Grinnell, and the ' Twi-
light,' built by the Mallorys after my drawings,
were both famous for speed. They left New York
for the Golden Gate on the same day and hour,
and arrived in San Francisco on the same day
and within an hour of one another. The bark

Groton and Mystio 109

' Aquidneck, ' built by myself for Baltimore mer-
chants in the Rio trade, performed a feat never
surpassed. She made the trip from Baltimore to
Rio in time never equaled by steamer or sailing
vessel. I suppose the most notable shipyard in
Mystic was that of the Mallorys. D. D. Mallory,
the founder, came here from Waterford, Conn.,
when quite a young man, and began life as a sail-
maker. By industry and economy he accumu-
lated capital sufficient to engage in the whaling
business, and later embarked in shipbuilding.
Besides many Government vessels he built eight
of the fifteen gunboats for the Spanish Govern-
ment which were built in Mystic. There were
thirty in all, you remember, in the contract taken
by Ericsson, fifteen being built in New York and
fifteen here. The war struck the first blow at the
prosperity of our shipyards. The depredations
of Confederate privateers led shipowners to reg-
ister under the British flag. Then the age of
steam and iron vessels came, and there was little
demand for wooden craft such as our yards turned
out."

We were not slow in discovering the many de-
lightful drives in the vicinity of Mystic. Chief
of these is the drive to Lantern Hill, about six

110 In Olde Connecticut

miles above the village. The road winds along
the curves of the estuary for the first three miles,
and then leads you up the narrow wooded valley
of the Mystic, through meadow intervales, under
frowning crags, until at length you reach the base
of the hill. It is a long climb to the top, but when
you reach it the view is superb. It is the highest
land hereabouts and forms a landmark for vessels
coming in from sea. Montauk Light is thirty
miles nearer the ocean, and stands upon a con-
siderable bluff, yet sailors approaching Montauk
Point sight first this rugged Connecticut hilltop.
Of course, from so lofty a position the eye ranges
over a wide and varied landscape. Town and
village with their church spires are prettily blended
with the dark-green foliage of June, and beyond
is the Sound with its islands and the dark-blue
ocean.

At other times we drive to Fort Hill, about two
miles west of the village. On this hill stood the
central stronghold of the Pequots, described by
Captain Mason in his account of the battle as
being two miles from the fort on Pequot Hill,
stormed by himself. Here is another magnificent
view. Another delightful drive is to Stonington,
six miles east; from the summit of the ridges

Groton and Mystic 111

which lie between, one gets delightful views of
land and water. The little local walks are also
very delightful. West Mystic bristles all over
with stern granite crags, on which and amid which
the houses of the village nestle. On one of these,
commanding the ship channel, and some forty
feet above it, stood Fort Rachel, one of the de-
fenses of Mystic in the war of 1812. A friend who
accompanied us thither for a Sunday evening stroll
told its story as follows :

"In the war of 1812, as you know, the British
paid much more attention to this part of the coast
than to any other, several of their larger vessels
patrolling our waters almost constantly. On the
12th of June, 1813, an armed cutter of the enemy,
with a launch in tow, was seen approaching up
the ship channel yonder, with the evident design
of plundering and burning the town, as he had
several of our coast villages. A masked battery
of one twelve-pounder, named Fort Rachel, after
a local heroine, had already been thrown up on
this rock, which, as you see, commands the ship
channel completely. An express hastily sum-
moned the minutemen of the village to the fort,
which was unmanned. Twenty men responded.
There was powder for the gun, but no ball, but

112 In Olde Connecticut

spikes, scrap iron and pieces of chain were hastily
gathered and thrust into the muzzle. The British,
quite unsuspicious of danger, were allowed to
approach to about where the drawbridge now
stands, when the gun was fired at point-blank
range, sweeping the cutter's decks. As soon as
she could recover from the confusion the cutter
manned her launch, and sent a detachment ashore
to carry the cliff, which, to appearance, was un-
defended; but while this was being done, our lads,
under Captain Haley, had time to load, and as
the launch neared the shore again discharged
their weapon with such good judgment that the
craft was sent to the bottom, and most of her
men were killed or wounded. The British com-
mander then turned and fled. In plundering and
burning houses tenanted by defenseless women
and children he had been measurably successful,
but for contending against spikes and scrap iron
he had no stomach. This Haley, with four other
Mystic men — Burrows, Park, Washington and
Tufts — was the hero of another gallant affair.
For two days after Hardy attacked Stonington,
the British fleet lay off the Hummocks, and our
boys thought they would try a stratagem on them.
They manned a large sloop-rigged fishing boat,

Groton and Mystic 113

loaded her with boxes, barrels and bags, and
sailed out past the fleet as if intending to run the
blockade. Meantime, one looking through the
hill yonder might have seen Capt. Jonathan
Wheeler's company of Groton militia concealing
themselves amid the rocks of Groton Long Point.
The British eagerly pursued the American sloop
in the familiar barge used in their predatory ex-
cursions. The sloop at first tried to outsail her
pursuers, but apparently failing in the attempt,
turned and ran in upon Groton Long Point, where
the men beached her and fled on shore. The
British eagerly pursued them, and when once on
land were met by a volley from the militia, which
killed several, wounded more, and sent the sur-
vivors into the water, where they surrendered.
The captured barge was afterwards sold for $1,200
a part of the proceeds being divided among the
captives.

" I must tell you about another exploit in which
Captain Burrows figured. One day the Mystic
sloop ' Fox, ' commanded by Capt. Jesse Crary,
was captured, though captain and crew succeeded
in escaping to the shore. Crary determined to
retake his craft, which was as the apple of his
eye. He accordingly bought the sloop 'Hero,'

114 In Olde Connecticut

procured letters of marque from New London,
and sent her out in command of Captain Burrows,
to retake the 'Fox.' The 'Hero' convoyed a
fleet of six vessels as far as Montauk, and soon
after sighted the 'Fox,' which ran off with the
' Hero ' in hot pursuit. Both craft had been built
by Eldridge Packer of Mystic, and were equal in
speed, but Burrows knew better how to sail his
vessel, and gained on the 'Fox'; indeed, he over-
hauled her so quickly that he was enabled to run
his bowsprit into the enemy's mainsail, and to
board her, where, after a gallant fight, he gained
her colors. The two vessels received a hearty
greeting as they came up to the village, through
which the news of the expedition had been quickly
spread. "

CHAPTER VIII

FISHER'S ISLAND

FROM the masthead of the old whaling barque
"Nile," slowly rotting at New London's
docks, we saw one day, a long, blue outlined
island, eight or ten miles out to sea and acting as
the natural breakwater of the harbor. Its corol-
lary on the Long Island coast is Plum Island,
and between the two the currents of Long Island
Sound rush with the velocity of a mill race.
Much of the island is unfenced and uninhabited;
and although it has all the elements of a summer
resort — pleasant prospects, cool breezes, pictur-
esque walks and drives — it is rarely visited by
the tourist. Its history is a notable one, and it
derives additional interest from the fact that it
has been for more than two centuries the occasion
of much wrangling and contention as to jurisdic-
tion between neighboring States.

Captain Adolphus Block first discovered it, sail-
ing up the Sound from Manhattan in his square-

116 In Olde Connecticut

bowed, high-pooped, native-built yacht the " Rest-
less, " poking his inquisitive nose into every creek
and bay along the coast as far east as Cape Cod,
and claiming for his Dutch masters territory that
rightfully belonged to the English king, and this
in 1614, six years before the " Mayflower" landed.
Block named the island Fisher's Island after one
of his companions, it is said. It was pretty cor-
rectly mapped by De Saet, an early Dutch geog-
rapher, who thus speaks of it in his journal:

"A small island lies to the southwest by south
from this river (the Thames) as the coast runs.
Near the west end of it a northwest by west moon
causes very low water. "

For twenty-five years after its discovery the
island remained a wilderness, known only to the
Dutch traders, who resorted thither to purchase
peltries and wampum of the Indians. But in 1640
John Winthrop, Jr., son of the famous Governor
Winthrop, the founder of Boston, obtained from
the Massachusetts plantation a grant of Fisher's
Island so far as it was theirs to grant, " reserving
the right of Connecticut if it should be decided
to be theirs. " Nearly at the same time, in order
that there might be no flaw in his title, he applied
to the Connecticut General Court for a similar

Fisher's Island 117

grant, which was given him in the following words,
which are copied from the records of a General
Court, held at Hartford, April 9, 1641:

" Upon Mr. Winthrop's motion to the court for
Fisher's Island, it is the mind of the court that
so far as it hinders not the public good of the
country, either for fortifying for defence, or setting
up a trade for fishing or salt and such like, he
shall have liberty to proceed therein. "

But the patent granted to the Duke of York
in 1664 contained an insignificant clause that was
not only a source of disquiet to Governor Win-
throp, but has continued to be a disturber of the
peace to the present day. This clause gave to
New York all the islands lying in Long Island
Sound, and shortly after the patent was granted
Winthrop applied to and received from Governor
Nicholls of New York a third patent, declaring
his island to be an " entire, enfranchised township,
manor, and place of itself, in nowise subordinate
or belonging unto or dependent upon any riding,
township, place or jurisdiction whatever. " Con-
necticut, however, did not by Winthrop's act re-
linquish her claim to jurisdiction.

In 1680 Sir Edmund Andros, the petty tyrant
who soon afterward made an ignominious exit

118 In Olde Connecticut

from the colonies in chains, wrote to the magis-
trates of Connecticut, asserting his authority as
Governor of New York over Fisher's Island; to
this the General Court of May 13, 1680, thus
stoutly replied:

"Whereas this court is informed that Sir Ed-
mund Andros hath asserted that a certain island
called Fisher's Island, belonging to heirs of John
Winthrop, deceased, is part of his Royal High-
ness's territories, which by charter from his Maj-
esty, Charles II., King of England, is indeed
granted unto this, his Majesty's colony of Con-
necticut, and under the government (thereof).
This colony, for preserving the just limits of his
Majesty's gracious grant to them, do hereby pub-
licly assert that said island is a part and member
of this colony of Connecticut and under the gov-
ernment thereof, and that they have exercised and
shall exercise government there as occasion shall
require, and do hereby declare and protest against
the said Sir Edmund Andros and all other persons
their claims or exercise of authority or government
on or over said island. "

Here the matter ended for the time being, but
on each occasion that the vexed question of the
boundaries of the two States came up for settle-

Fisher's Island 119

ment the island was always an important factor
in the problem. Early in the present year a report
was presented to the Legislature of Connecticut by
its three commissioners previously appointed to
treat with the commissioners of New York on
this affair, which recommended the surrender of
the island to New York. This report was accepted
by the Legislature, but the act created so much
dissatisfaction in some parts of the State that it
was led to supplement its action by reappointing
the commissioners to treat further with those of
New York, and to devise some method for its
acquisition by Connecticut. And this is the pres-
ent status of the matter. It cannot but be re-
marked, however, that in the eastern part of the
State the prospect of the cession of the island to
New York is viewed with the greatest objection.
Connecticut claims it by patent, conquest and
purchase, and the general feeling is that the island
is lawfully hers. " Why, look at it, " said a prom-
inent gentleman conversing on the subject re-
cently; "the island is scarcely three miles off our
coast — just far enough to be beyond the reach of
riparian law; it was settled by our people; it is
bound to us by every tie of interest and kinship;
we have considered it ours for more than two

120 In Olde Connecticut

centuries, and now it is given to a foreign State,
whose nearest territory is twenty miles away across
a stormy channel, and whose nearest county town
is thrice and its capital ten times that distance.
Connecticut ought to have it, of course she ought,
and if she had half the pluck and belligerency of
her younger days she would have it, or " — a very
expressive bit of pantomime finished the sentence.

There is no way of acquiring the island now,
it is said, except by act of Congress, and it is
probable that New York, having maintained a
death grip on it for more than two centuries, will
require a pretty liberal fee before agreeing to the
act of cession.

Soon after receiving his patent from Connecti-
cut, in the spring of 1644, Governor Winthrop
began his settlement of the island by sending
hither several " yeomen, " who cleared the forest
and put up two or three rude cottages for winter
quarters. There is no evidence of Winthrop's
presence on the island until the spring of 1645,
when he came with a company, and the settle-
ment of the island was actively urged forward.
None of the pioneers, however, brought their
wives and families with them; these remained
behind until the autumn of 1646, or until com-

Fisher's Island 121

fortable dwellings had been built for them; but
the colonists were not all this time without the
refining influence of female society. As early as
April, 1645, there is evidence of a lady's presence
among them. Roger Williams, writing to Gov-
ernor Winthrop from " Narragansett, 22, 4, 45,"
sends his " loving salutes to your dearest and kind
sister, " and other letters of the Winthrops of this
period mention her. This brave lady was Mrs.
Lake, sister-in-law to Governor Winthrop. She
had been visiting Lady Fenwick at Saybrook, but
on Winthrop's arrival on the island went thither
in company with Mr. Thomas Peters, a brother
of the Rev. Hugh Peters, a Puritan divine, who
figures somewhat largely in the early records of
the colony. She is worthy of honor as being the
first Englishwoman who trod the soil of the Pe-
quot country.

Governor Winthrop remained on the island un-
til the success of the plantation was assured, and
then, having received a grant on the banks of the
Thames, removed thither and founded the present
city of New London.

The piratical annals of the island (if I may be
allowed the expression) form a not uninteresting
episode in its history. For a period of nearly

122 In Olde Connecticut

fifty years— from 1680, let us say, until 1723, when
the " Greyhound, " man-of-war, broke the spirit
of the marauders by capturing a pirate crew of
twenty-five men, and bringing them into Newport,
where they were hanged — the shores and islands
of the eastern part of the Sound and of the ocean
as far east as Cape Cod were havens of refuge
for all the pirates who infested the American
coasts. Hard pressed, hither they fled for safety.
The innumerable islands, bays, creeks and chan-
nels of these waters afforded secure hiding-places,
and their swift currents, shoals, reefs and the
dense fogs that are whirled swiftly in from the
ocean were additional elements of security.

Every one who has read of Captain Kidd will
remember Gardiner's Island and Bay on the coast
of Long Island as his favorite haunt, and Fisher's
Island, directly opposite, was much frequented
by himself and others of his ilk. Here, behind
its wooded shores, in their low, black schooners
they waited until a rich West Indiaman, bound to
or from New London, came sailing by, when they
pounced upon her, and after rifling her of such
parts of her cargo as pleased their fancy, either
burned her or allowed her to proceed on her
voyage.

Fisher's Island 123

Many marvelous tales and legends of these free-
booters still linger about the coast, and eerie sights
still continue to be seen by the credulous fisher-
men. In the dead of night ghostly companies
land upon the island, seek some secluded dell,
and fall to digging with spade and pickax, but
in the morning when the fisherman seeks the spot
no trace of their labors is seen, and frequently
spectral vessels, with low, black hulls, tapering
masts, and everything, "as they sailed, as they
sailed, " under Captain Kidd, are seen flying down
the Sound amid the scud and drift of the depart-
ing easterly storms. There are persons who sneer
at these tales, and even of the existence of the
pirates themselves as mere figments of the imagi-
nation, and who would rob Captain Kidd of his
glory by making him out a mere thievish landsman
who was in the habit of putting out from the
shore in a whaleboat occasionally and capturing
such unfortunate coasters as came in his way.
But these gentlemen forget the large mass of doc-
umentary evidence against their view of the mat-
ter, which if gathered together might make some
interesting annals of piracy. It is doubtful if they
ever met with the following paper, which I copy
from the records of a meeting of the Governor

124 In Olde Connecticut

and Council at Hartford in 1682, and which is
the earliest authentic document that I have seen
proving the existence of pirates on this coast,
although there may be earlier. It is addressed
to the above-named body by Daniel Wetherell,
of New London:

" NEW LONDON, July 25, 1682.
"Hon'd Sir: Thse may inform your honor that
lately arrived at East hampton on Longe Island
a Catch and 2 small Sloops with about 30 or 40
privateers or rather pirates; one of the sloops laye
some time at Plum Island when 5 of her men left
her and came hither, the rest went for the Bay
Colonie, and at Nantasket met with more of their
companions and gave chase to a sloop of Mr. Isaac
Arnold's yt was bound to Virginia and took her
with a thousand pound cargo as he informs me;
the Ketch was about 130 tunn which they made
sale of at East hampton to one Hutchinson of
Bostone, and with part of the money bought an-
other sloop of Capt. Hubbard of the same place;
which came over to this harbor pretending to buy
some provisions, but bought not any only a little
bread. I doe suppose they intend to supply them-
selves by piracy. The next day after they were

Fisher's Island 125

gone I received the enclosed, which gives account
of the third small sloop by the Governor of Rhode
Island, since which here arrived Mr. Jonas Clarke
bound to Southold to put Mr. Arnold ashore there,
and from thence to Connecticut, who was chased
by that privateer that went out of this harbor and
lyes still about Fisher's Hand and Gardiner's
Hand; but they were too nimble for ye privateers
and came into this harbor where they desired
some men and arms to secure them, having as
they said a very considerable cargo on board.
.... Sir, my humble desire is that your Honor
with your Honored Councell would please to
inform me what to do in these exigincys for
they are yet waiting for to take all they can mas-
ter, being well armed and fitted with granadas for
the work. I earnestly beg your Hon'rs advice in
this weighty concern wherein men's lives and es-
tates are daily in hazard, and shall wait for an
answer from your Hon'r and Councell. Mean-
while shall rest your Hon'rs humble servant to be
commanded.

"DANIEL WETHERELL.

" A Catch of Mr. Raymand's coming from Vir-
ginia was spoken with off Block Island eight days

126 In Olde Connecticut

since; is not yet arrived; we fear she is taken by
some of these Rogues. "

Lying in the path of all the commerce of the
Sound, Fisher's Island is the dread of mariners;
its swift currents, shoals and bars, sunken reefs
and cruel ledges of rock, combine to render it the
Sable Island of the Sound. Race Point, on the
western end of the island, and Race Rock, a short
distance southwest, marked by a spindle, have
been most prolific of shipwrecks.

A list of the disasters that have occurred here
would form a long chapter of accidents. The
English ship " John and Lucy, " lost here in 1671,
and the bark " Providence, " lost November 28th,
1679, were the earliest victims. The first vessel
sent out from New London on a whaling voyage
was lost here January 13, 1735, and in 1775 a
ship sent in by Captain Biddle as a prize met here
the same fate. But the most notable wreck, and
one no doubt vividly remembered by many read-
ers, was that of the steamboat " Atlantic, " which
went ashore on the rocks a little east of Race
Point on the night of the 27th of November, 1846.
The "Atlantic" was one of a line of steamboats
plying between Norwich and New York. On the

Fisher's Island 127

27th of November she was on her passage to New
York, and had just passed the mouth of New
London Harbor, when she was disabled by the
breaking of a part of her machinery. A heavy
sea was running at the time, and the swift cur-
rents carried her upon the rocks of Fisher's Island
and pounded her to pieces in a short time. Forty-
two persons perished in this catastrophe. The
disaster occasioned as much horror and excitement
in the public mind as the more recent burning of
the " Narragansett. " New London soon after-
ward raised a stately monument of granite to the
memory of the lost (more particularly to the Wal-
ton family, father, mother and three children, all
of whom perished in the wreck, though their bod-
ies were recovered), and Mrs. Sigourney, who was
then living in Norwich, and some of whose friends
were among the lost, further commemorated the
event by her beautiful dirge, "The Bell of the
Wreck " — familiar to all schoolboys from its popu-
larity with the compilers of school readers. The
Government has since erected a lighthouse on one
of the hummocks or islets of the Sound near the
scene of the disaster.

CHAPTER IX

THE FROGS OF WINDHAM

IT is difficult for one who lingers in summer
days on the beautiful village green of Wind-
ham, where evidences of wealth, comfort and
plenty confront him on every side, to bring back
the scenes and conditions of that far-off year,
1754, which made possible the curious incident
we are about to describe.

It was the night of June 17, 1754, that the
grewsome, grotesque circumstance occurred. The
green was as fresh and vivid in coloring, the elms
arched as gracefully, the stream from the pond
broke over its barriers and flowed away under the
rustic bridge as murmuringly then as now, but in
the minds of the people there was sad foreboding
and expectation of the momentary outbreak of a
savage foe. It was the eve of one of the bloodiest
of the French and Indian wars. Windham
County had special reason for fearing vengeance,
since, in acquiring some parts of her recent Sus-

The Frogs of Windham 129

quehanna purchase, the Indians were known to
have been aggrieved and wronged. Goodman
White's negro slave Pomp was the first to expe-
rience the terrors of the night. Having lingered
until a late hour beside a dusky Phyllis in one of
the outlying farmhouses, he at length started to
return to the village, a Voodoo charm about his
neck and a horseshoe in his hand as a protection
against spooks. The night was still, misty, and
intensely dark. Pomp went his way whistling,
his fears equally divided between the insubstan-
tial ghost and the more material Mohawk. He
had reached the green, when all at once a dire
uproar burst upon him. Roar, bellow, gabble,
shriek, splash, gurgle, were combined, and the
sounds came from everywhere at once — above,
below, on this side and that, from field, and pond,
and forest. To say that Pomp fled, and shrieked,
and prayed, conveys no idea of the celerity of his
flight nor the intensity of his groans and supplica-
tions. But before he could reach the center of
the green, chamber windows were thrown open,
nightcapped heads were thrust forth, and femi-
nine shrieks and the strong cries of men added
to the uproar; many swooned; the stronger fled
as they were to the village green, where they

130 In Olde Connecticut

huddled in a little group, every eye upturned to
see through the murky gloom the glory of the
opening heavens and the awful visage of the de-
scending Judge. In that company not one but
believed that the last great day was at hand. But
the levin-stroke of judgment failed to come, and
soon the thought came to the stronger minds that
the uproar was of terrestrial origin, and attributa-
ble to savage foes. Peering into the darkness, and
shrinking from the possible deadly tomahawk,
they waited and watched. At length they heard,
amid the general babel, distinct articulations
which gradually resolved themselves into the
names of two of Windham's most prominent citi-
zens— Colonel Dyer, the agent, and Squire Elder-
kin, one of the trustees of the Susquehanna Com-
pany. "We'll have Colonel Dyer! We'll have
Colonel Dyer! We'll have Colonel Dyer!" the
mysterious voices declared; and "Elderkin too!"
"Elderkin too!" "Elderkin too!" an equally
mysterious chorus repeated; not a person but
trembled for the fate of those two strong pillar*
of the commonwealth. The words " tete," " tete,"
which followed, were construed as meaning that
the investing force was disposed to treat, but as
nothing could be done in the darkness, the af-

The Frogs of Windham 131

frighted people contented themselves with placing
a line of sentries around the town, and then with-
drew to their homes.

So in fear, doubt, distress, speculation, the fate-
ful night wore away. Morning broke, and never,
it is safe to say, was light welcomed with more
hearty accord than by the good people of Wind-
ham.

Hours passed but no savage army appeared,
nor was any cause of the strange voices of the
night discoverable, and the occurrence would, no
doubt, have been added to the long list of super-
natural events detailed in Cotton Mather's Won-
der Book had not Pomp, watering his master's
horses at the pond next morning, discovered mul-
titudes of frogs lying dead and blackened in the
water. Then it came as a revelation to the people
of Windham that an army of frogs, smitten with
some deadly epidemic, or, perhaps, attacked by
some invading army, had produced the affrighting
sounds. The revulsion of feeling, it is said, was
great; the whole village assumed a sheepish air.
Somehow, too, the story got abroad, and brought
a ripple of laughter to the face of the whole county.
Everybody was disposed to regard the experience
of that terrible night as a rich joke. Gibes, puns,

132 In Olde Connecticut

lampoons, ditties, proverbs, were rained on the
unfortunate Windamites. Even the clergymen
poked fun, as the following letter from the Rev.
Mr. Stiles of Woodstock, to his nephew, a law
student, abundantly shows. It is dated at Wood-
stock, July 9, 1754, and proceeds :

" If the late tragical tidings from Windham de-
serve credit, as doubtless they do, it will then
concern the gentlemen of your Jurispritian order
to be fortified against the croaks of Tauranean
legions — legions terrible as the very wreck of mat-
ter and the crash of worlds. Antiquity relates
that the elephant fears the mouse; a herd trembles
at the crowing of a cock; but pray whence is it
that the croaking of a bullfrog should so Belthaz-
zarize a lawyer? How Dyerful the alarm made
by these audacious long-winded croakers. I hope,
sir, from the Dyerful reports from the frog pond
you will gain some instruction, as well as from
the reports of my Lord Coke. "

CHAPTER X

LEBANON, THE HOME OF JONATHAN TRTTMBULL

old town well illustrates the historical
A importance of the average rural New Eng-
land village, once, maybe, the theater of inspiring
events, but which the shifting currents of trade
have left far inland, as it were, to retain and treas-
ure up what it has received. The atmosphere of
the town is as dreamy as that of the Lotos Isles.
The ashes of the past here rest undisturbed.
Rusty flintlock and dented sword blade, quaint old
china, letters of famous men breathing faintly of
lavender and camphor, scented garments of an-
other age, rest secure from the collector's rage and
the golden shekels of the dealer in antiques. One
is surprised to find what stores of history are locked
up in the town. It was, as remarked, the birth-
place and home of Jonathan Trumbull, the "war
Governor" of Connecticut. His "war office, "
the true base of supplies for the Continental
armies, stood here. William Williams, signer of

134 In Olde Connecticut

the Declaration of Independence, lived in a corner
house on the village street. The Duke de Lau-
zun's legion of the French army went into winter
quarters here in 1779, and pretty much all the
famous men of the Revolution, at one time and
another, have threaded its streets. Never was a
people more steeped in tradition and historic lore
than the villagers. They imbibe it with their na-
tive air and impart it as freely as it is received.
Governor Trumbull, is of course, the chief fig-
ure in the village gossip. He was Governor of
Connecticut from 1770 to 1784, and held his court
in the village. He was a Judge before he was
Governor, Senator and Deputy before he was
Judge, and a merchant before he was either. To
give his mercantile career in detail would be to
open up all the methods and channels of colonial
commerce. He had a store and warehouse at
Haddam, on the Connecticut, another at Norwich,
and ships on every sea where the jealous policy
of England allowed the colonies an entrance.
His most extensive trade was with the West Indies.
Connecticut was then purely agricultural, and the
fields and forests of Windham county produced
cattle, horses, sheep, grain, salted provisions and
the like in great abundance, all of which found a

Lebanon, the Home of Jonathan Trumbull 135

ready sale on the plantation. These Trumbull
collected and sent in great wagon-trains to Had-
dam or Norwich, whence his swift ships bore
them to the Indies, receiving in return sugar, mo-
lasses, salt, rum, cotton, wool and other com-
modities. He had also several ships trading to
London, and sent hither in addition to the crude
products of the soil, furs, skins, whale-oil, whale
fins, flax, hemp, potash, tar, turpentine, fish, cider
and perry. The articles that he received in return
were intended chiefly for the use of his fair country-
women; many of their descendants of the present
day I imagine would be puzzled to determine the
nature and use of these articles from a mere men-
tion of them. Here is a list taken from one of
his invoices of about 1742 : " Scarlet cloaks, scar-
let caps, scarlet calimancoes, black leather and
morocco clogs, drugget, rich black serges, rich
black-spotted grogatoons, broad knee-gartering,
calicoes, muslins, cambrics, canvas, kerseys, lin-
ens, duffels, grograms, hose, silk gloves, crape,
satin, lace, thread, galloons, sorted velvet masks,
lawns, checks, ribbons, fans and taffetas, colored
Brussels camlets, women's stuffed shoes, flowered
silk shoes and clogs, and glasses in walnut, shell,
mahogany and japanned frames. "

136 In Olde Connecticut

By 1763 our merchant had become rich. He
owned a fine old roomy mansion on the village
main street, a store, gristmill, and several farms
in Lebanon, wharves and warehouses at Haddam
and Norwich, and argosies enough upon the seas
to swell the inventory of his estate to £18,000.
It is a striking instance of the simplicity of the
times as well as of his own powers of body and
mind that to the busy career of the merchant he
added the cares of such public offices as Senator
of the colony and Judge of the Superior Court,
besides serving on several commissions of grave
importance. But still more arduous services were
in store for him. In 1769 the unanimous voice
of the freedmen made him Governor of the sturdy
little colony, and he was still Governor when on
that April morning in 1775 Trail Bissel, spurring
down from Watertown, roused every country ham-
let with his news of Lexington. Never was busier
man than Trumbull for the next few weeks. The
gossips give a graphic picture of him at this time.
From morning till night he was at his store, now
turned into a supplies depot; hat, coat and vest
off, gray hair floating in the breeze, dealing out
tents and rations to the militia that came pouring
in, packing great wagons with clothing, provisions

Lebanon, the Home of Jonathan Trumbull 137

and powder, for the newly-formed camps at Bos-
ton, reading and answering dispatches brought by
breathless messengers from captains of trainbands
and selectmen of the various towns, while every
now and then a village trainband or militia com-
pany would march in with fanfare of drum and
fife, salute him and be dismissed to the seat of
war with well-chosen words of encouragement.
From this time on until the close of the struggle
the little store became the theater of the intensest
military activity. It is as historic in its way as
Faneuil Hall or the State House at Philadelphia.
Nearly all the 719 meetings of the Connecticut
Governor and Council during the war were held
here. Here Washington, Adams, Hancock, Jef-
ferson, Putnam, Greene, Rochambeau and others
met at different times to consult on the affairs
of the country. Here was conceived and per-
fected that admirable system of espionage and
detection which preserved Connecticut from the
horrors of civil war. It was the birthplace, too,
of those audacious privateers, the "Spy," the
" Cromwell, " the " Trumbull, " and others, that
scoured the Sound and discovered such an affinity
for the fat storeships of the enemy; and from its
doors those long supply trains and droves of fat

138 In Olde Connecticut

beeves, guided by Colonel Champion, of happy
memory, set out for Valley Forge and Morris-
town. This historic building was a little one-
story structure, with an old-fashioned hipped foof
and central chimney stack, and divided within
into two apartments — one filled with the miscel-
laneous articles of a country store and an inner
apartment used as a counting room. It is still
standing, though removed from its ancient site
and fitted up for a tenement.

But this is drifting into serious history when
the main object was to present some of the gos-
sipy anecdotes that are so marked a feature of
the village life. Two or three that follow are
only for purposes of illustration. One day, in the
December of 1780, Lauzun's Legion of Hussars
came riding into the town. They were a splendid
body of men, every one above the regulation
standard of six feet, and all mounted on horses
gayly caparisoned. The officers were young " no-
bles " of France, and resplendent in the blue and
gold of the French uniform. At their head rode
the Duke de Lauzun, his breast sparkling with
orders, in appearance worthy to be the leader of
such a legion. Rochambeau had designated Leba-
non as their winter quarters, and they were soon

Lebanon, the Home of Jonathan Trumbull 139

in camp — the men in barracks on the village
green, the officers in the homes of the villagers,
and Lauzun in the house of Colonel David Trum-
bull, the Governor's son, which stood directly
opposite the gubernatorial residence. They re-
mained in the village seven months. Once during
the winter the dull routine of the camp was broken
by the news that General Washington was close
at hand. He was then on his way to Newport to
meet Rochambeau, and came to Lebanon as the
guest of the Governor. Lauzun ordered a grand
review of the legion in his honor, on which occa-
sion the Hussars displayed the perfection of mili-
tary discipline. They charged, wheeled and de-
ployed, broke ranks and reformed, waved their
colors, bared their sabers, and fired their carbines
amid torrents of applause from the multitudes
that gathered to witness the grand affair. The
reviewing party made a pretty bit of color. There
were Washington and his escort in full uniform —
blue, buff-lined coats, buff vests, buff breeches
buckled at the knees, and long spurred boots;
Lauzun and his staff in blue and gold, epauleted,
their breasts glittering with jeweled insignia; and
Governor Trumbull and his suite in the crimson,
broad-flapped coats, embroidered vests, and vel-

140 In Olde Connecticut

vet small-clothes that formed the dress of the ci-
vilian of that period. It was a grand affair, and
its memory will never fade from the village. The
presence of the mercurial Frenchmen gave to the
town this winter the gayety of a provincial capi-
tal. The young nobles were not slow in discov-
ering the attractions of the "fair Connecticut
girls" (as one of their number styled them in a
letter which I should like to print entire if space
permitted). Sleigh rides, dancing parties, tea par-
ties, and dinner entertainments kept the village
in a whirl of excitement the winter through. Once
the officers rode down to Norwich to a grand din-
ner at General Jedediah Huntington's, and won
the hearts of all the village maidens by their splen-
did uniforms and superb bearing. Governor
Trumbull and the neighboring gentry and the
Duke gave many entertainments. One of the
grandest of these was a dinner given by the Duke
in honor of two distinguished officers of the French
army — the Marquis de Chastellux and the Baron
de Montesquieu — the latter a grandson of the
famous sage of Brede. Governor Trumbull was,
of course, invited. When the guests were all
seated at table — most of them being gay, skep-
tical French officers — the Governor arose and

Lebanon, the Home of Jonathan Trumbull 141

pronounced a long and formal grace to the no
little astonishment of his fellow guests. It was
the Puritan custom, and the good old methodical
chief magistrate could not depart from it. The
incident produced such an impression on De Chas-
tellux that he recorded it in his volume of travels.
It was not all merrymaking, however. In the
depth of winter news came that the army was suf-
fering terribly, especially for clothing, and so the
good Governor, as he had done before, ordered
that contributions for their relief should be taken
on Sunday in the various churches. On the day
appointed the little village church at Lebanon was
crowded, and in their stiff, straight backed pew
sat the Governor and Madam Trumbull — the lat-
ter wearing a beautiful scarlet cloak, the gift, it is
said, of Rochambeau himself. The Governor's
call was read, and in the hush that followed
Madam Trumbull arose, proceeded to the altar,
and laid on it the scarlet cloak as her contribution
to the cause. Such an example could not but be
contagious. Rings, brooches, chains, purses, and
cloaks from the women, greatcoats, caps, mittens,
stockings, boots, money and provisions from the
men were rained upon the altar, and the poor sol-
diers reaped a rich harvest from the generous act.

CHAPTER XI

MOUNT TOM, A HAUNTED HILL

IT is not long since the public was kept for
weeks on the rack of expectation by a moun-
tain in the Carolinas, yclept Bald Mountain,
which after hundreds of years of unbroken seren-
ity suddenly assumed a disturbed aspect. Deep
in its bowels unearthly meanings and mutterings
were heard. Great bowlders were seen to start
and roll from summit to base without apparent
cause; fissures in its sides, and tremors and shak-
ings in the surrounding country, seemed to imply
the presence of volcanic force, and the tidings
flashed over the wires that the country was about
to acquire a promising volcano excited the live-
liest expectations in every patriotic breast. Eager
gentlemen of the press at once rushed to the
mountain that the public might be presented with
its every succeeding phase, as well as with a vivid
description of the final catastrophe. A railroad
thither was projected, and contracts entered into

Mount Tom, a Haunted Hill 143

for building inns and boarding houses to accom-
modate prospective sightseers. So far, however,
the mountain has disappointed expectations, and
if the scientific men are correct, will continue to
do so.

But a stranger fact is that, all unknown to the
public, there is in Connecticut, scarcely three
hours by rail from New York, a mountain that
far surpasses its Carolinian rival in all that makes
the latter famous. This mountain is known as
Mount Tom, and is in the township of East Had-
dam, on the Connecticut River, about sixteen
miles above Saybrook Point, and not more than
half that distance from the city of Middletown;
it is easily accessible from Saybrook, Middletown
and Hartford by the Valley Railroad and also by
the steamboats that ply on the Connecticut River.
By the railroad one stops at Tylerville, where a
primitive scow propelled by a two-man power
ferries one across the river to Goodspeed's. The
steamboats stop at both Goodspeed's and East
Haddam landings.

The mountain itself rises about two and one-
half miles north of the village of East Haddam,
and is in shape something like an elongated sugar
loaf; there are outcroppings of the granitic for-

144 In Olde Connecticut

mation peculiar to this region, on its surface, and
it is covered with a small growth of chestnut, oak
and maple, whose dark green foliage, when I
visited it, was beginning to give place to the russet,
crimson and gold of early autumn. The Salmon
and the Moodus Rivers flow together at its west-
ern base, first compassing the mountain on two
sides; the average rise and fall of the tide here
is two feet. At the base of the mountain, on one
side, is the pretty factory village of Moodus, vocal
with the hum of ten thousand spindles; on the
other is a cove and dock, whence a little steam-
boat accomplishes weekly trips to New York;
north and east stretches a cultivated country with
many a village and hamlet snugly nestled in its
bosom.

Having visited the mountain I became inter-
ested in its history. Its Indian name was Mack-
imoodus, signifying "the place of noises," and
the tribe of Indians who inhabited the region
about it bore the same appellation. They were
remarkable for their piety, and sustained the re-
lation of priests to the other Indians, to whom
this mountain with its thunderings and quakings
could be no other than the abode of Hobbamocko,
the author of all human calamities, who was to

Mount Tom, a Haunted Hill 145

be propitiated. Hence Pequot, Mohegan and
Narragansett resorted thither with offerings, and
the powwows of the Mackimoodus were kept of-
fering almost daily sacrifices to the spirit of the
mountain.

The first whites came here in 1670, and from
this time minute accounts of the phenomena may
be gleaned from the early writers. A long and de-
tailed account is given in the manuscript of the
Rev. Charles Bradley, for many years pastor of
the church at East Haddam, which is preserved
in the library of the Connecticut Historical Society
at Hartford. The Rev. Mr. Hosmer, the first
minister at Haddam, in a letter to Mr. Prince of
Boston, dated August 13, 1729, thus speaks of
the mountain:

"As to the earthquakes I have something con-
siderable and awful to tell you. Earthquakes
have been here (and nowhere but in this precinct
as can be discerned; that is, they seem to have
their center, rise and origin among us), as has
been observed, for more than thirty years. I
have been informed that in this place, before the
English settlement, there were great numbers of
Indian inhabitants, and that it was a place of
extraordinary Indian Pawaws, or, in short, that

146 In Olde Connecticut

it was a place where the Indians drove a pro-
digious trade at worshipping the devil. . . .
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 subterranean caverns
of the earth cannot be known; for there is no
eruption, no explosion perceptible, 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 sev-
eral hundreds of them within twenty years, some
more, some less terrible. Sometimes we have
heard them almost every day, 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, which 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 both
but moderate. "

Mount Tom, a Haunted Hill 147

The venerable Doctor Trumbull, the Cotton
Mather of Connecticut, in his search for its an-
tiquities, gathered much concerning the Moodus
noises, and printed it in his delightful chronicles
of the State, now I believe entirely out of print;
he publishes the letter given above and also the
following account from a resident of Haddam:

" The awful noises continue to the present time.
The effects they produced are various as the in-
termediate 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 shocks
they give to a dwelling house are the same as the
falling of logs on the floor. The small shocks
produce no emotions of terror or fear in the minds
of the inhabitants. They are spoken of as usual
occurrences, and are called Moodus noises. But
when they are so violent as to be felt in the ad-
jacent towns they are called earthquakes. During
my residence here, which has been almost thirty-
six years, I have invariably observed after some
of the most violent of these shocks that an ac-
count has been published in the newspapers of a
small shock of an earthquake at New London
and Hartford. Nor do I believe in all that period

148 In Olde Connecticut

there has been any account published of an earth-
quake in Connecticut which was not far more
violent here than in any other place. By recur-
ring to the newspapers you will find that an earth-
quake was noticed on the 18th of May, 1791,
about 10 o'clock p. M. It was perceived as far
distant as Boston and New York. A few minutes
after there was another shock which was percep-
tible at the distance of seventy miles. Here at
that time the concussion of the earth and the
roaring of the atmosphere were most tremendous;
consternation and dread filled every house. Many
chimneys were untopped, and walls thrown down.
It was a night much to be remembered, for be-
side the two shocks which were noticed at a dis-
tance, during the night, there was here a succession
of shocks to the number of twenty, perhaps thirty,
the effects of which, like all others, decreased in
every direction in proportion to the distances.
The next day stones of several tons weight were
found removed from their places, and apertures
in the earth, and fissures in immovable rocks,
ascertained the places where the explosions were
made. Since that time the noises and shocks
have been less frequent than before, though not
a year passes but some of them are perceptible. "

Mount Tom, a Haunted Hill 149

Mr. Barber in his "Historical Collections"
says:

"The severest shocks are felt as far northeast-
erly as Boston, and as far southwesterly as New
York, and there noticed as earthquakes. In 1816
and 1817 in the night these noises were more than
usually violent. A person was on Mount Tom
about fifteen years since, at the time these noises
were heard. It appeared to this person as though
a stone or large body fell underneath the ground
directly under his feet, and grated down to a con-
siderable distance in the depths below. The
cause of these noises is explained by some to be
mineral or chemical combinations exploding at a
depth of many thousand feet beneath the surface
of the earth. The jar is similar to that of ex-
ploded gunpowder. "

And the " Connecticut Gazette " of August 20,
1790:

" Various have been the conjectures concerning
the cause of these earthquakes, or Moodus noises
as they are called. The following account has
gained credit with many persons: It is reported
that between twenty and thirty years ago a tran-
sient person came to this town who called himself
Doctor Steel, from Great Britain, who having had

150 In Olde Connecticut

information respecting these noises made critical
observation at different times and in different
places, till at length he dug up two pearls of great
value which he called carbuncles, near Salmon
River, and that he told the people the noises would
be discontinued for many years, as he had taken
away their cause ; but as he had discovered others
in miniature, they would be again heard in proc-
ess of time. The best evidence of the authentic-
ity of this story is that it has happened agreeably
to his prophecy. The noises did cease for many
years, and have again been heard for two or three
years past, and they increase. Three shocks have
been felt in a short space, one of which, according
to a late paper, was felt at New London, though
it was by the account much more considerable in
this and the adjacent towns. "

An aged inhabitant of Haddam, in answer to
my inquiry concerning the origin of the noises,
related this legend, and I have given it as a valu-
able addition to our stock of "folklore." He
added that Mount Tom — which is the center from
which these noises proceed — had been quiet for a
series of years. The last violent outbreak he had
himself heard. It occurred one Sunday evening
in 1852, when the villagers had gathered for wor-

Mount Tom, a Haunted Hill 151

ship, and I judge from his description was of the
same general character as those above described.

From the foregoing account it appears that dif-
ferent persons have entertained different theories
respecting the origin of these remarkable natural
phenomena. The simple Indians and the early
colonists ascribed it to the agency of evil spirits;
others attributed it to the explosive power of sub-
terranean gases; the scientific theory would prob-
ably differ from all these; and, curious to know
what it might be, I addressed a note to Professor
Rice, of Wesleyan University, who is familiar with
the mountain, expressing my desire, and received
from him the following reply:

"I have never made any special investigation
of the geology of Moodus. In general the rocks
of that vicinity are of the micaceous metamorphic
series. They would be called granite in the loose
sense in which that word is colloquially used.
More strictly they are gneiss and mica schist.
There are no volcanic rocks in the vicinity. The
noises are simply small earthquakes, such as are
frequent in many regions of greatly disturbed
metamorphic strata, as for instance in the Alps
and Pyrenees. On page 350 of the abridged edi-
tion of Charles Kingsley's memoir is an account,

152 In Olde Connecticut

in his inimitably picturesque style, of one of these
little earthquakes which he experienced at Pau
in the Pyrenees. In regions of highly disturbed
metamorphic strata the rocks are apt to be in a
state of strain or tension, which will from time
to time produce such slight vibratory movements
as are heard and felt in the Moodus noises. The
comprehensive cause, both of these and of the
severer earthquakes, is the contraction of a cooling
globe."

CHAPTER XII

A REVOLUTIONARY NEWGATE*

TN East Granby, sixteen miles northwest of
•*• Hartford, on a bleak, barren hillside, plenti-
fully sprinkled with half corroded fragments of
copper ore, there stands a mass of ancient, grim-
looking buildings, which, frowning from behind
a massive wall of stone, and displaying bastion,
moat and watch tower, resemble somewhat the
deserted castles that confront the traveler on every
hilltop as he journeys up or down the Rhine.
The moat is nearly filled now, and the wall might
be scaled by an active climber, but the visitor who
declines this exertion by following the wall around
to the east, comes presently to a gateway, through
which he may enter unchallenged by warden or
sentry, when he will find himself in the yard of
what was once the most terrible of modern pris-
ons,— from 1775 to 1783 the national prison of
the Continental Government, and from 1790 to
* " Lippincott's Magazine," March, 1881.

154 In Olde Connecticut

1827 the State prison of Connecticut. The ut-
most desolation now reigns in the inclosure. The
owlet rests undisturbed on the coping of the wall.
The dust and mold of half a century have col-
lected in the unused interiors of workshop and
chapel. Bats cling in the dark corners, and the
wary spider weaves his meshes and inveigles the
silly fly, undisturbed by the housewife's broom or
other signs of human occupancy.

The buildings above ground, which first attract
the attention, are the former workshops, hospital,
chapel and guardhouse of the prison. The dun-
geons and cells — the prison proper — were one hun-
dred feet beneath the ground; and it was this
feature that gave to the old Newgate its unique
and horrible character and made it the terror of
evildoers wherever its ominous fame was sounded.
The entrance to these dungeons is by a perpen-
dicular shaft fifty feet deep, whose yawning mouth
is still covered by the guardhouse standing in the
center of the prison yard. To one of its sides is
affixed a wooden ladder down which the visitor
must climb to reach the dungeons below. At the
bottom of the shaft a flight of stone steps leads
down thirty or forty feet farther to a central cham-
ber, which contained the sleeping apartments of

A Revolutionary Newgate 155

the convicts. On one side a narrow passage leads
down to a well of pure water, above which an
air shaft pierces the sandstone for seventy feet
until it reaches the surface and admits a few
cheering rays of light into the dungeon. Every-
where else a Cimmerian darkness prevails. These
caverns may be briefly described as comprising
three parallel galleries in the heart of the mount-
ain, extending eight hundred feet north and
south, and connected by numberless cross-passages
cut to facilitate communication, while lateral gal-
leries honeycomb the mountain on either side.
The lowest depth reached is three hundred feet.
The galleries are cut through the solid rock, and
are low and narrow, except in the case of the
chamber above mentioned. Their floors are cov-
ered with a soft adhesive slime, and in some places
with water, which drips unceasingly from the roof,
and the intense darkness and noxious gases which
prevail render their passage difficult, though not
impossible. Besides the main shaft there are
other means of exit from the dungeons, — two air
shafts, both of which open in the prison yard, and
a level or drain leading from the northeast gallery
and having its outlet without the prison wall.
The cavern was originally a copper mine, and

156 In Olde Connecticut

owed its existence to the discovery here, about
1705, of a vein of copper ore, so rich that Pro-
fessor Silliman, after careful assay, found it to
yield fifteen per cent of pure copper, the yield of
the Cornish mines being but eight per cent. It
is a truism in mining lore, I believe, that all the
minerals known to man may be found in Con-
necticut in just sufficient quantities not to pay for
working; but at the beginning of the eighteenth
century this truth had not been discovered, and
the entire range of sandstone hills which stretch
from the prison to East Rock, near New Haven,
fifty miles distant, is seamed with shallow holes
dug by the prospectors of that age. One day
these investigators discovered this rich vein of
copper ore, and, as gold was believed to be not
far distant, a company to work it was quickly
formed. To give the history of the mining op-
erations which hollowed out the dungeons of New-
gate is not germane to our subject; it is, perhaps,
sufficient to say that after being worked for seventy
years by free labor, slave labor, and the imported
article, the enterprise was abandoned, having
bankrupted a score of chartered companies and
reduced as many once affluent families to the bit-
terest poverty. This was in 1773. At that time,

A Revolutionary Newgate 157

as it happened, the colony of Connecticut was
feeling the need of greater prison accommodations
than it then possessed. The county jails, its only
penal institutions, were overcrowded with prison-
ers, and were, besides, extremely insecure. It
lacked the means to build a general or State's
prison, even if the necessary authority could be
obtained. In this dilemma some bright spirits
suggested employing the abandoned copper mine
at Simsbury (now East Granby) as a convict hold,
— a suggestion received with great favor by the
people and adopted by the Legislature of 1773.
This body passed an act directing that male pris-
oners not under sentence for capital crimes should
be imprisoned in the mines, and appropriated a
small sum for the purchase and for making the
place secure; it also appointed a keeper, one
Captain John Viets, and named the new prison
Newgate, after the famous prison of that name
in London. Another act prescribed the terms of
imprisonment. Burglary, robbery and counter-
feiting were punished, the first offense by impris-
onment not exceeding ten years, the second of-
fense by imprisonment for life. The punishment
which might be inflicted on the convicts was mod-
erate whipping, not exceeding ten stripes, and

158 In Olde Connecticut

the putting shackles and fetters upon them; the
keeper was also instructed to employ them at
labor in the mines, but this was not practised
long, as the convicts soon found that the pick-
ax and shovel used in mining could be advan-
tageously employed in digging a way out. John
Hinson was the first prisoner formally committed
to Newgate; his commitment bore date Decem-
ber 2, 1773. Before entering the dungeons he
had been so fortunate as to gain the affections of
a strong-handed Phyllis serving on one of the neigh-
boring farms, and she, on the eighteenth night
of his confinement effected his release by drawing
him up through one of the shafts in a bucket that
had been used for hoisting ore. Captain Viets
then guarded an empty prison until the 26th of
the succeeding February, when three prisoners
were received; of these, one escaped on the 9th
of the following April, and the two others on the
23d. A prisoner committed April 5th escaped
on the 9th, having been confined four days. All
were released by accomplices outside, who drew
them up through the unguarded air shafts, — a
fact which led the Legislature to order a more
thorough fortification of these approaches.

But events were hastening which were destined

A Revolutionary Newgate 159

to bring about a new order of things and fill New-
gate with a far different class of prisoners. The
year 1775 found the colonies engaged in their
memorable contest with the mother country.
At the outset the patriots found themselves ham-
pered and their cause endangered by the adhe-
rents of the British crown among them, men who
had been their friends as well as neighbors, but
who now became their bitterest foes, assailing
them with the rankest epithets, denouncing their
measures, spying into their actions and transmit-
ting swift intelligence thereof to the British gen-
eral, plotting to bring down on them the enemy's
armed hordes, and, when they came, piloting
them through the country. The patriot leaders,
bold, resolute, blessed with abundant nerve-force
and an utter absence of sickly sentimentality, took
prompt measures to repress these traitors. In
most of the colonies committees of safety were at
once appointed, charged with a strict espionage
of all suspected persons. When sufficient cause
appeared, such people were visited and an avowal
of their sentiments demanded. If only indiffer-
ent, the espionage was continued, but if they
openly avowed Tory sentiments they were forth-
with apprehended, tried for misdemeanor, and

160 In Olde Connecticut

sent to prison. It was important that such pris-
oners should be securely confined. The county
jails were quite the reverse of secure, and so the
stern logic of necessity consigned them to the
gloomy dungeons of Newgate. It is interesting
to note that the first commitment of prisoners of
this class was made by General Washington. His
letter of commitment, addressed to the committee
of safety at Simsbury, is worthy of insertion as a
literary curiosity:

"CAMBRIDGE, Dec. 7, 1775.
"GENTLEMEN, — The prisoners which will be
delivered you with this, having been tried by a
court-martial and deemed to be such flagrant and
atrocious villians that they cannot by any means
be set at large or confined in any place near this
camp, were sentenced to Simsbury, in Connecti-
cut. You will, therefore, be pleased to have them
secured in your jail, or in such other manner as
to you shall seem necessary, so that they cannot
possibly make their escape. The charges of their
imprisonment will be at the Continental expense.
"I am, etc.,

"GEORGE WASHINGTON."

During the eight years of war that followed,

A Revolutionary Newgate 161

Newgate became widely celebrated. Its name
frequently appeared in the public prints, and tales
of the horrors of its dungeons and of the suffer-
ings of its prisoners were freely narrated at cottage
firesides and industriously circulated by the Tories
and their friends.

In 1781, one Ebenezer Hathaway had gained
considerable notoriety as captain of a Tory pri-
vateer boat named the " Adventure. " With this
boat and his crew of eight men he would steal out
from his rendezvous on the Long Island coast,
make a descent on some defenseless town in Con-
necticut, plunder and burn at pleasure, and then
return at leisure to his place of retreat. Of
course reprisals were made by the other party,
and thus originated the famous " whaleboat war-
fare," waged with so much animosity by the pa-
triots of Connecticut and the Tories of Long Is-
land. In one of these reprisals Hathaway and
his crew were taken and committed to Hartford
jail for trial. A Tory newspaper furnishes the
sequel: "After being tried before the Superior
Court, they were ordered to Newgate Gaol, or
rather to that inquisition, Simsbury Mines, which,
from the following description, exceeds anything
among their allies in France or Spain :
K

162 In Olde Connecticut

"These poor unfortunate victims relate that
they were taken from Hartford Gaol and marched
under a strong guard to Simsbury Mines, distant
about seventy-four miles. In approaching this
horrid dungeon they were first conducted through
the apartments of the guards, and then through a
trapdoor downstairs into another upon the same
floor with the kitchen, which was divided from it
by a very strong partition door.

" In the corner of this outer room and near the
foot of the stairs opened another large trapdoor,
covered with bars and bolts of iron, which was
hoisted up by two guards by means of a tackle,
whilst the hinges grated as they turned upon their
hooks, and opened the jaws and mouth of what
they call Hell, into which they descended by
means of a ladder about six feet more, which led
to a large iron grate or hatchway locked down
over a shaft of about three feet diameter, sunk
through the solid rock, and which they were told
led to the bottomless pit. Finding it not possible
to evade this hard, cruel fate, they bade adieu to
the world, and descended the ladder about thirty-
eight feet more, when they came to what is called
the landing; then marching shelf by shelf, till, de-
scending about thirty or forty feet more, they

A Revolutionary Newgate 163

came to a platform of boards laid underfoot, with
a few more put overhead to carry off the water,
which keeps continually dropping. 'Here,' say
they, ' we found the inhabitants of this woful man-
sion, who were exceeding anxious to know what
was going on above. ' ' '

The year previous, a band of Tory marauders
from Long Island bent on a predatory excursion
had landed near New Haven and marched to
Bethany, a town ten miles northwest, — their ob-
jective point being the house of Captain Ebenezer
Dayton, a gentleman formerly residing on Long
Island, but whose Whig sentiments had forced
him to fly from the wrath of the Loyalists. This
house they broke open and pillaged from top to
bottom, the master being absent, and then re-
turned to their boats ; but before they could reach
the British lines they were captured by two whale-
boat crews from Derby, and brought back to Con-
necticut for trial. Graham, the leader, proved to
be a deserter from the Continental Army, and
was shot; the others were sentenced to Newgate.
Not all the prisoners in these dungeons at this
time, however, were of this character. There
were men of learning, wit and talent among them,
— physicians, lawyers, and one clergyman, the

164 In Olde Connecticut

Rev. Simeon Baxter, who for his "exceedingly
bitter and seditious" language against the Con-
gress was sentenced to Newgate. It was his cus-
tom every Sabbath to preach to his fellow-spirits
in prison, and as he possessed a certain rude elo-
quence, and some logic, and so constructed his
discourses as to prove to his audience that all
their persecutors " would swing before John Han-
cock should be king," he was listened to with
the greatest attention and respect. One of these
sermons was published in London shortly after
his release. It is entitled "Tyrannicide proved
lawful from the Practice and Writings of Jews,
Heathens, and Christians. A Discourse delivered
in the Mines at Symsbury, in the Colony of Con-
necticut, to the Loyalists confined by Order of
the Congress, on September 19, 1781, by Simeon
Baxter, a Licentiate in Divinity and Voluntary
Chaplain to those Prisoners in the Apartment
called Orcus. "

Among prisoners of this character, strong, in-
genious, desperate, and believing themselves un-
justly imprisoned, the hope of escape was fondly
cherished, and the attempt eagerly made when-
ever opportunity offered. Next to the air shafts,
the level or drain leading from the northeast gal-

A Revolutionary Newgate 165

lery was the most common means of escape. The
first to make use of this narrow road to freedom
was Henry Wooster, one of those engaged in the
pillaging of Dayton's house. The entrance to the
drain had been closed by a solid wall of masonry,
in which, however, a grated aperture was left for
the passage of the water. Arming himself with
a nail rod taken while at his duties in the nail
shop, Wooster attacked the masonry, and picked
it out bit by bit until the iron bars could be
wrenched from their position. He then entered
the level, and, lying at length within its slimy
confines, worked himself along, enlarging the pas-
sage with his nail rod in places where it did not
afford room for his shoulders. Toiling in this
way for several weeks, he had nearly gained the
outlet when he found one morning, as he was
returning feet foremost, that a large stone had
fallen from the roof of the drain and completely
barred the passage. For a time he was almost
in despair: he could not turn to reach the stone,
and to escape by the outlet was to give himself
up to the guards, as day had already dawned.
At length, by a desperate effort, he succeeded in
pushing the stone along with his feet till it sank
into a hollow ; he then passed over it and reentered

166 In Olde Connecticut

the cavern, bruised and bloody, just as the day-
break bell rang to call the prisoners to their daily
labor. A few nights afterward, Wooster and
several of his fellow captives who were able to
remove their fetters passed through the drain and
escaped to the forests.

But a much more desperate outbreak than this
is recorded in the prison annals as occurring on
the 17th of May, 1781. At that time there were
thirty desperate men confined in the vaults. The
guard in charge of them consisted of a lieutenant,
sergeant, corporal and twenty-four privates, sev-
eral of the latter mere boys, and all lax in their
ideas of discipline. The officers were armed with
swords and pistols, the privates with muskets and
fixed bayonets. On the night of the day in ques-
tion, after the prisoners had been fastened in the
dungeons, the wife of a convict named Young
appeared and desired to see him, and, as there
was nothing suspicious in this, the request was
readily granted. Two officers lifted the trap, the
rest of the guard being asleep, but no sooner was
the heavy door unfastened than it was thrust vio-
lently up from beneath, and the whole body of
prisoners rushed into the room. The two officers
were at once struck down, the arms of the pri-

A Revolutionary Newgate 167

vates seized, and, after a sharp tussle, the insur-
gents became masters of the prison. In the melee
six of the guard were wounded, — one mortally, —
and a like number of the assailants. After this
exploit the victors proceeded to close the hatches
on their former guards and fled to the forests,
and, with one or two exceptions, succeeded in
escaping. This wholesale delivery produced the
wildest excitement, and expressions not very com-
plimentary to the management of the prison or
to the honesty of the guards were freely bandied
about. The Legislature, then in session, ordered
an investigation, and a committee was appointed
to repair to Newgate and inquire into the facts.
The report of this committee affords specimens of
grim humor worth extracting:

" Jacob Southwell was awakened by the tumult,
took a gun and ran out of the guardhouse, but
durst not go back for fear they would hurt him.
(N. B. — A young man more fit to carry fish to
market than to keep guard at Newgate.) Nathan
Phelps who was also asleep, waked, but could do
nothing, the prisoners having possession of the
guardhouse (a small lad, just fit to drive plough
with a very gentle team). He went to Mr. Viets's
and stayed till morning (poor boy!). Abigail, the

168 In Olde Connecticut

wife of John Young, alias Mattick, says that the
first night she came to prison she gave her hus-
band fifty -two silver dollars; her husband told her
after he came out that he had given Sergeant Lilly
fifty of them in order that he may suffer the pris-
oners to escape; that he told her the sergeant pur-
posely left the door of the south jail unlocked;
that Sergeant Lilly was not hurt; that she bor-
rowed the money of a peddler; that she heard
Lilly say it was a great pity such likely men should
live and die in that place. "

A new commandant and guards for the prison
were appointed, and after a time the excitement
subsided.

In 1790, Connecticut, " free and independent, "
made Newgate the State prison of the Common-
wealth; and as it was perhaps the first penal in-
stitution of this character in the United States,
and was withal somewhat peculiar in its construc-
tion and management, the details of its internal
economy from this time forward must be inter-
esting and valuable. Fortunately, from the nar-
ratives of travelers, the records of the State, and
the researches of the local historian, these details
have been preserved in a very satisfactory man-
ner. The traveler Kendall, who visited the prison

A Revolutionary Newgate 169

in 1807, when it was at its best estate, in his
"Travels in the Northern Parts of the United
States," gives a vivid sketch of the daily routine
of the prison as then conducted. He says, "On
being admitted into the yard, I found a sentry
under arms within the gate and eight soldiers
drawn up in line in front of the gaoler's house.
A bell summoning the prisoners to work had al-
ready rung, and in a few moments they began
to make their appearance. They came in irreg-
ular numbers, sometimes two or three together,
and sometimes a single one alone; but whenever
one or more were about to cross the yard to the
smithery, the soldiers were ordered to present in
readiness to fire. The prisoners were heavily
ironed, and secured both by handcuffs and fetters,
and, being therefore unable to walk, could only
make their way by a sort of jump or hop. On
entering the smithery some went to the sides of
the forges, where collars dependent by iron chains
from the roofs were fastened round their necks,
and others were chained in pairs to wheelbarrows.
The number of prisoners was about forty; and
when they were all disposed of in the manner de-
scribed, sentries were placed within the buildings
which contained them. This establishment, as I

170 In Olde Connecticut

have said, is designed to be, from all its arrange-
ments, an object of terror, and everything is ac-
cordingly contrived to make the life endured in
it as burdensome and miserable as possible. . . .

"The trapdoor being lifted up, I went down
an iron ladder perpendicularly fixed to the depth
of about fifty feet. From the foot of the ladder
a rough, narrow, and low passage descends still
deeper till it terminates at a well of clear water,
over which is an air shaft seventy feet in height,
and guarded at its mouth, which is within the
gaol yard, by a hatch of iron. The cells are
near the well, but at different depths beneath the
surface, none perhaps exceeding sixty feet. They
are small, rugged, and accommodated with wooden
berths and some straw. The straw was wet, and
there was much humidity in every part of this
obscure region; but I was assured I ought to
attribute this only to the remarkable wetness of
the season; that the cells were in general dry,
and that they were not found unfavorable to the
health of the prisoners.

" Into these cells the prisoners are dismissed at
four o'clock in the afternoon of every day without
exception, and at all seasons of the year. They
descend to their fetters and handcuffs, and at

A Revolutionary Newgate 171

about four o'clock in the morning they ascend
the iron ladder, climbing it as well as they can
by the aid of their fettered limbs. It is to be
observed that no women are confined here, the
law providing that female convicts, guilty of
crimes for which men are confined in Newgate
prison, are to be sent to the county gaols. . . .
" Going again into the workshop or smithery,
I found the attendants of the prison delivering
pickled pork for the dinner of the prisoners.
Pieces were given separately to the parties at each
forge. They were thrown upon the floor, and
left to be washed and boiled in the water used
for cooling the iron wrought at the forges. Meat
had been distributed in like manner for break-
fast. The food of the prison is regulated for each
day in the week, and consists in an alternation
of pork, beef and peas, with which last no flesh-
meat is allowed. Besides the caverns or excava-
tions below, and the gaoler's house above, there
are other apartments prepared for the prisoners,
and particularly a hospital, of which the neatness
and airiness afford a strong contrast to the other
parts of the prison. It was also satisfactory
to find that in this hospital there were no
sick. "

172 In Olde Connecticut

Supplementary to Mr. Kendall's narrative, the
following sketch of the daily routine at Newgate,
written by a gentleman who was a frequent visitor
at the prison in his boyhood and familiar with
its management, will be read with interest : " The
hatches were opened and the prisoners called out
of their dungeons each morning at daylight, and
three were ordered to 'heave up' at a time; a
guard followed the three to their shop, placing
them at their work, and chaining those to the
block whose tempers were thought to require it.
All were brought out likewise in squads of three,
and each followed by a guard. To those who
never saw the operation their appearance cannot
be truly conceived as they vaulted forth from the
dungeon in their blackness, their chains clanking
at every step, and their eyes flashing fire upon the
bystanders. It resembled, perhaps, more than
anything, the belching from the bottomless pit.
After a while their rations for the day were carried
to them in their several shops. Each one divided
his own rations to suit himself. Some cooked
over their own mess in a small kettle at their
leisure, while others, disregarding ceremonies,
seized their allowance, and ate it on an anvil
or a block. . . . They were allowed to swap

A Revolutionary Newgate 173

rations, exchange commodities, barter, buy and
sell at their pleasure. Some would swap their
rations for cider, and often would get so tipsy
that they could not work. During the day the
guard was changed once in two hours at the
sound of a horn, and in the night a guard
entered the caverns every hour and a half
and counted the prisoners. The punishments
inflicted for offenses and neglect of duty were
severe flogging, confinement in stocks in the dun-
geon, being fed on bread and water during the
time, double or treble sets of irons, hanging
by the heels, etc., — all tending to inflame their
revenge and hatred; and seldom were appeals
made to their reason or better feelings. "

No books or reading matter of any description
were furnished the prisoners, and there seems to
have been no recognition of them as men for
whom reformation was possible or desirable, ex-
cept the provision made for their religious instruc-
tion on Sunday. A few years after the prison was
established by legislative act, the pastor of the
society at East Granby became chaplain of the
institution. One service on the Sabbath was
deemed sufficient, and this was held at first in the
nail shop, some of the more refractory of the au-

174 In Olde Connecticut

dience being chained to the nail blocks to insure
peace and quietness in the assembly. Later, a
chapel was built, in which the townspeople and
prisoners worshipped together.

Some interesting details of the economy of the
prison are given in a report of its overseers, made
to the Legislature in 1810. We make room for a
few extracts:

"The winter clothing of the prisoners consists
of two check-flannel shirts, a short coat, one pair
of pants of home-made cloth, two pairs of woolen
stockings, and one pair of shoes. Their summer
clothing consists of a change of towcloth frocks
and trousers, with stockings and shoes. Their
shirts, summer frocks, trousers, and stockings are
shifted and washed once a week, and are boiled
in strong lye made of ashes, which effectually de-
stroys the vermin.

"The prisoners are lodged in huts or cabins
made in the cavern. They are built on a floor
elevated three feet above the ground, and are
ranged on each side of a space which lies be-
tween them. The roofs and outer sides of these
cabins are made close and tight with boards. The
berths in these cabins are plentifully supplied
with blankets, and generally with straw when the

A Revolutionary Newgate 175

prisoners wish it. The straw is shifted as often
as necessary.

"The prisoners are secured by iron fetters
around their ankles. While at work, a chain
fastened to a block is locked into these fetters
or round the ankle. For the more daring and
refractory, heavier chains are occasionally used.

"No allowance is made to those prisoners who
do more than their daily task. Formerly an al-
lowance of one penny on each pound of nails over
the daily task was allowed. But this practice for
several years past has been discontinued. It was
found this allowance induced them to slight
their work and steal nails from each other at the
forges. "

The sanitary effect of the dungeons on the
prisoners, briefly touched on by the overseers, is
worthy of further remark. Other observers have
noted the fact, recorded by them, that the con-
finement was not detrimental to health; indeed,
some of the prisoners reached extreme old age
while incarcerated there. This circumstance was
attributed by some to a medicinal quality in the
mineral rock which forms the wall of the cavern;
others supposed it to be due to the equable tem-
perature. In 1811 experiments were made to

176 In Olde Connecticut

ascertain the mean temperature of the mines,
when it was discovered that the mercury ranged
eight degrees lower there in the hottest days of
summer than in the coldest days of winter, and
that the mean temperature was forty -eight de-
grees.

The overseers in 1810 reported the number of
convicts as being forty-six. Sixteen years later
the number had increased to one hundred and
twenty-seven, imposing an annual tax on the State
for their maintenance of seven thousand dollars.
The cost and impossibility of accommodating and
securing so many in the cavern led the State au-
thorities to provide for the erection of another
prison at Wethersfield. This was finished, and
the prisoners removed thither, in 1827, since which
time the old Newgate has been left to the ravages
of decay.

CHAPTER XIII

CONNECTICUT'S DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

"JV/TANY students of American history never
•^ -*- heard of — much less read — the Connecticut
Declaration of Independence. This instrument,
which has not become immortal, but deserves to
be so, was in the form of a Proclamation issued by
Governor Jonathan Trumbull, "with the advice
of the Council and at the desire of the Representa-
tives in General Court assembled, " on June 18,
1776, sixteen days before the better known Dec-
laration of Philadelphia was adopted. Governor
Trumbull's paper so nearly covered the ground
taken by the Philadelphia instrument, that when
the latter arrived in Hartford, on July 12, the
Governor and Council declined to publish it for
the reason that it would be supererogatory, and
the Declaration of Independence for this reason
never was published in Connecticut. Dr. Charles
J. Hoadley, State Librarian of Connecticut, in his
fifteenth and last volume of the " Colonial Records

178 In Olde Connecticut

of Connecticut, " published the paper entire from
a contemporary broadside. It is as follows:

" By the Honorable
"JONATHAN TRUMBULL, Esq.,
" Governor and Commander-in-chief of the Eng-
lish Colony of Connecticut in New England.

"A PROCLAMATION

" The Race of Mankind was made in a State of
Innocence and Freedom subjected only to the
Laws of God the Creator, and through his rich
Goodness, designed for virtuous liberty and Hap-
piness, here and for ever; and when moral Evil
was introduced into the World, and Man had
corrupted his Ways before God, Vice and Iniquity
came in like a Flood and Mankind became ex-
posed, and a prey to the Violence, Injustice and
Oppression of one another. God in great Mercy
inclined his People to form themselves into So-
ciety, and to set up and establish civil Government
for the Protection and security of their Lives and
Properties from the Invasion of wicked men. But
through Pride and ambition the Kings and
Princes of the World appointed by the People the
Guardians of their Lives and Liberties, early and
almost universally degenerated into Tyrants, and

Connecticut's Declaration of Independence 179

by Fraud or Force betrayed and wrested out of
their hands the very Rights and Properties they
were appointed to protect and defend. But a
small part of the Human Race maintained and
enjoyed any tolerable Degree of Freedom. Among
those happy few, the nation of Great Britain was
distinguished by a Constitution of Government
wisely framed and modelled to support the Dig-
nity and Power of the Prince, for the protection
of the Rights of the People, and under which that
Country in long succession enjoyed great Tran-
quillity and Peace, though not unattended with
repeated and powerful efforts, by many of its
haughty Kings, to destroy the Constitutional
Rights of the People, and establish arbitrary
Power and Dominion. In one of those convul-
sive struggles our Forefathers, having suffered in
that their native Country great and variety of
Injustice and Oppression, left their dear Connec-
tions and Enjoyments, and fled to this then in-
hospitable land to secure a lasting retreat from
civil and religious Tyranny.

"The God of Heaven favored and prospered
this Undertaking — made room for their settle-
ment— increased and multiplied them to a very
numerous People and inclined succeeding Kings

180 In Olde Connecticut

to indulge them and their children for many years
the unmolested Enjoyment of the Freedom and
Liberty they fled to inherit. But an unnatural
King has risen up — violated his sacred Obliga-
tions and by the Advice of Evil Counsellors at-
tempted to wrest from us, their children, the Sacred
Rights we justly claim and which have been rati-
fied and established by solemn Compact with,
and recognized by his Predecessors and Fathers,
Kings of Great Britain — laid upon us Burdens too
heavy and grievous to be borne and issued many
cruel and oppressive Edicts, depriving us of our
natural, lawful and most important Rights, and
subjecting us to the absolute Power and Controul
of himself and the British Legislature; against
which we have sought Relief, by humble, earnest
and dutiful Complaints and Petitions: But, in-
stead of obtaining Redress our Petitions have been
treated with Scorn and Contempt, and fresh In-
juries heaped upon us while hostile armies and
ships are sent to lay waste our Country. In this
distressing Dilemma, having no Alternative but
absolute Slavery or successful Resistance, this,
and the United American Colonies have been con-
strained by the overruling laws of Self Preserva-
tion to take up Arms for the Defence of all that

Connecticut's Declaration of Independence 181

is sacred and dear to Freemen, and make this
solemn Appeal to Heaven for the Justice of their
Cause, and resist Force by Force.

" God Almighty has been pleased of his infinite
Mercy to succeed our Attempts, and give us many
Instances of signal Success and Deliverance. But
the wrath of the King is still increasing, and not
content with before employing all the Force which
can be sent from his own Kingdom to execute his
cruel Purposes, has procured, and is sending all
the Mercenaries he can obtain from foreign coun-
tries to assist in extirpating the Rights of America,
and with theirs almost all the liberty remaining
among Mankind.

"In this most critical and alarming situation,
this and all the Colonies are called upon and ear-
nestly pressed by the Honorable Congress of the
American Colonies united for mutual defence, to
raise a large additional number of their militia
and able men to be furnished and equipped with
all possible Expedition for defence against the soon
expected attack and invasion of those who are our
Enemies without a Cause. In cheerful compli-
ance with which request and urged by Motives
the most cogent and important that can affect the
human Mind, the General Assembly of this Col-

182 In Olde Connecticut

ony have freely and unanimously agreed and re-
solved, that upwards of Seven Thousand able and
effective Men be immediately raised, furnished
and equipped for the great and interesting Pur-
poses aforesaid. And not desirous that any should
go to a warfare at their own charges (though
equally interested with others) for defence of the
great and all-important Cause in which we are
engaged, have granted large and liberal Pay and
Encouragements to all who shall voluntarily un-
dertake for the Defence of themselves and their
country as by their acts may appear, I do therefore
by and with the advice of the Counsel, and at the
desire of the Representatives in General Court
assembled, issue this PROCLAMATION, and make
the solemn Appeal to the Virtue and public Spirit
of the good People of this Colony. Affairs are
hastening fast to a Crisis, and the approaching
Campaign will in all Probability determine forever
the fate of AMERICA. If this should be successful
on our side, there is little to fear on account of
any other. Be exhorted to rise therefore to su-
perior exertions on this great Occasion, and let
all that are able and necessary show themselves
ready in Behalf of their injured and oppressed
Country, and come forth to the help of the Lord

Connecticut's Declaration of Independence 183

against the Mighty, and convince the unrelenting
Tyrant of Britain that they are resolved to be
Free. Let them step forth to defend their Wives,
their little Ones, their Liberty, and everything they
hold sacred and dear, to defend the Cause of their
Country, their Religion, and their God. Let
every one to the utmost of their Power lend a
helping Hand, to promote and forward a design
on which the salvation of America now evidently
depends. Nor need any be dismayed: the Cause
is certainly a just and a glorious one : God is able
to save us in such way and manner as he pleases
and to humble our proud Oppressors. The Cause
is that of Truth and Justice; he has already shown
his Power in our behalf, and for the Destruction
of many of our Enemies. Our Fathers trusted in
him and were delivered. Let us all repent and
thoroughly amend our Ways and turn to him, put
all our Trust and Confidence in him — in his Name
go forth, and in his Name set up our Banners,
and he will save us with temporal and eternal sal-
vation. And while our Armies are abroad jeop-
arding their lives in the high Places of the Field,*

* The use of these words is very striking, seeing that
in Governor Trumbull's own State the monument now
standing, opposite New London, in honor of the victims of

184 In Olde Connecticut

let all who remain at home, cry mightily to God
for the Protection of his Providence to shield and
defend their lives from Death, and to crown them
with victory and success. And in the Name of
the said General Assembly I do hereby earnestly
recommend it to all, both Ministers and People
frequently to meet together for social prayer to
Almighty God for the outpouring of his blessed
Spirit upon this guilty land — That he would
awaken his People to Righteousness and Repent-
ance, bless our Councils, prosper our Arms and
succeed the Measures using for our necessary self-
defence — disappoint the evil and cruel Devices of
our Enemies — preserve our precious Rights and
Liberties, lengthen out our Tranquillity, and make
us a People of his Praise, and the blessed of the
Lord, as long as the Sun and Moon shall en-
dure.

"And all the Ministers of the Gospel in this
Colony, are directed and desired, to publish this
Proclamation in their several churches and con-
gregations, and to enforce the Exhortations thereof

the massacre of Groton Heights, bears most appropriately
the entire verse (Judges, v. 18). " Zebulun and Naphtali
were a people that jeoparded their lives unto the death in
the high places of the field."

Connecticut's Declaration of Independence 185

by their own pious Example and public instruc-
tions.

" Given under my Hand at the Council Chamber
in Hartford, the ISth day of June Anno Domini
1776.

" JONATHAN TRUMBULL. "

CHAPTER XIV

ANCIENT LITCHFIELD

ONE of the most charming of New England
villages is Litchfield, in northwestern Con-
necticut— charming in a way very palpable to the
senses, though difficult indeed to define, as one
is forced to conclude after passing an hour under
its elms in a vain effort to discover the source of
his emotions. Perhaps this is to be found in its
utter quiet and seclusion, or in its beauty of sit-
uation; perhaps, again, in its historical impor-
tance, in the traditions of past glory and greatness
which throw over it a glamour of old romance
and antiquarian splendor. It was formerly of the
first social and political importance, and has been
so fruitful of heroic men and women, and has so
abounded in historic deeds, that it may be said
to have a history and a literature of its own; in-
deed, many of the names which the village gossips
interweave with their tales would confer luster on
any annals. The Wolcotts, father and son, Ethan

Ancient Litchfield 187

Allen, Colonel Tallmadge, Judges Reeves, Adams,
Church and Gould, Dr. Bellamy, Dr. Bushnell,
the three Beecher brothers, John Pierpont, poet
and pastor, Aaron Burr, John C. Calhoun, Cath-
arine Beecher, Mrs. Stowe, Hollister, the Dem-
ings, the Huntingtons, the Seymours, the Wood-
ruffs, are a few only of the famous names inti-
mately connected with the village history. In
addition is the wealth of tradition before men-
tioned, to whose subtle charm even the bitterest
iconoclast would submit both reason and imagi-
nation; hence the curious stranger, as he loiters
through its streets in a summer atmosphere of
poesy and sentiment, will find on every side re-
minders of " the days that are no more. "

About the antiquated mansion of Governor
Wolcott on South street, for instance, this " legend
of good women" still lingers:

" At the beginning of the Revolution, as is well
known, the patriots stood in imminent need of
ammunition, especially of lead to run into bullets,
and early in 1776 the leaden statue of George III.
which stood on Bowling Green in New York, was
overthrown and brought to Litchfield, where it was
made into bullets by the ladies of the village, the
men being absent on more actively martial duties.

188 In Olde Connecticut

"The statue was deposited in Governor Wol-
cott's apple orchard, and ladies of the first rank
and fortune — among them Laura and Mary Wol-
cott, the fair daughters of the Governor — engaged
in the enterprise. It was rough work for hands
unaccustomed to labor; curls were tangled and
fair faces flushed, and tender fingers were blis-
tered by the molten lead, but they persevered, and
at sunset a conical mound of forty-two thousand
and eighty-eight cartridges (as is learned from a
paper left by Governor Wolcott himself) attested
to the skill and fidelity with which they labored.
There was a grim sort of humor, fully appreci-
ated, no doubt, by the stern Governor and his
associates, in this making King George's statue
into bullets wherewith to mow down the battalions
of King George's army. "

Across the way from Governor Wolcott's is the
mansion house of Judge Tapping Reeve, where
Lafayette and Rochambeau were entertained in
May, 1777, and which was the home of Aaron
Burr while a resident of Litchfield. Burr's only
sister, to whom he was deeply attached, the wife
of Judge Reeve, was then mistress of the mansion,
and he came hither to engage in the study of the
law fresh from his theological controversy with

Ancient Litchfield 189

Dr. Bellamy, who lived in Bethlehem, but seven
miles distant. Here he passed a year or more,
studying a little law, paying court to the village
beauties, and hunting and fishing in the adjacent
woods and waters, and from here he set out with
his friend Ogden to join the Continental army
before Boston, and later for the heroic march with
Arnold through the wilderness to Quebec. While
absent on this expedition he wrote several inter-
esting letters to his sister which are still preserved
in the village.

A few years after Burr's departure Litchfield
welcomed another American of ominous fame —
John C. Calhoun — who passed almost three years
of his checkered career in this classic village, and
here nursed those gloomy, disorganizing fancies
which this generation has seen ripen into bitter
fruit. Perhaps the golden legends of the village
center about two ancient mansions in North Street,
once the home of Judge Gould, where the students
of the famous Litchfield Law School met for reci-
tation ; the other the square-built, aggressive-look-
ing structure which was the seat of Miss Sarah
Pierce's no less famous Young Ladies' Seminary.
These two schools drew their students from every
part of the Union, and gave to the village a na-

190 In Olde Connecticut

tional fame. Miss Pierce's school was estab-
lished in 1792, and was very successful from the
first — due, a cynical observer would insist, to the
fact, patent to marriageable maidens and manag-
ing mammas, of the existence in the village of a
law school which numbered among its students
one hundred of the most eligible young men of
the country. Considering the strict laws which
then governed the relations of the sexes, it is
somewhat strange that the schools should have
been placed so near to each other — with only a
narrow yard intervening; but this was probably
the result of accident rather than of design; cer-
tain it is that a handkerchief waved from the rear
windows of Miss Pierce's establishment would
have been at once perceived in Judge Reeve's
recitation room, nor could the Romeos and Ju-
liets of the day have met but few obstacles in ar-
ranging their stolen interviews ; yet so salutary was
the moral atmosphere of the village, and so nice
the sense of honor and purity implanted in the
breasts of these young people, that not a breath
of scandal arose against them — not even a moon-
light escapade occurred to mar the harmony of
their social relations.
In one of the ancient mansions of the village,

Ancient Litchfield 191

jealously guarded from the common eye, was
shown me a most interesting collection of old let-
ters and documents, some of them even possess-
ing historical importance. The ancient packet,
when opened, exhaled a faint odor of lavender,
and the paper had taken on a yellowish tinge with
the lapse of a hundred years. None of the letters
was inclosed in an envelope, but each was folded
and sealed with a wafer which was stamped with
the seal of the writer; some of them had been sent
by private hand, others by the post, and on these
a fee of twenty-five cents had been collected.
Most of them were addressed to the lady by whom
they were preserved and from whom they have
descended to the present possessor; others had
been directed to her father, a once famous college
president, and to her husband, a former Chief
Justice, and were from men of the first rank in
Church and State ; several were from her brother,
written when a soldier in the Continental army,
but by far the larger number were from female
friends and correspondents. These last were
so delicate in sentiment and so gracefully and
fluently expressed as to effectually explode the
theory advanced by some modern pedants that
but little attention was paid to the culture of

192 In Olde Connecticut

the female intellect in the days of our grand-
mothers.

Two of these epistles I am permitted to publish.
The first is an ancient love letter, dated more than
a hundred years ago, written by a former Chief
Justice of Connecticut to the lady whom he after-
ward married, and is of a class always interesting.
It reads as follows:

" My Lovely Sallie : When I was in New Haven
I wrote to you by your Aunt Fannie, which I sup-
pose you have received before this time; if you
have not this will serve to inform you that I did,
and that I am never forgetful of my dear Sallie.
The bearer is going this minute, and I cannot
detain him. I did not know until a moment ago
that he was going, and can therefore only inform
you that I am well, and of that which you very
well know, that I want to see my charmer. If you
remember, I informed you that I had in my,
possession a letter which I had never sent, and
which I now enclose to supply the defects of this.
If Aaron is with you, give him my kindest love.

"I propose to come to Fairfield as soon as I hear
that you are got there. "

The second letter is from Jonathan Edwards to

Ancient Litchfield 193

Aaron Burr, the honored president of Princeton
College, and father of the better known man of
the same name. It is dated May 5, 1752, some
two months before the marriage of President Burr
to Esther Edwards. The finances of Princeton
College were then in a crippled state, and Presi-
dent Burr had been untiring in his efforts to place
it on a solid financial foundation. He had written,
pleaded, preached for it, had even made several
journeys into New England seeking contributions
in its behalf, and was now meditating a journey
to Great Britain on a similar errand. Concerning
this project, in answer to one from President Burr,
Mr. Edwards wrote the following letter:

" SHEFFIELD, May 6, 1752.
" Rev. and Dear Sir: I thank you for your favor
by Williams your pupil, and also for your other
letter rec'd before. My not answering them be-
fore now was not in the least owing to want of
resolution, or any disposition to uphold any mis-
understanding, but partly from the multitude of
affairs which have continually pressed my mind,
which yet would not have prevented my writing
if I had known of any good opportunity. I heard
nothing of Mr. Josiah Williams going away in

194 In Olde Connecticut

the winter till after he had gone ; if I had I should
doubtless have wrote by him. As to the affair of
the report of what you said concerning my book
on the 'Terms of Communion,' &c., from the
credit I give your representation, I fully believe
you have been misrepresented, and therefore don't
think it worth while to make an uproar in tracing
the matter to the original.

" I would pray you to give your mind no further
uneasiness about the matter, as though anything
remained with me to occasion disaffection; I as-
sure you there is nothing of that nature. You are
pleased to ask my thoughts concerning your pro-
posed voyage to Great Britain for the sake of New
Jersey College. You have those nearer to you
than myself, as well informed of the circumstances
and necessities of the College, that are vastly more
able and in fitter circumstances to advise you —
Governor Belcher and the trustees in particular.
There doubtless might great advantages be ob-
tained by your going to England and Scotland
and spending about a year in Great Britain, more
than by all letters that could be written; the only
doubt is whether the College won't extremely suf-
fer by your being so long absent, but of that I am
not a fit person to judge. One thing I will ven-

Ancient Litchfield 195

ture to give you my thoughts on, namely: that
since you have not had the smallpox, if you find
a skillful and prudent physician under whose care
you can put yourself, you would take the small-
pox by inoculation before you go, after properly
preparing your body for it by physic and diet.
.... If you go to Great Britain I shall be
ready to do my utmost to further the designs of
your going in my next letter to Scotland. Mr.
Wright can inform you something of the state of
things in Stockbridge. You may perhaps do
much to promote our affairs in London; but I
hope to write to you again about these matters
before you go. In the mean time, asking your
prayers, I am, dear sir,

" Your friend and brother,

" JONATHAN EDWARDS.

The foregoing letter forms a part of the unwrit-
ten history of Princeton College, and ought to be
preserved in the archives of that institution.

CHAPTER XV

MINING IN CONNECTICUT

NOT long ago a paragraph went the rounds
of the press announcing the formation of a
syndicate of capitalists in Wallingford and New
Haven for the purpose of boring for coal in Con-
necticut. The announcement brought a smile of
derision to the faces of many, no doubt, yet these
capitalists are not wholly without reason for the
belief that coal in quantity may be found there.
The thrifty little State has made more progress
in agriculture and manufacture than in mining,
it is true, yet the mineral wealth within her borders
is remarkable, as was shown to my satisfaction
recently by a gentleman largely interested in the
coal-mining experiment above referred to, whose
knowledge of the State's mineral resources is
varied and comprehensive.

" The rocks of Connecticut abound in veins of
mineral," he began, " some of them exceedingly
rare — in fact, seven minerals entirely new to

Mining in Connecticut 197

science were once found in a single ledge in the
western part of the State. Merchantable mica,
a rare commodity, has been taken by the hundred
pounds from the feldspar beds of Ridgefield.
Asbestos has been found in the limestone quarries
in Redding. Jonathan Trumbull, the Revolu-
tionary Governor of Connecticut, supplied his
troops with lead taken partly from a mine in
Middletown. Many engineers would be surprised
to learn that a vein of cobalt has been successfully
worked in this State. It was opened in Chatham,
near Middletown, about 1762, by Dr. Stephannes,
a German chemist, and large quantities of ore were
shipped in casks to Germany or England — no
one knew exactly where, it being the Doctor's
whim to keep his movements as secret as possible.
If you follow up that singular trap formation
which begins with the East and West Rocks at New
Haven and stretches northward to Massachusetts,
you will find it honeycombed with holes dug by
prospectors for the precious metals, and at Sims-
bury, in this range, you will see an immense
cavern, with shafts, galleries and chambers, ex-
cavated before the Revolution for the rich hoards
of copper they contained. This mine later be-
came famous as the Newgate, the State prison of

198 In Olde Connecticut

Connecticut. Several veins of lead and copper
have been discovered and superficially worked in
the hills of Plymouth, in the Naugatuck Valley.
" If we pass westward over the hills separating
this valley from that of the Shepaug, a branch
of the Housatonic, we find in ancient Woodbury
a rich mineral field. Mr. Cothren in his history
of that town gives the following list of minerals
actually discovered there, or in its immediate
vicinity: iron, ocher, Fuller's-earth, agates,
prehnite, epidote, chalcedony, purple quartz,
plumbago, magnetic iron pyrites, albite, white
copperas, dyalogyte, triplite, gypsum, kyanite,
mesotype, andalusite, spar, hornblende, botryoidal
chalidocrase, garnet, dolomite, bitumen, opal,
chrichtonite, mispickel, yellow copper pyrites,
coal, mica and spathic or steel ore. This latter
merits a further description. It is one of the
most remarkable mineral deposits in the country.
The mine is up the Shepaug, some six miles above
its confluence with the Housatonic, and is marked
by the great grimy stack of an iron furnace. It is
on a hill some 350 feet high, and has a shaft about
150 feet deep. The ore is harder than calcareous
spar, and may be smelted into the very best
German steel. In fact, it is the only ore in this

Mining in Connecticut 199

country that can compete with ore from the
German mines. An analysis shows protoxide
of iron 57 to 60, carbonic acid 34 to 36, with
traces of lime, manganese and magnesia. It
was first opened in 1750 for silver, and worked
for that metal till a shaft 125 feet deep had been
sunk, when it was abandoned. It has been
worked to some extent within the last twenty-
five years for spathic ore, and has produced
steel of excellent quality, but the title is unfortu-
nately in dispute, and has been for some years
in the courts.

"The marble quarries of New Preston are no
doubt well known to you, and the same might be
said of the famous Salisbury iron-ore beds. As
one goes up the Housatonic Valley, he strikes at
Kent the first furnace supplied with ore from
this district. There are one or two more furnaces
at Cornwall Bridge, one at Lime Rock, two or
three in Canaan. Seen at night, with the flames
pouring from their great black stacks, they add
not a little to the picturesqueness of that exceed-
ingly interesting region. Three ore beds — the
Old Hill, Davis and Chatfield— supply all of
them and are situated on the east slope of the
Taghkanic range, near the village of Salisbury.

200 In Olde Connecticut

These ore beds are the furthest remove from one's
idea of iron mines, being simply huge openings,
several acres in extent, in the sides of the green,
grassy hills peculiar to that region. The ore is
brown hematite of the best quality; the iron it
makes is the best produced in the United States,
and is made up into car wheels and other articles
requiring the toughest and most malleable metal.
Its quality is shown by the fact that early in the
Revolution, Governor Jonathan Trumbull caused
a foundry to be erected in Salisbury, and there
cast from this iron, cannon, cannon balls, and
other munitions for the patriot troops.

" Lower down the Housatonic Valley, at Sandy
Hook in Newtown, we have a gold mine which was
worked by British soldiers in the Revolution,
and casks of its ore sent to England for treat-
ment. From one pound of its ore seventy-two
cents in gold and eleven in silver were taken,
if the assay er is to be believed.

"But, to return to our own special undertak-
ing. The working of all the veins I have named
has been entirely superficial — the work of men
without capital, skill or experience. Our project
proposes to make use of all the appliances which
capital can command, and prove the question

Mining in Connecticut 201

once for all whether there is a paying bed of
coal, and perhaps iron, underlying our bitumi-
nous shales. We have formed a syndicate and
have nearly succeeded in raising $15,000 in $2.50
shares (6,000 shares), representing a capital stock
(should the enterprise prove successful) of
$120,000 at $20 per share. We have leased a
tract of fifteen hundred acres of land in Durham,
a town adjoining Wallingford on the east, and
propose to explore it for coal with the modern
diamond drill. We have chosen this neighbor-
hood because here are strong indications of coal.
Perhaps you would like to read the report of a
well-known geologist who has recently examined
this tract for us.

"Prof. Forrest Shepard writes: 'I have visited
and examined your leased mineral lands in the
township of Durham, Conn., and find surface
indications for coal-seams superior to those I
found in North Carolina, where within about 200
yards of a trap-ridge I discovered an excellent
coal-seam of about six feet in thickness; even
better than the surface indications I found at
Chesterfield, Va., where at a depth of 700 feet,
coal 30 feet in thickness based on hard granite,
was struck, which has led to a vast coal trade.

£02 In Olde Connecticut

... I hope a test will be made on your prop-
erty, in places pointed out, by boring, for the
satisfaction of the public, and to settle the ques-
tion whether we have a good coal deposit so near
home.' "

This conversation was brought to the writer's
mind afresh a few days since by a two days' ride
through one of the prettiest portions of Con-
necticut, which brought to notice much of this
newly-discovered mineral wealth of which our
friend had spoken. The ride embraced the towns
of Ridgefield, Redding, Bethel and Newtown,
which stretch across the northern portion of Fair-
field County, from the New York State line to the
Housatonic.

We first visited Branchville in Ridgefield, a
little station on the Danbury and Norwalk Rail-
road, some twelve miles above Norwalk, and nota-
ble as the place where, in 1877, a remarkable
group of minerals, entirely new to science, was
discovered. A deep feldspar quarry, from which
several thousand tons of the finest feldspar have
been shipped, now occupies the place where they
were taken out, which is on the lower slope of a
hill rising steeply up into granite crags. The man
to whom belongs the credit of first introducing

Mining in Connecticut 203

them to science, was the Rev. John Dickinson,
who at the time was pastor of the Methodist
Episcopal Church in Redding. Mr. Dickin-
son's account of the discovery, which we had
heard before visiting the place, was quite in-
teresting. "I was," said he, "one day ram-
bling among the Branchville ledges, when I dis-
covered in Fillow's field and on the walls, a min-
eral entirely new to me, and, as I believed, to
science. I selected several specimens, and left
some at Columbia College and some with Pro-
fessor Brush, of Yale.

" Brush was incredulous — some of the Branch-
ville specimens had before been taken by the elder
Dana without result — but in a few days I got a
letter from him asking for more; then shortly
after I met him on the cars, on his way to Branch-
ville, and found him enthusiastic. He had
opened the vein, had found albite, microcline,
and new minerals that promised wonderful re-
sults. Well, the matter was followed up until
seven entirely new minerals were discovered and
described in the scientific journals, viz.: First,
Eosphorite, chemically akin to phosphorite; sec-
ond, Triploidite; third, Dickinsonite ; fourth,
Lithiophilite; fifth, Reddingite; sixth, Fairfieldite,

204 In Olde Connecticut

and seventh, Fillowite. All mineralogists agreed
that this was a colossal discovery; there were,
however, other remarkable features connected
with it. Some twenty-five different known min-
erals were found in the pocket, many of them
occurring in unique forms. We found mica,
for instance, in globular form; curved mica we
call it; and specimens sent to twenty prominent
mineralogists in various parts of the world elicited
the fact that they had never before known it to
occur in that form. Again there is a mineral
known as spodumene, which contains lithia, and
occurs usually in small crystals ; but here a crystal
was found eight feet long, sixteen inches wide and
between four and five thick. Another rare feature
was that this spodumene had been pseudomoFphed
into another rare mineral known as cymatolite,
which also appeared in large crystals." Profes-
sors Bruch and Dana, in the "American Journal
of Science and Arts," for July, 1878, gave an in-
teresting account of the discovery and description
of the minerals found by them on a visit to this
spot.

Further proof of activity in developing the
mineral resources of this part of the State is seen
in a large frame building standing just across

Mining in Connecticut 205

the track from the quarry on the line of the
branch road leading to Ridgefield. This build-
ing, 161 feet by 50, two stories and basement, has
been erected and furnished with powerful and
costly machinery for the purpose of crushing the
quartz, or, more properly, oxide of silicon, found
in the neighboring hills. The company owns
three quarries within a radius of three miles of
the works, and has others at command. The
works comprise a kiln in which the stone is first
calcined, an engine, chases and rubbing tubs in
which, after burning, the silicon is crushed and
then ground to a fine powder. The product is
used in the arts of making soap and paint, and
as glazing for pottery.

For our second day's ride we drove to Bethel,
eight miles, and from thence three miles in a
southerly direction, to inspect a famous tourma-
line rock and a second feldspar quarry recently
opened near by. Our road led along the borders
of Redding, Bethel and Newtown, and as we
drove we were sometimes in one town, sometimes
in another. The region is as wild, woody and
lonesome as could be imagined, a forest of several
square miles in extent, known as Hopewell
Woods, covering the craggy, almost mountainous

206 In Olde Connecticut

hills that here divide the richly cultivated hill
slopes of Redding from those of Newtown. A
mile's travel through a forest path fairly paved
with glossy brown chestnuts brought us to the
quarry, which only began active operations last
April, but has already opened a large chasm in the
rocky heart of the hill. This vein, we learned,
is controlled jointly by the New Jersey Flint and
Spar Company and the International Pottery,
both of Trenton, New Jersey, and all its stone
is shipped there, being hauled three miles and a
half by horses to Plumtrees, a way station on the
Shepaug Railroad.

Some very interesting specimens have been un-
earthed in quarrying here. We saw in Superin-
tendent Sloan's office an immense tourmaline
crystal, measuring three feet by eighteen inches,
and very pretty specimens of beryl, columbite,
albite, mica and rose-quartz. Several of these
veins of feldspar crop out through the forest,
and as the stone, it is said, can be profitably
shipped to England, it is possible that a great
industry may spring up among these rock-ribbed
hills. Coming out, we stopped to view, near the
roadside, the tourmaline rock, an object of in-
terest for many years to both professional and

Mining in Connecticut 207

amateur mineralogists. It is an immense granite
bowlder stranded on a hilltop, and stuck full, like
plums in pudding, of black glistening tourmaline
crystals of all shapes, sizes and degrees of bril-
liancy. Black fragments and heaps of tourmaline
dust at the base of the rock bear witness to the
presence and ardor of many prospectors and
specimen-hunters.

CHAPTER XVI

THE PEQUOT INDIANS

IT is a fact little known that a remnant of the
once powerful Pequot race still maintains a
tribal organization in Connecticut. Schaghticoke,
the ancient seat of this people, is situated in the
town of Kent under the Schaghticoke Mountain
in the middle valley of the Housatonic. It is on
the edge of the great bowl-like depression in the
hills that make room for the beautiful Kent
meadows, and two and one half-miles south of
pretty Kent village. The Housatonic flows before
it so near that there is barely room for the village
between it and the mountain. Schaghticoke con-
sists of six little, brown, clap-boarded one-story
houses tenanted by some seventeen persons. The
reservation of three hundred acres comprises
Schaghticoke Mountain, valuable only for its tim-
ber, and extends west some two miles to the State
of New York. The Indian question excites so
much interest just now, that the history of this

The Pequot Indians 209

ancient people, Connecticut's dealings with them
and its results is not without significance and
value. The founder of the Schaghticoke tribe
was Mawwehu, a chief of the royal Pequot blood.
When that tribe was dispersed by Captain Mason
and his men, a fragment, including several mem-
bers of the royal family, settled at Dover in New
York, some five miles west of Schaghticoke where
Mawwehu was born. He had all the ardor of
his race for domination, and longed for a people
to rule over. On a hunting excursion one day,
he discovered the Kent Plains, then uninhabited
by man, and determined to found a colony there.
He went to his own people, to the Mohegans of
the Hudson, the Housatonics and other wander-
ing tribes and, gathering them into the valley,
formed a community, with himself as head. This
was about 1735. In 1736 the tribe numbered one
hundred warriors. An interesting episode in its
history was the arrival there in 1742 of Christian
Henry Rauch, the famous Moravian missionary,
who preached to the tribe with success. Maw-
wehu and one hundred and fifty of his people
were converted; a church was established, and
the Indians became sober and industrious. Un-
fortunately, this success of the Moravians did not

N

210 In Olde Connecticut

meet the views of the white traders and dissolute
characters who, as early as 1738, had pressed into
the valley, and they proceeded to drive away the
missionaries. They first poisoned the minds of
the Indians against them, and then a little later
accused them of being in league with the French
and drove them from the valley. Rauch and his
companions fled to the Moravian settlements at
Bethlehem, Pa., and quite a number of their In-
dian converts went with them.

The Government of Connecticut pursued a just
and liberal policy toward those of them who re-
mained. When the township of Kent was formed,
two large reservations were granted them — one in
the valley on the east side of the river, and the
other of some 2,000 acres among the mountains.
They were placed under the religious care of the
church in Kent. The common schools, when es-
tablished, were freely open to them. When com-
plaints of the white man's aggressions were made
to the General Court, a committee was appointed
and justice was generally done. For a hundred
years they have been surrounded by an industri-
ous and law-abiding community; yet their course
has been so steadily downward that they are now
on the verge of extinction. Indolence, drunken-

The Pequot Indians 211

ness, and intermarriage with negroes and the
lower class of whites are largely responsible for
this. Their improvidence was such that as early
as 1752 they had sold all the planting lands in
the valley. In 1757 they had become so incapa-
ble of maintaining themselves that the colony ap-
pointed an overseer, to whom their property was
committed, and who was charged with their over-
sight and maintenance. From that time forward
the affairs of the tribe have been administered by
an agent of the State. In a petition of 1786 they
admit their ignorance and inability to take care
of themselves, and implore the continued assist-
ance of the whites. Their number is stated in
this petition to be males 36, females 35 — of whom
20 were children.

In 1801 they were spoken of as being reduced
to "35 idle, intemperate beings who cultivated
only six acres of ground. " They had then some
1,200 or 1,500 acres of mountain land, which re-
mained in their possession chiefly because they
were unable to sell it, and as the debts of the
tribe, from sickness and other causes, were then
pressing, Abraham Fuller, the overseer, petitioned
that this land might be sold, the proceeds to be
applied to discharging the debts, and the surplus,

212 In Olde Connecticut

if any, invested as a permanent fund. The land
sold for £ 1,300, and the money' was applied as
the petition suggested except that ,£200 was used
in building six cottages for the Indians. In 1846
the overseer reported ten Indians of pure blood
and thirty half-breeds under his care.

Wishing to judge for myself of the present con-
dition of the tribe, I one day sought an interview
with the overseer, Mr. Henry Roberts, who lives
at Gaylordville, a little village in the town of New
Milford, and was invited to accompany him on a
visit to the Indian village. On setting out a large,
loaf-shaped mountain in the north, some three
miles distant, was pointed out as Schaghticoke
Mountain. I shall not soon forget the beautiful
tints of its autumn foliage. Our road lay along
the left bank of the river over little foothills of
the valley, between meadows and pastures, and
little patches of forest. The valley walls contract
as you go northward, so that your experience is
much like riding into the mouth of a funnel. After
following the river for two and one-half miles we
crossed it by a firm, single-span bridge, swept
around the point of the mountain by a road that
overhung the river, passed five little brown cot-
tages, one of them deserted, and drew up at the

The Pequot Indians 213

home of Vinie, the Queen of the Schaghticokes —
Queen by inheritance, she being a great-grand-
daughter of Mawwehu, the Pequot chief. Vinie
received us very affably. She is a tall, angular
woman showing few traces of Indian blood, and
was clad in a clean calico gown and apron of the
same material. According to her own account,
she is seventy-five years of age, although her neigh-
bors say that she is several years older. There is
no carpet on the floor of her cottage. Its furniture
consists of a cooking stove, three or four chairs,
a clock, a basket, two dogs — a big and a little
one — and a shaving-horse where she prepares the
splints for her baskets. A pair of rude stairs leads
to a loft above. Questioned concerning the origin
of her people, the Queen gave a very interesting
and correct account of the founding of the tribe.
She remembered hearing her grandmother tell
many Indian tales and traditions — love stories,
"booger" stories, exploits of heroes in war and
the chase — but could not remember them suffi-
ciently well to narrate them for her visitors' bene-
fit. Asked why her people did not retain the
habits and language of the Indians, she said that
they had lived so long among the white folk that
they loved white folk's ways. Asked how many

214 In Olde Connecticut

in number her people were, she said she "could
not tell ; they were scattered like grasshoppers. "
Pressed for an answer, she replied, "About forty,
I suppose. " Vinie is a member of the Congrega-
tional Church in Kent, and her pastor reports her
as living up to the average standard. She has
been busy and industrious all her life, weaving
baskets, cultivating the acre or two of land about
her dwelling, and has relied very little on the fund
for support. Her mother was a white woman.
She has a half-sister, Rachel, who sometimes
shares her abode and who is full blood.

The next cottage south of the Queen's is occu-
pied by George Cogswell, his wife and four chil-
dren. The husband is partly negro, the wife full
Indian. The next dwelling, a few yards south,
is the home of an eccentric individual known lo-
cally as Hen Pan. He prides himself on his un-
mixed blood, and in scorn of his neighbor's race-
mixing propensities has marked on his chimney
in large letters "I. AM. O. K. " His brother,
Jim Pan, who has a white wife and two children,
shares his cottage. Of the two other dwellings
on the reservation one is occupied by Mrs. Kilson,
a widow, an industrious and capable woman, the
mother of nine children, of whom only one re-

The Pequot Indians 215

mains with her, and the other by Value Kilson,
who has a wife and four children. The ancient
burying-ground of the Schaghticokes — a triangu-
lar piece of ground inclosed by a dilapidated board
fence — adjoins Value's cottage. The graves are
mostly marked by wooden head-boards, and many
have not even this memorial. The ground is sit-
uated directly under a cliff, over which a mountain
brook tumbles.

The present overseer has been five years in of-
fice, and, being a firm, as well as a humane, man,
has somewhat improved the financial condition of
the tribe. He has aimed to make them as far as
possible self-supporting, and the fund in his hands
has shown a steady yearly increase. He has the
sole charge of the tribe, invests their money to the
best advantage, gives them orders on the country
merchants for necessary articles which they are
unable to procure for themselves, and furnishes
them with medicine and medical attendance when
sick. Each year he returns three reports of his
stewardship — one to the Secretary of State, one to
the District Court of Litchfield county, and a
third to the Town Clerk of Kent. From his last
report (September, 1881) I learn that the present
reservation comprises three hundred acres of land,

216 In Olde Connecticut

six dwelling houses (one unoccupied) and three
stores, the whole valued at $3,500. The fund now
amounts to $5,427.45, an increase in five years of
some $628.

Mr. Roberts can make no exact return of the
present number of the tribe, as its members are
widely scattered, but places their probable num-
ber at fifty. Of these, however, but three or four
are of unmixed Indian blood.

CHAPTER XVI

GREENFIELD HILL, A ONCE FAMOUS VILLAGE

NOW and then the pilgrim chances on a nook
of such quiet beauty and serenity as to sug-
gest that earthly paradise which has filled so many
poet's dreams. Such a place is the little hamlet
from which I write. Let one imagine a green
common, well shaded, with an ancient church and
weather-beaten academy on one side and several
fine old country houses on the other, placed on
the summit of a hill overlooking several miles of
green meadows and the Sound, and he has a pic-
ture of this Arcadia, which is known in local par-
lance as " the Hill. " All about it is a mass of
greenery — green pastures, meadows, forests, corn-
fields— only in the grain fields does this prevailing
color change. The prevailing color appears, too,
we have remarked, in the local nomenclature,
Green Farms and Greenfield being the names of
two hamlets at our doors. There is a fine old
country seat here — the Bronson estate — which was

218 In Olde Connecticut

the objective point of the Tally-ho coach in one
of its outings a few summers ago, a fact which,
for the first time in many years, gave the little
village a generous notice in the daily press.

We find here a polite and agreeable society, the
legacy of a somewhat notable past; the courtesy
and flavor of good old Dr. Dwight's day still re-
main. For the village was once the home of that
eminent divine; the parish was his first charge;
in the old academy which has been mentioned,
his famous school was kept; and tucked away in
cupboards and secretaries of the old colonial
houses we find now and then a time-stained
and moldy copy of his still more famous poem,
" Greenfield Hill " — a poem in which rural
delights, grave historical events and prophetic
visions are blended with considerable poetic skill
and ingenuity. We had the pleasure of handling
one of these, a small volume in homely binding,
as was the fashion of books in 1794. The poem
is in seven parts. We have copied the heads of
the arguments: I. The Prospect. II. The Flour-
ishing Village. III. The burning of Fairfield.
IV. The Destruction of the Pequots. V. The
Clergyman's Advice to the Villagers. VI. The
Farmer's Advice to the Villagers. VII. The

Greenfield Hill, A Once Famous Village 219

Vision, or Prospect of the Future Happiness of
America.

About Dr. Dwight's pastorate village memories
naturally cluster. He became pastor here in 1783,
after a most precocious boyhood. It is said of him
that he read the Bible at four, studied Latin by
himself at six, and was fitted for college at eight.
In 1765, at the age of thirteen, he entered Yale
College, was graduated at seventeen, and became
a tutor in his college at nineteen. In 1777 he en-
tered the Revolutionary army as chaplain, where,
like his friend Joel Barlow, he exerted a happier
influence on the soldiers by his lyrics than by his
sermons. It was after leaving the army that he
assumed charge of the church at Greenfield Hill.
There are old residents in the village who still re-
member the Doctor, who died at New Haven in
1817. Our most pleasant employment is to sit
under a venerable elm near the common with one
of these worthy old gentlemen, and listen to tales
of the former glory of the village.

" Dr. D wight, " he began, on our first interview,
"came here on a very insufficient salary, and to
eke it out he opened an academy for young people.
Over yonder there stood a little brown shop where
Gershom Hubbell dressed leather and then fash-

220 In Olde Connecticut

ioned it into breeches of excellent cut and work-
manship, while his daughter was noted for her
skill as a glovemaker. This shop the Doctor se-
cured, and his first school session was opened
there as early as 1784, if not earlier. The Acad-
emy was built for him in 1785 or 1786, and after
that his school rapidly became one of the most
famous in the country. He had an ambition to
be thought one of the best educators of the day.
His boys, intended for Yale, were better fitted, it
is said, than those of any other graduate. Schol-
ars soon began to come irom all parts of the world
to study under him. In the early class were two
Livingstons from Hudson River; Dubois, from
France; Charles H. Pond, who later became Lieu-
tenant-Go vernor of Connecticut; Joel R. Poin-
sett, Minister to Mexico and Secretary of War;
two Capers from South Carolina, and Henry Bald-
win, afterward a Judge of the Supreme Court of
the United States. Contemporary with these was
a class of young ladies — the three Misses Burr,
of Fairfield; Miss Young, of Bridgeport; Sally
Nichols, of Newtown, and others — said to have
been a class of remarkable beauty. A little ro-
mance came of this juxtaposition, too, for in the
Fairfield records you will find recorded the mar-

Greenfield Hill, A Once Famous Village 221

riage of Abigail Burr to William Henry Capers,
of the parish of St. Helena, S. C.

" In the school there were two daily sessions of
three hours each. Wednesday was a red-letter
day: in the afternoon the boys declaimed, after
which came a spelling-bee, the winners being let
out a quarter of an hour before the others as a
reward. In the evening the Doctor lectured on
theology — lectures which he afterward published
in a volume. In private life Doctor D wight was
very genial and hospitable, and kept open house;
he was so famous, too, that many travelers and
gentlemen of distinction would come to Greenfield
to call on him. But those days passed, and have
never come again. On the death of President
Stiles, of Yale College, Doctor Dwight was called
to the Presidency, and removed thither in 1795. "

" An old tavern stood on that corner, " said the
same narrator, as we joined him another day un-
der the elms, "that some of you clever young
men might make something of if you would
dig out the facts. It was kept by Joseph Bulkley
at the time Doctor Dwight lived in Greenfield,
and some famous men were entertained there
first and last. Talleyrand and the Spanish Min-
ister (whose name I forget) once dined there. It

222 In Olde Connecticut

was a famous resort for the judges and lawyers
when the County Court was in session at Fair-field;
such men as Chief Justice Reeve, Uriah Tracy,
and Gideon Granger have often been its guests.
Rufus King, our Minister to England; Joel Bar-
low, our Minister to France, with his wife, who
was a sister of Judge Henry Baldwin; Gen. Rufus
Putnam, of Ohio, and many others, I have myself
seen there. They don't have such merrymakings
now as used to be held in the old tavern. In win-
ter there was a dance about once a month, with
Mose Sturges to fiddle, and wine and plum cake
for the feast. Dr. D wight usually made it a point
to come in, take a glass of wine and a piece of
cake, tell a good story, and withdraw at a decorous
hour. "

Sometimes a spasm of activity seizes us, and we
explore the surrounding country; I might have
said the neighboring wilderness. Five miles west
is the valley of the Saugatuck, and by following
it a few yards above where the Greenfield road
strikes it, we enter a deep, romantic gorge, which
would have excited the raptures of many a trav-
eler ere this had it been placed in Nevada or Ari-
zona. There is a dark wooded mountain on the
right, and on the left, fifty feet down, at the foot

Greenfield Hill, A Once Famous Village 223

of a precipice, the river tumbling and foaming over
ledges of rock. We follow the brawling stream
for two miles through thick woods, without seeing
a vestige of human habitation save a charcoal-
burner's deserted hut, or meeting anyone except
the charcoal man on his huge spreading wagon of
coal, bound to market, and then come suddenly
on a little hamlet of neatly painted houses clus-
tered about several low workshops on the bank of
the river. The place, we learned, was called the
Forge. This wildness, it must be remembered,
was within four or five miles of the belt of popu-
lous communities which skirt the Connecticut
shore of the Sound.

The valley of the Mill River, two miles east, is
equally wild and romantic. In one of its spurs
(a huge mass of ledges and precipitous rocks, in
itself well worthy a visit) is a great natural or ar-
tificial curiosity, which has long puzzled the curi-
ous. It is a deep, smooth round hole in the rock
of from twelve to sixteen quarts capacity. Tradi-
tion ascribes its origin to the Indians of the valley.
It is certain that it was used by them for genera-
tions as a mortar in which to pound the corn
raised on the adjacent lowlands; and whole fam-
ilies must have gathered there, for the rock about

224 In Olde Connecticut

the mortar is worn smooth by the tread of many
feet.

If we drive southward we enter on different
scenes. Here are farms in the highest state of
cultivation, with buildings and lawns denoting
both wealth and taste on the part of the owners.
It is the home of the onion-grower. Nothing
seems to grow but onions between Greenfield Hill
and the sea. We pass many fields of five to ten
acres each, and hear of growers who raise all the
way from ten to twenty-five acres of the pungent
bulbs.

CHAPTER XVII

THE BEGINNINGS OF A GREAT RAILROAD

THE law papers and many private papers of
the Hon. Roger Sherman, one of the most
prominent jurists of his day, are now in posses-
sion of the Fairfield County Historical Society in
Bridgeport. Among them is a series of interest-
ing documents, showing in a vivid way the violent
opposition encountered by the now dominant rail-
road in making its way into this conservative
region.

The first passenger railroad constructed in the
United States was the Baltimore and Ohio, a sec-
tion of which was formally opened July 4, 1828,
the first locomotive for it being built by Peter
Cooper in Baltimore. The second was the Mo-
hawk and Hudson, from Albany to Schenectady,
opened in 1830. By 1833 the fever of railroad
building had extended into Connecticut, and on
the first Wednesday of May, 1833, the Connecti-
cut Legislature constituted as a body politic and
o

226 In Olde Connecticut

corporate the Hartford and New Haven Railroad,
with power to "locate, construct, and fully com-
plete a single, double, or treble railroad or way"
from Hartford to the navigable waters of New Ha-
ven Harbor. This was the first railroad opened
in the State, although the " Boston, Norwich and
New London" had been chartered the May pre-
vious. It is significant of the slow and halting
manner in which its projectors felt their way, so
to speak, that it was empowered to use as motors
" the power and force of steam, of animals, or of
any mechanical or other power or any combina-
tion of them. " It is difficult to believe that only
fifty years have elapsed since this project startled
the sleepy villages strung along the turnpikes that
then connected the capital cities of Connecticut,
and that there are men still living along the route
who remember the commotion it raised. Almost
everyone, except its promoters, opposed it, on gen-
eral principles, from the natural conservatism of
rural residents, and utter ignorance of the nature
and scope of the proposed way. But there were
three different classes — shrewd men, who opposed
it from interest, with full knowledge, probably, of
its possibilities, and these were the directors and
stockholdres of the turnpikes, the managers of the

The Beginnings of a Great Railroad 227

steamboat lines, that on the breaking of the Ful-
ton-Livingston monopoly had sprung up, and were
enjoying a lucrative carrying trade with a score of
points on the Sound, and the farmers through
whose land the proposed route would pass.

The nature and extent of this opposition is ad-
mirably shown in a memorial addressed to the
Legislature of 1832, evidently drawn up by Judge
Sherman, and signed by Simeon Baldwin, J.
Wood, Roger M. Sherman, Wm. Bristol, and
Epaphroditus Champion, "overseers of turnpike
stock. " There are two remarkable things about
this document — that it could be dated so recently
as fifty years ago, and the prescience of its authors
in so clearly foretelling the evils likely to result to
the public from the exclusive privileges granted
such corporations. I insert the document for its
picturesque and historic interest:

"Your memorialists, to their very great sur-
prise, have lately been informed that a petition
is now pending before your honorable body which
has been referred to a joint committee of both
houses for the incorporation of a railroad from
Hartford to New Haven. However beneficial in
general such improvement may be, it is very cer-
tain that they may be adopted under such circum-

228 In Olde Connecticut

stances as to produce more harm than good, and
may result in great injury and injustice to private
property. A railroad is a monopoly in a peculiar
sense. On a canal or turnpike every citizen has
a perfect right to use his own vehicles — not so on
a railroad. The carriages upon that must all be-
long to the proprietors of the road, or run by their
especial permission, and must be subject to one
superintendence. In the monopoly now contem-
plated your memorialists are informed and be-
lieve that, although no names appear on petition
but those of the citizens of this State, yet a great
majority of the interest is to be owned and held
by strangers, citizens of other States, proprietors
in those great and overwhelming establishments
of steamboats and railroads which now monopo-
lize the conveyance of passengers between the
cities of New York and Philadelphia, and are en-
deavoring to seize the exclusive right through this
State and Long Island Sound, and unite the whole
with such additions as they may hereafter acquire
under one power. Should they, by the aid of leg-
islative grants and immense and increasing wealth,
extend into Massachusetts and reach the capital
of New England, a traveler who would enjoy the
advantages of a conveyance between Boston and

The Beginnings of a Great Railroad 229

Washington must submit to such terms as they
please to prescribe. No line of steamboats not
connected with that company could partake of the
right of conveying passengers on these long and
frequented routes. A passenger entered at Bos-
ton or Hartford for Philadelphia or Washington
would pay his fare at the commencement of his
journey, and be lost to every intermediate convey-
ance. Thus all competition would be put down,
and the great sums now invested by and exten-
sively divided among our citizens, tending to cheap-
ness and convenience as well as to equality of
rights and privileges, would be annihilated, and
the expense of traveling would depend on the will
and pleasure of that united interest which would
find its advantage in the highest possible rates of
fare.

" By the grant now contemplated, four turnpike
companies between New Haven and Hartford, in
which many widows, orphans and persons in mod-
erate circumstances have invested their property,
the steam navigation from Hartford to New York,
the steamboats between the latter city and New
Haven, and many other of the vested interests of
our own citizens would be utterly destroyed. "

All of the memorialists had investments in some

230 In Olde Connecticut

of these establishments, and they humbly prayed
in behalf of themselves and others in like circum-
stances, that the charter might not be granted.

We are apt to speak of monopolies as of mod-
ern growth, but that called " The Fulton Steam-
boat Company, " which certain " acts " of the New
York Legislature had created, far exceeded in
powers and privileges any known in our day. A
petition found among the papers goes on to re-
cite various acts, forming precedents, under which
it had grown up : First, the act of 1787, giving to
John Fitch the sole right of employing and navi-
gating for a limited time all vessels on New York
waters impelled by steam; second, the act of 1798,
withdrawing the exclusive right given to Fitch,
bestowing it on Robert Livingston, and extend-
ing the time to twenty years; third, the act of
1803, extending the time to twenty years from
that date, and including Robert Fulton as one
of the privileged; fourth, the act of 1808, provid-
ing that whenever Livingston, Fulton, and such
persons as they should associate with them,
should place on this line additional boats, each
one so added should prolong the term of exclu-
sive privilege by five years, such terms in toto,
however, not to exceed thirty years; fifth, the act

The Beginnings of a Great Railroad 231

of 1811, making it possible for the persons named
in the act or their associates to seize any boat,
not having their license, found in waters under
the jurisdiction of New York, and to condemn
them as though the same had been taken forcibly
and wrongfully out of their possession, and forbid-
ding the owners of such boat to obtain any writ
of injunction to navigate, employ or remove them
out of the jurisdiction of the court during the pen-
dency of the trial of such seizure. The petition
then goes on to recite that Livingston and Fulton
had complied with the various provisions of the
acts in question, and had become possessed of the
privileges conferred ; that they had since died, but
that previous to their death, they had sold to Jo-
siah Ogden Hoffman, Cadwallader D. Golden and
William Cutting, the exclusive right, so far as they
possessed it, to navigate the waters of the East
River in the State of New York, "or the Sound
commonly called Long Island Sound," by means of
steam or fire, and also a right to the exclusive use
of the inventions of Fulton and Livingston; that
the former gentlemen, with their associates, had
since been incorporated by the Legislature of New
York as the Fulton Steamboat Company, to which,
by sundry assignments or conveyances, all the ex-

232 In Olde Connecticut

elusive rights and privileges of Fulton and Living-
ston had been conveyed. The complaint further
alleged that the Fulton Steamboat Company had
then two steamboats plying on the waters lying
between New York and New London, and that
there were no other boats whatever " employed in
the navigation from any part of the State of New
York to any place without the said State and ly-
ing on the Sound aforesaid. " Having recited
these facts, the petitioners next remind the Court
that by virtue of the Constitution and laws of the
United States, they have the right to navigate any
of the waters of New York, and particularly those
used in the navigation between New York and
other States; which right was denied them by the
acts mentioned, and by the threats of enforcement
made by the Fulton Steamboat Company; also,
that they could not have recourse to the common
law, as the moment their vessel entered the waters
of New York, it was liable to seizure and practi-
cal confiscation; and they therefore prayed for a
writ of injunction restraining the Fulton Steam-
boat Company from bringing any action or suit
in any court of the State of New York, under
color of the said acts, until the right of the peti-
tioners should be fully ascertained. They also

The Beginnings of a Great Railroad 233

prayed for an order directing the Fulton Steam-
boat Company to appear, and show cause why
the injunction should not be granted.

John L. Sullivan was the inventor and patentee
of a steam engine of a different character from
that employed by Fulton in his boats. His peti-
tion for an injunction was brought on the advice
of Roger Sherman, who, in September, 1819, for-
warded him a very elaborate opinion, advising an
injunction, which now lies before me. It appears
by a letter to Judge Sherman from Henry D. Sedg-
wick, Esq., of New York, dated October 11, 1819,
that the petition was met by the defendants with
a demurrer, assigning as causes that the complain-
ants had not made a case entitling them to relief;
that the bill contained no equity; that the ques-
tion was proper only for a court of law ; that com-
plainants had an adequate remedy at law, and
that before filing the bill the case should have been
tried at law ; and, sixth, that none of the adminis-
trators or next of kin of Fulton and Livingston
were made parties to the suit; Sedgwick adds that
he does not believe the assigned causes of de-
murrer sufficient.

The case was one of the causes cdebres of the
day, and awakened wide interest, but ultimately

234 In Olde Connecticut

ended in a breaking of the monopoly by the courts.
On looking over these time-stained documents the
query is suggested, what would be thought now of
a corporation that claimed and held the exclusive
control of the commerce of the Hudson and of
Long Island Sound ? — for this was practically the
privilege of the Fulton Steamboat Company in
1819.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE PROBATE JUDGE AND THE TOWN CLERK

TN the quiet Connecticut village whence we
•1 write, there are three great men — the minis-
ter, the doctor and the judge of probate. All
other men may sit in the "store" of evenings,
"swap" stories, and discuss their neighbors, but
these three by the very dignity of their office are
foresworn. The judge is nearing the age limit of
seventy, slender, grizzled, with a typical New Eng-
land face. He wears a tall hat, long frock coat,
and trousers of sober hue, a little shiny from long
wear.

His house — just across the common from the
village tavern, our domicile — with its lofty portico
supported by fluted pillars, its carved front door
with brass knocker, wide cornice and dormer win-
dows, is most imposing. The judge's office occu-
pies an L on the left of the main structure, and
communicates with his sitting room by a door cut
through the dividing partition so that he can step

236 In Olde Connecticut

into his office these days without exposing himself
to the nipping air. His office is sui generis.
Nothing like it is to be found outside of New
England. There is an iron safe where wills and
inventories for a hundred years back are kept,
copied into huge, parchment-bound tomes, a book-
case filled with law books, quaint old armchairs
with claw feet, an ancient desk with pigeon-holes
full of papers, and a huge Franklin stove, which
on a January day with the thermometer ten de-
grees below zero, has a capacity for radiating com-
fort undreamed of by those who sit beside its de-
generate successors. The judge will burn nothing
but hickory, and "Pete," his man of all work,
cuts without orders every year two of the giants
in the hickory grove beyond the calf pasture to
fill the stove's capacious maw.

The judge of probate is in a special sense the
"little father" of the people of his district. For
forty years it has been his duty to declare persons
legally dead, and to turn over all they died pos-
sessed of, to the legatees — if they left a will — or
to the next of kin, if they died intestate. To him
widows look for an allowance during the settle-
ment of their husbands' estates; to him minor
children appeal that a whole or a part of their

The Probate Judge and the Town Clerk 237

portion of their father's estate may be sold and
the proceeds devoted to their support; he is the
custodian of all wills, inventories and distributions
of estates, counsellor in all questions of law affect-
ing wills and the final disposal of property; a
magistrate to hear and decide all claims against
estates where the inventory thereof does not ex-
ceed $2,000.

A desire to gather some scattered threads of
family history led us to consult the leather-clad
volumes in the judge's safe, and many of the long
cold days of last winter were passed in his office.
One day a family party drove up in carriages,
men and women alighted, and filed into the judge's
office, legatees under the will or kindred of one of
the solid men of the town who had just died,
gathered to listen to the reading of the will.

At such times and when he is holding court,
the judge appears at his best. He was more care-
fully brushed than usual this time, his manner
was more judicial and consolatory, as befitted so
sad and solemn an occasion. The faces of the
party were a study. Some knew they had been
ignored, some that they had been remembered;
others evidently were quite uncertain what the in-
strument had in store for them. The reading was

238 In Olde Connecticut

soon over, however, and the party filed out, some
faces radiant, others depressed or defiant, as if
promising a future contest.

Another time there drove up in a mud-bespat-
tered carriage that had brought him from the sta-
tion, four miles away, a small, modest appearing
gentleman with a legal air, who proved to be one
of the greatest lawyers of the metropolis. He
wished to find the parentage of his great-grand-
mother, Huldah May, who had been born in the
old town a hundred years before, but the record
of whose birth could not be found, in either the
town records (in possession of the town clerk) or
in the parish records of the Prime Ancient So-
ciety, held by the clerk of the Congregational
Church in the village, although a standing offer
of $500 for the entry had been made by him the
year before.

At the close of the Revolution, the victorious
Whigs having banished the Tories and confiscated
their estates, were so incensed against anything of
English savor that they refused to keep the vital
statistics of their towns because it was the custom
in England to do so; consequently from 1781 to
1830 the genealogist finds the most maddening and
deplorable hiatus in the volumes that recorded the

The Probate Judge and the Town Clerk 239

births and deaths of the rural towns, and which
before that historic struggle were kept with praise-
worthy fidelity.

Nothing annoys the judge more than the curi-
osity of the villagers at every death as to whether
or no the deceased left a will — if he did, as to who
were the legatees, and the amount of his estate,
and a persistent quizzing of him in order to find
out. He parries questioners quite skillfully, how-
ever, by reminding them that the records in ques-
tion may be examined by anyone during the legal
hours.

The town clerk is another worthy of our village
community. His office must have been instituted
away back in the twilight of the race when men,
growing out of the family and tribal relation, be-
gan to found organized communities and needed
an official to record their doings. Here the town
clerk has also been our neighbor. He is the beau
ideal of a scholar — tall, bent, thin-visaged, and
stoop-shouldered from long poring over his rec-
ords. Fidelity to duty is stamped on every linea-
ment. He has no office hours. You are free to
examine the records in his office from seven o'clock
in the morning until ten at night. He rarely goes
out, except to the Congregational Church — of

240 In Olde Connecticut

which he is one of the pillars — on Sundays, and
to town meetings. All his remaining hours are
spent among his huge tomes, writing, or turning
over musty leaves in search of some elusive Amin-
adab or Ebenezer, Charity or Patience, or Esther,
ancestor or ancestress of some gentle enthusiast
across the Continent maybe, who needs but this
missing link to complete a family tree.

For fifty successive years at the annual town
meetings his fellow citizens have elected him their
town clerk, and this without his having expressed
the slightest desire for a reelection. His father
served fifty years before him. He has a son to
whom it may descend, for the townspeople seem-
ingly look on the ofiice as hereditary. The town
clerk lacks that reverence and respect accorded his
fellow official, the judge of probate, because of the
latter's judicial capacity. For keeping its records
the town pays its clerk the munificent salary of
fifty dollars per year. But this by no means rep-
resents the total of his income, for there are many
fees and perquisites — so much for recording a
deed; so much for administering an oath; so
much for a certified copy of any instrument in
his office, so much for searching the records; so
that on the whole he gets a very tidy salary out

The Probate Judge and the Town Clerk 241

of it. We are of opinion that his largest gains
come from those genealogically inclined. There
would be more return but that his conscience will
permit him to charge but fifty cents an hour for
his services.

There are perhaps thirty portly leather-covered
volumes which must be examined in making these
researches. These are records of births, mar-
riages and deaths, going back to 1670; the earli-
est are still quite legible. There are some curious
things about them, for instance the births of the
several children in a family are all recorded at
the same time, having evidently been brought in
by the father, who copied them from his family
Bible, and generally prefaced them by giving the
marriage of himself and wife. Some dates are
given " to the best of my knowledge and belief. "
Whether there was a law making this obligatory,
is not known. They occur during the term of of-
fice of one clerk only, and may have been brought
in at his request. Some of the town clerks were
of a frugal turn of mind, and used old account
books and ledgers for registers. These are quite
valuable to the snapper up of unconsidered trifles,
as showing the value of articles in common use
at that time.

242 In Olde Connecticut

It is very interesting to the town-bred man to
sit in the clerk's office and study the callers. Some
few are townspeople, but the majority are students
of family. We had no idea before of the interest
taken in genealogical studies by our fellow Ameri-
cans. There are men and women, old and young,
of all sorts and conditions, but most of them, of
course, of culture and some amount of wealth.
For 250 years the old town has been pouring her
best blood and brawn into the insatiate maw
of the cities and of the great West, and the de-
scendants of these "pilgrims" are now coming
back to the mother town to learn whence they
came. The old official is very patient with them,
for he is a genealogical enthusiast himself, and is
often able to give them a clue or a fresh scent,
when the chase seemed hopeless. He has never
been known to accept a fee for this particular ser-
vice, although many have been tendered. When
visitors have exhausted the records of his office,
he sends them to his neighbor, the judge of pro-
bate, across the street, and to the slender, spec-
tacled young man on his right, who acts as
clerk of the Prime Ancient Society, and has one
thin volume of baptisms, marriages, and deaths
going back to 1670, which contains more names

The Probate Judge and the Town Clerk 243

than all the town clerk's portly volumes com-
bined.

We witnessed in his office, one January after-
noon, a somewhat pathetic incident. A farmer
with wrinkled face and shoulders bent with toil,
came in to have a deed recorded. "At last,
'squire, " cried he, his face radiant and eyes beam-
ing, " I have got the old place clear. Here's the
last quitclaim deed from brother Hiram, away out
in New Zealand. All the other heirs quitclaimed
long ago. Rob is in San Francisco, Tom in Rio
Janeiro, Harriet in Iowa — how we are scattered!
He sends back my check for $500, too — his share —
says he's got more than he can manage now, and
to use it in keeping the old place up. Says if he
should happen to lose his pile, he'll come back and
board it out. Rather handsome of Hi, wasn't it ? "

The old clerk agrees that it was, and, taking
down a dusty docket, proceeds to record the deed
therein.

It is at town meetings, however, that our friend
appears to most advantage. It is then made ap-
parent to every voter that he has the town busi-
ness at his fingers' ends; that he is the one who
oils the wheels of the town's machinery, so that
they run smoothly. He sits at a small desk on

244 In Olde Connecticut

the right hand of the moderator, a little below the
raised dais on which the latter stands. The mod-
erator, portly, florid, with basso profundo voice,
and grandiloquent manner, is a figurehead merely.
Anyone can see that his prompter and whole de-
pendence in bringing forward the different heads of
the town business, is the calm, modest, spectacled
man at his right. The latter records only the mo-
tions, resolutions and votes; to take down the
fiery eloquence, the witticisms, the tales that point
a moral, the impassioned appeals, the verbal flay-
ings of this forum of the people, would require as
nimble a stenographer as those who serve in the
Capitol at Washington. The town clerk never
speaks of himself; he never seeks to influence leg-
islation— it is his to record, and he performs the
function so acceptably that no rival appears in
the field against him.

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pretenders. Folio, canvas, gilt top. $15 net (carriage

THE BLOOD ROYAL OF BRITAIN. Contains over
36,000 lines of Royal descent from Edward IV and Henry
VII of England and James III of Scotland. Folio, 650
pages, Japanese vellum. $50 net (carriage extra).

THE PLANTAGENET ROLL. Gives an immense
number of descents from Edward III of England. Folio,
550 pages, cloth. $45 net (carriage extra).

HISTORY OF ANCIENT WETIIERSFIELD, CON-
NECTICUT. By Henry R. Stiles, M.D. Two volumes,
cloth, folio, illustrated. $25 net (carriage extra).

THE HILLS FAMILY IN AMERICA. By William
S. and Thomas Hills. 8vo, cloth, illustrated. $6 net
(carriage extra).

THE ANCESTRY AND DESCENDANTS OF LIEUT.
JONATHAN AND TAME SIN (BARKER) NORRIS,
OF MAINE. By H. M. Norris. 8vo, cloth, illustrated,
gilt top. $3 net (carriage extra).

THE GENEALOGY OF THE RIX FAMILY. By
Guy S. Rix. 8vo, cloth, illustrated. $5 net (carriage extra).
The above prices are subject to increase without notice.

THE GRAFTON PRESS, GENEALOGICAL EDITORS AND PUBLISHERS
TO FI

FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK

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