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LOS ANGELES MUSEUM
EXPOSITION PARK
4
PAPERS AND ADDRESSES
Society of Colonial Mars
STATE OF CONNECTICUT
TOGETHER WITH THE CONSTITUTION AND BY-LAWS, REGISTER OF
OFFICERS AND MEMBERS AND NECROLOGIES, FORMING
VOLUME II
OF THE
PROCEEDINGS OF THE SOCIETY
THE T. M. & T. PRESS
BY VOTE OF THE COUNCIL AT A MEETING HELD ON FEBRUARY
TENTH NINETEEN HUNDRED AND NINE THIS VOLUME WAS
ORDERED PRINTED. ARRANGED AND EDITED BY A SPECIAL
COMMITTEE OF PUBLICATION THEN APPOINTED
THEODORE SALISBURY WOOLSEY
ARTHUR REED KIM BALL
WILLISTON WALKER
LUCIUS ALBERT BARBOUR
222
LOS ANGELES LvJ:??
EXPOSITION PARK
CONTENTS
Page
Charter, 9
Constitution, , . . . . . . . . . 15
By-Laws, 20
Members, Present and Past, 27
Officers, .: 37
Gentlemen of the Council, 39
Members of Committees, 40
The Pequot Fight, 43 \
Captain John Mason and the Expedition Against the Pequots, 59 v
The Great Swamp Fight, . . . . . . 71 v
Colonial Weapons, . . . . . . . . 91
Three Memorials, ; . . 109 V
The Charter Oak Memorial, . 125
The Dutchman in Connecticut, 131
The Dutchman Again, . . . . . . . . 141
The Pilgrim, . 149
General Robert Sedgwick, . . . . ... . 161
On Colonial Literature, . . . .185
Two Colonial Americans, 191
Reminiscences of a Collector, 205
Colonial Taxation, . . . . . . . . .221
Four Lost Legacies, 247
The Game of Wicket, 269
Necrology, 1903-1909, 305
Index, 373
CHARTER
SOCIETY OF COLONIAL WARS,
IN THE STATE OF NEW YORK.
April 26th, 1893.
MESSRS. CHARLES S. WARD, GEORGE M. GUNN, GEORGE H. FORD,
CHARLES H. TROWBRIDGE, CHARLES A. TOMLINSON, NATHAN G.
POND, W. CECIL DURAND, NICHOLAS M. POND, NATHAN A.
BALDWIN :
GENTLEMEN : —
Your Petition to organize the Society of Colonial Wars in the
State of Connecticut is hereby granted under the provisions of the
Constitution of this Society.
It is mutually understood and agreed that all your actions will be
governed by the Constitution of this Society, until a General Consti-
tution is ratified at a General Assembly of Delegates from the
different State Societies by unanimous consent.
By order of the Council,
HOWLAND PELL,
Secretary.
FREDERIC J. DE PEYSTER,
Governor.
The Society of Colonial Wars in the State of Connecticut was
incorporated under the laws of Connecticut, May 2ist, 1893, by the
following gentlemen: — MESSRS. CHARLES S. WARD, CHARLES H.
TROWBRIDGE, NATHAN G. POND, WM. CECIL DURAND, GEORGE M.
GUNN, CHARLES A. TOMLINSON, FREDERICK L. TIBBALS, LYNDE
HARRISON, A. HEATON ROBERTSON, and GEORGE H. FORD.
FIRST GENERAL COURT
The first General Court of the Society of Colonial Wars in the
State of Connecticut was held in New Haven on December 14,
1893, at which time most of the officers and a Council were chosen.
An adjourned General Court was held in New Haven on May 26,
1894, the 257th anniversary of the attack by Captain John Mason
and his forces on the Pequot fort in Mistick. At this time the rest
of the officers were eleSled, and the Constitution and By-Laws were
adopted by a unanimous vote, about thirty-one members of the
Society being present.
THE CONSTITUTION AND BY-LAWS
CONSTITUTION
ARTICLE I.
NAME OF THE SOCIETY.
This Society shall be known by the name of the "Society of
Colonial Wars in the State of Connecticut." It recognizes the
authority of the "General Society of Colonial Wars," and all its pro-
ceedings shall be subjeB to the Constitution of said General Society.
ARTICLE II.
OBJECTS OF THE SOCIETY.
The Society of Colonial Wars is instituted to perpetuate the
memory of the events of American Colonial History, and of the men
who, in military and naval service, and in civil positions of trust and
responsibility, by their a£ls or counsel, assisted in the establishment,
defense and preservation of the American Colonies, and were in
truth the founders of the Nation. To this end it seeks to collecT; and
preserve manuscripts, rolls, relics, and records; to provide suitable
commemorations or memorials of events in Colonial History ; and to
inspire in its members the fraternal and patriotic spirit of their fore-
fathers, and in the community respe6l and reverence for those whose
public services made our freedom and unity possible.
ARTICLE III.
MEMBERSHIP.
Any man above the age of twenty-one years, of good moral
characler and reputation in the community, whose direcl; ancestor in
the male line came to reside in the American Colonies before the
year 1750, shall be eligible to membership in this Society, provided
10S ANGSLES MUSEUM
EXPOSITION PARK
1 6 The Constitution and By-Laws
that he is lineally descended in either male or female line from an
ancestor :
(1) Who served as a military or naval officer, or as a soldier,
sailor, or marine, or as a privateersman, under authority of the
Colonies which afterward formed the United States, or in the
forces of Great Britain which participated with those of the said
Colonies in any wars in which the said Colonies were engaged, or in
which they enrolled men, from the settlement of Jamestown, May
13, 1607, to the battle of Lexington, April 19, 1775 ; or
(2) Who held office in any of the Colonies between the dates
above mentioned, either as
(a) Director-General, Vice-Dire6lor-General, or member of the
Council, or legislative body in the Colony of New Netherlands ;
(6) Governor, Lieutenant or Deputy-Governor, Lord Proprietor,
member of the King's or Governor's Council, or legislative body in
the Colonies of New York, New Jersey, Virginia, Pennsylvania,
and Delaware ;
(c) Lord Proprietor, Governor, Deputy-Governor, or member of
the Council, or of the legislative body in Maryland and the
Carolinas ;
(d) Governor, Deputy-Governor, Governor's Assistant, or Com-
missioner to the United Colonies of New England, or member of
the Council, body of Assistants, or legislative body in any of the
New England Colonies; provided, that descent from Deputies to
the General Assembly who performed no military service, shall not
be available for entrance into this Society, but may be used for
supplementary proof of honorable descent. Inheritance of member-
ship from a deceased member shall be by primogeniture, but shall
not be permitted unless the Council be satisfied that the heir is per-
sonally acceptable in regard to character and reputation.
ARTICLE IV.
OFFICERS.
The Officers of the Society shall be a Governor, a Deputy Gov-
ernor, a Lieutenant Governor, a Secretary, and a Treasurer, who
The Constitution and By-Laws 17
shall be ex officio members of the Council; also a Chaplain, a
Registrar, and a Historian.
ARTICLE V.
GENTLEMEN OF THE COUNCIL AND COMMITTEES.
There shall be a Council consisting of nine members in addition
to the ex officio members, a Committee on Membership consisting
of five members, and a Committee on Collection of Historical Docu-
ments and Records consisting of five members. At a meeting of the
Society other than the annual meeting, the Society shall ele£l by
ballot thirteen members from whom a nominating committee of
seven shall be drawn by lot, which committee shall, one month
before the next General Court of the Society, mail to every member
a list of names to be voted on for officers and committees at the
annual election.
ARTICLE VI.
ELECTION OF OFFICERS.
The officers above named, together with the members of the
Council and members of the Committees, shall be elected at the
General Court by ballot. A plurality vote shall cleft, and said
officers and members of the Committees shall hold office for the
period of one year, or until their successors shall be duly elected and
qualified. The other gentlemen of the Council first elected under
this Constitution shall be divided by lot into three classes, three
persons in each class, whereof one class shall hold office for one
year, one class for two years, and one class for three years, and at
the General Court successors shall be elefted to the members of the
class which completes its term of office. In this article the first year
is understood to mean the time from the General Court of the year
1894 to that of the year 1895.
Vacancies among the officers or in the Council or Committees
shall be filled for the residue of the current term at a meeting of the
Council called on one month's notice.
1 8 The Constitution and By-Laws
ARTICLE VII.
ELECTION OF MEMBERS.
An invitation to become a member shall be given only by the
Council, who shall vote on each name by ballot, one adverse vote in
five to cause rejection of the candidate. Gentlemen accepting the
invitation will file preliminary applications stating the naifie, resi-
dence and services of the Colonial ancestors from whom their eligi-
bility is derived. Formal application papers must be subscribed by
the applicant and approved by two members of the Society over
their signatures. Applications shall be accompanied by proof of
eligibility, and such application and proof shall be referred to the
Committee on Membership, who shall carefully investigate the same
and report at the next meeting of the Council their recommendation
thereon. Members shall be elected by vote at a Council of the
Society duly called, but a negative vote of one in five of the ballots
cast shall cause the rejection of any candidate. Payment of the
initiation fee and dues, and subscription to the Declaration contained
in the Constitution of the Society, shall be a prerequisite of
membership.
ARTICLE VIII.
DECLARATION.
Every member shall declare upon honor that he will use his best
efforts to promote the purposes of the Society and will observe the
Constitution and By-Laws of the same ; and shall sign a declaration
that he will support the Constitution of the United States.
ARTICLE IX.
PURPOSES.
At every meeting of the Council the purposes and general welfare
of the Society shall be considered and measures taken to promote
and secure them. No party political question of the day or existing
controversial religious subje6l shall be discussed or considered at
any meeting of the Society.
The Constitution and By-Laws 19
ARTICLE X.
COM MEMORATIONS.
The Society shall celebrate yearly some martial event in Colonial
History, as a festival day, and its members shall dine together at
least once in each year.
ARTICLE XI.
SEAL.
The Seal shall be— A title scroll "1633. Society of Colonial Wars
in the State of Conneaicut. 1775," secured at base with arrows;
within a shield surmounted of the Crown, quarterly of four ; i and
4 argent 3 grapevines leaved and f ru6led proper ; 2 and 3 argent a
cross of Saint George, gules.
The Secretary shall be the Custodian of the Seal.
ARTICLE XII.
INSIGNIA AND DIPLOMA.
The Insignia and Diploma are those of the General Society.
ARTICLE XIII.
FLAG.
The flag of this Society shall consist of the Red Cross of Saint
George on a white field having in the center an escutcheon bearing
one grapevine.
ARTICLE XIV.
ALTERATIONS OR AMENDMENTS.
Alterations or amendments of this Constitution signed by no less
than five members proposing the same, may be presented at any
meeting of the Society : said amendments with the proposers' names
shall be printed by the Secretary and sent to every member of the
Society, but shall not be voted upon except at a General Court held
2O The Constitution and By-Laws
not less than six months after the proposed amendments shall have
been printed and distributed. No amendment shall be made unless
adopted by a two-thirds vote of the members present at the Court
voting upon the same.
BY-LAWS
SECTION I.
FEES AND DUES.
The initiation fee shall be ten dollars ; the annual dues five
dollars, payable on or before the first day of January of each year ;
provided, that any member elecled and paying annual dues during
the last three months of the year shall not be required to pay the
annual dues for the year next ensuing. The payment at one time of
one hundred dollars shall constitute life-membership, such payment
being in lieu of initiation fee and all annual dues. All life-member-
ship moneys thus collecSled, and all initiation fees hereafter, shall be
put into a fund, the income of which shall be available for the
running expenses of the Society.
The Council shall have the power to drop from the roll the name
of any member of the Society who shall be at least two years in
arrears and shall fail, on proper notice, to pay the same within sixty
days, and on being dropped his membership shall cease, but he may
be restored to membership at any time by the Council upon his
written application and the payment of all such arrears from the
date when he was dropped to the date of his restoration.
SECTION II.
RESIGNATION.
No resignation of any member shall become effective unless
consented to by the Council.
The Constitution and By-Laws 21
SECTION III.
DISQUALIFICATION AND EXPULSION.
No person who may be enrolled as a member of this Society shall
be permitted to continue in membership when his proofs of descent
or eligibility shall be found to be defective. The Council, after
thirty days' notice to such a person to substantiate his claim, and
upon his failure satisfactorily so to do, may require the Secretary to
erase his name from the membership list. The said person shall
have a right to appeal to the Society at its next Court, or at the
General Court. If the said appeal be sustained by a two-thirds vote
of the members present at such Court, the said person's name shall
be restored to said membership.
Any member, for conduct inconsistent with the character of a
gentleman and man of honor, or for serious disloyalty to the
Society, or for other grave cause, may be suspended or expelled
from the Society. But no member shall be suspended or expelled
unless written charges are presented against him. The Council,
after hearing such charges, and giving him an opportunity for reply
to them, may a8; by a two-thirds vote ; and its aftion shall be final.
SECTION IV.
VACANCIES AND TERMS OF OFFICE.
Whenever an officer of this Society shall die, resign, or negle£l to
serve, or be suspended, or be unable to perform his duties by reason
of absence, sickness, or other cause, and whenever an office shall be
vacant which the Society shall not have filled by an eleBion, the
Council, being summoned at one month's notice, shall have power to
appoint a member to such office pro tempore, who shall a£l in such
capacity until the Society shall cleft a member to the vacant office,
or until the inability due to said cause shall cease; provided, how-
ever, that the office of Governor shall not be filled by the Council
when there shall be a Deputy or Lieutenant-Governor to enter on
these duties. The Council may supply vacancies among its members
under the same conditions, and should any member other than an
22 The Constitution and By-Laws
officer be absent from three consecutive meetings of the same, with-
out sufficient excuse, his place may be declared vacant by the Council
and filled by appointment until an election of a successor. SubjeSl
to these provisions, all officers and gentlemen of the Council shall
from the time of election continue in their respective offices until the
next General Court, or until their successors are chosen.
SECTION V.
GOVERNOR.
The Governor, or in his absence the Deputy, or Lieutenant-
Governor, or Chairman pro tern., shall preside at all Courts of the
Society, and shall exercise the duties of a presiding officer, under
parliamentary rules, subject to an appeal to the Society. The Gov-
ernor shall be a member ex officio of all Committees excepting the
Nominating Committee and the Committee on Membership. He
shall have power to convene the Council at his discretion, or upon
the written request of five members of the Society, or upon the like
request of three members of the Council.
SECTION VI.
CHAPLAIN.
The Chaplain shall be an ordained minister of a Christian church,
and it shall be his duty to officiate when called upon by the proper
officers.
SECTION VII.
SECRETARY.
The Secretary shall condu6l the general correspondence of the
Society, and keep a record thereof. He shall properly notify all
persons ele&ed to membership in the Society, and shall perform
such other duties as the Society or his office may require. He shall
have charge of the Seal, certificates of incorporation, constitution,
The Constitution and By-Laws 23
by-laws, historical and other documents and records of the Society
other than those required to be deposited with the Registrar, and
shall affix the seal to all properly authenticated certificates of mem-
bership, and transmit the same to the members to whom they may
be issued. He shall notify the Registrar of all admissions to
membership. He shall certify all aSts of the Society, and when
required authenticate them under seal. He shall have charge of
printing and of publications issued by the Society. He shall give
due notice of the time and place of the holding of all courts of
the Society and of meetings of the Council. He shall keep fair and
accurate records of all the proceedings and orders of the Society and
of the Council, and shall give notice to each officer who may be
affeded by them, of all votes, resolutions and proceedings of the
Society or Council, and at the General Court, or oftener, shall report
the names of those candidates who have been admitted to member-
ship, and shall read the names of those members whose resignations
have been accepted or who have been expelled for cause or for
failure to substantiate claim of descent. In his absence from any
meeting, a Secretary pro tern, may be designated therefor.
The Secretary may be paid a salary at the discretion of the
Council.
SECTION VIII.
TREASURER.
The Treasurer shall colle£l and keep the funds and securities of
the Society, and as often as those funds shall amount to one hun-
dred dollars, they shall be deposited in some bank in the city of resi-
dence of the Treasurer, to the credit of the "Society of Colonial
Wars in the State of Connecticut," and such funds shall be drawn
thence on the check of the Treasurer for the purposes of the Society
only. Out of these funds he shall pay such sums only as may be
ordered by the Society or the Council, or his office may require. He
shall keep a true account of his receipts and payments, and at each
annual meeting render the same to the Society.
24 The Constitution and By-Laws
For the faithful performance of his duty he may be required to
give such security as the Society shall deem proper.
SECTION IX.
HISTORIAN.
The Historian shall keep a detailed record of all historical and
commemorative celebrations of the Society, and in conjunction with
the Secretary shall edit and prepare for publication such historical
addresses, papers and other documents as the Council may see fit to
publish. He shall also prepare a necrological list for each year, with
biographies of deceased members, which he may be called upon to
read at meetings of the Society.
SECTION X.
REGISTRAR.
The Registrar shall receive and file all the proofs upon which
membership or supplemental ancestral record has been granted, with
a list of all diplomas countersigned by him, and all documents which
the Society may obtain ; and he under direction of the Council shall
make copies of such papers as the owners may not be willing to
leave in the keeping of the Society.
SECTION XI.
COUNCIL.
The Council shall meet as often as required, or at the call of the
Secretary, or at the written request of three of its members. Five
shall be a quorum for the transaction of business. It shall perform
the duties prescribed by the Constitution of the Society and these
By-Laws, shall have general control and management of the affairs
and funds of the Society, shall cause a report of proceedings to be
made annually to the Society, and may appoint Committees on the
Society's affairs, composed wholly or in part of members of the
Society outside of its own number. The Council may for cause
The Constitution and By-Laws 25
suspend any officer, and its aftion must be reported to the Society
for approval or the reverse within thirty days.
SECTION XII.
COMMITTEE ON MEMBERSHIP.
The Committee on Membership shall consist of five members
chosen by ballot at the General Court of the Society. Three mem-
bers shall constitute a quorum and a negative vote of two shall cause
an adverse report to the Council on the candidate's application. The
proceedings of the Committee shall be secret and confidential. Any
member of this Committee failing to attend three successive meet-
ings, without sufficient excuse, shall be dropped from the Commit-
tee, and some one else may be appointed by the Council to serve for
the rest of his term.
The Committee shall have power to make By-Laws for its
government and for other purposes not inconsistent with the Consti-
tution or By-Laws of the Society.
SECTION XIII.
COURTS.
The General Court of the Society for the year 1894 shall be held
on the second Wednesday of December, and thereafter the General
Court shall be held on the first Wednesday in May, in commemora-
tion of the First General Court of the Colony of Connecticut held at
Hartford on the first day of May, 1637 [O. S.], at which time the
Sovereignty of the Colony was first asserted by the formal Declara-
tion of War against the Nation of the Pequots. Other courts shall
generally be held once in each season of the year at such anniver-
saries as the Society, or in event of its failure to choose, the Council
may selecl.
Special Courts may be called by the Governor at such times as in
his opinion the interests of the Society may demand, and must be
called by the Secretary at the request of ten members ; all notices of
26 The Constitution and By-Laws
meetings shall be sent out at least ten days before the date of meet-
ing. Fifteen members shall constitute a quorum.
SECTION XIV.
LOCAL SECRETARIES.
When ten or more members of the Society shall be resident in a
city or town of the State of Connecticut, one of their number may
be appointed Local Secretary by the Council, to hold office for one
year, or until he be removed for cause or his successor be duly
appointed. Subjecl to the approval of the Council, a Local Secre-
tary may, in conjunction with the members locally resident, arrange
local commemorations of men and events of Colonial History, and
attend to such other matters as may from time to time be expressly
committed to him by the Council.
SECTION XV.
ADDRESSES OF MEMBERS.
It shall be the duty of every member to inform the Secretary by
written communication of his place of residence and of any change
thereof, and of his post-office address. Service of any notice under
the Constitution or By-Laws on any member, addressed to his last
residence or post-office address, forwarded by mail, shall be suffi-
cient service of notice.
SECTION XVI.
ALTERATION OR AMENDMENT.
No alteration or amendment of the By-Laws shall be made unless
notice shall have been duly given in writing, signed by the member
proposing the same, at a Court of the Society.
The Secretary shall send a printed copy of the proposed amend-
ment to the members of the Society, and state the Court at which
the same will be voted upon. No amendment or alteration shall be
made unless adopted by a two-thirds vote of the members present at
the Court voting upon the same.
MEMBERS, OFFICERS AND COMMITTEES
LIST OF MEMBERS
STATE GENERAL
SOCIETY SOCIETY
No. No.
144 Abbot, Edgar Wade, 29 Barclay St., New York City 1997
222 Adams, Henry, Greenville, Cal 4253
148 Andrews, James Sherlock, Rochester, N. Y 2001
125 Andrews, Rev. William Given, D.D., Guilford 1978
178 Arms, Frank Thornton, Paymaster, U. S. N 3111
160 Baldwin, Wilson Leslie, Stamford 2I79
149 Barbour, Lucius Albert, Hartford 2002
*i88 Barnes, Amos Foote, New Haven 3448
123 Beach, John Kimberly, New Haven 1976
157 Beardsley, Morris Beach, Bridgeport 2176
212 Beardsley, Samuel Fayerweather, Bridgeport 397 1
*i7i Birdseye, Isaac Washington, Bridgeport 2435
95 Bishop, General Henry Alfred, Bridgeport 906
28 Bradley, Cyrus Sherwood, Southport 569
201 Brainard, Morgan Bulkeley, Hartford 3975
223 Brenton, Rev. Cranston, Hartford 1675
176 Brewer, Arthur Henry, Norwich 3146
*I73 Brewster, Rt. Rev. Chauncey Bunce, Hartford 3846
227 Brockway, William Stevens, Hartford 2858
218 Bronson, Charles French, Waterbury 4094
117 Bronson, Julius Hobart, Waterbury 1970
*io6 Brooker, Charles Frederick, Ansonia 1960
194 Brooks, Isaac Watts, Torrington 3701
107 Buel, John Laidlaw, M.D., Litchfield 1961
* 37 Bulkeley, Hon. Morgan Gardner, Hartford 578
130 Bull, Charles Stedman, M.D., 47 West 36th St., New
York City 1983
96 Bunce, Jonathan Brace, Hartford 907
140 Capen, Walter Nelson, Noroton 1993
179 Gary, Melbert Brinkerhoff, Ridgefield 3112
* Life Members
3o Members, Officers and Committees
STATE GENERAL
SOCIETY SOCIETY
No. No.
75 Catlin, Abijah, Jr., Hartford 616
69 Chapin, Charles Frederick, Waterbury 610
114 Cheney, Colonel Louis Richmond, Hartford 1967
150 Clark, Charles Hopkins, Hartford 2003
58 Collins, Atwood, Hartford 599
202 Comstock, George, Bridgeport 3924
116 Cone, James Brewster, Hartford 1969
* 45 Cooley, Francis Rexford, Hartford ^. . . . . 586
*i89 Crane, Albert, Stamford 3449
161 Curtis, John Calvin, Bridgeport 2180
*i8o Curtis, Lewis Beers, Bridgeport 3113
31 Cutler, Ralph William, Hartford 572
60 Daggett, William Gibbons, M.D., New Haven 601
216 Davenport, John, Stamford 4092
224 DePeu, Rev. John, Bridgeport 4259
192 Downes, John Ireland Howe, New Haven 4090
*io9 Eaton, George Francis, New Haven 1962
191 Edwards, Professor Charles Lincoln, Trinity College,
Hartford 1404
120 Elton, John Prince, Waterbury 1973
226 Ely, Grosvenor, Norwich 433$
220 Enders, John Ostrom, Hartford 43°7
131 Farnam, William Whitman, New Haven 1984
87 Farnsworth, Frederick, M.D., New London 775
* 3 Ford, George Hare, New Haven 29
* 93 Fowler, Professor Franklin Hamilton, New York City 26
74 Gay, Frank Butler, Hartford 615
32 Gooch, Professor Frank Austin, New Haven 573
207 Goodman, Richard Johnston, Hartford 3929
209 Goodwin, Charles Archibald, Hartford 4091
* 48 Goodwin, Rev. Francis, Hartford 588
* 34 Goodwin, James Junius, n West 54th St., New York
City 575
*Life Members
Members, Officers and Committees 31
STATE GENERAL
SOCIETY SOCIETY
No. No.
*2i3 Goodwin, Walter Lippincott, Hartford 3972
in Gould, David Henry, Yonkers, N. Y 1964
198 Griggs, Robert Foote, Waterbury 3777
* 99 Gross, Charles Edward, Hartford 954
219 Gross, Charles Welles, Hartford 4190
200 Hall, Clarence Loines, Hartford 39&9
46 Hamersley, Hon. William, LL.D., Hartford 987
126 Harral, Edward Wright, Bridgeport 1979
*I7O Harrison, Alexander, Care Morgan, Harjes & Co.,
Paris, France 2394
40 Hart, Rev. Professor Samuel, D.D., Middletown 581
* 1 1 Heaton, John Edward, New Haven 552
138 Holcombe, John Marshall, Hartford 1991
41 Hooker, Edward Williams, Hartford 582
132 Hotchkiss, Henry Lucius, New Haven 1985
155 Hoyt, Edward Corse, 72 Gold St., New York City . . . 2008
221 Hubbard, Elijah Kent, Jr., Middletown 4191
203 Hungerford, Newman, Hartford 3925
136 Huntington, Frederick Jabez, Norwich 1989
177 Hurlbutt, John Henry, Stamford 3147
151 Hyde, Hon. William Waldo, Hartford 2004
159 Ingalls, Phineas Henry, M.D., Hartford 2178
137 Ingersoll, Charles Anthony, New Haven 1990
*i8i Ingraham, William ShurtlefF, Bristol 31 14
195 Jackson, John Day, New Haven 3698
84 Jarvis, Rev. Samuel Fermor, D.D., Brooklyn, Conn. 625
146 Jennings, Arthur Osborne, Southport 1999
*2O5 Jennings, Oliver Gould, Fairfield 3927
113 Kellogg, John Prescott, Waterbury 1966
91 Kimball, Arthur Reed, Waterbury 779
52 Kingsbury, Hon. Frederick John, LL.D., Waterbury 593
61 Learned, Major Bela Peck, Norwich 602
68 Learned, Walter, New London 609
* Life Members
32 Members, Officers and Committees
STATE GENERAL
SOCIETY SOCIETY
No. No.
13 Leete, Charles Sidney, New Haven 554
210 Lippitt, Costello, Norwich 3931
*no Lockwood, Luke Vincent, 35 Nassau St., New York
City 1963
115 Love, Rev. William De Loss, Ph.D., Hartford 1968
*IO3 Maxwell, Francis Taylor, Rockville 1958
70 Merriman, William Buckingham, Waterbury 61 1
162 Mitchell, Charles Foote, Waterbury 2181
121 Munger, Carl Eugene, M.D., Waterbury 1974
17 Newton, Henry Gleason, New Haven 558
225 Northrop, Otis Smith, Waterbury 4337
*i66 Osborn, Professor Henry Fairfield, 850 Madison Ave.,
New York City 2328
197 Osgood, Frederick Larned, Norwich 37?6
39 Parmele, George Luther, M.D., D.M.D., Hartford .. . 580
* 94 Perkins, Hon. J. Deming, Litchfield 905
139 Perry, Hon. John Hoyt, Southport 1992
65 Pierce, Bradford DeWitt, Bridgeport 606
50 Plumb, Henry Blackman, Battle Creek, Mich 591
8 Pond, Nicholas Misplee, Milford 171
128 Porter, George Loring, M.D., Bridgeport 1981
208 Prentice, Hon. Samuel Oscar, Hartford 393°
135 Prentis, Edward, New London 1988
79 Raynolds, Edward Villette, New Haven 620
* 59 Roberts, Hon. Henry, Hartford 600
* 12 Robertson, Hon. Abram Heaton, New Haven 553
196 Robinson, Henry Seymour, Hartford 3699
*i82 Rockwell, Charles Lee, Meriden 3115
167 Russell, Talcott Huntington, New Haven 2329
* 73 Sanford, Professor Samuel Simons, 50 West 52d St.,
New York City 614
215 Seeley, Frederick Sterling, Bridgeport 3974
124 Seymour, George Dudley, New Haven 1977
* Life Members
Members, Officers and Committees 33
STATE GENERAL
SOCIETY SOCIETY
No. No.
38 Seymour, Hon. Morris Woodruff, Bridgeport 579
57 Shipman, Arthur Leffingwell, Hartford 598
90 Skinner, William Converse, Hartford 778
20 Smith, Bradish Johnson, Milford 561
118 Smith, Herbert Knox, Hartford 1971
211 Smith, Thomas Edward Vermilye, Hartford 879
187 Stanley, Alix Welch, New Britain 3447
186 Stanley, Charles Brown, New Britain 3446
122 Sturges, Henry Cady, Fairfield 1975
154 Taylor, John Metcalf, Hartford 2007
153 Thompson, Harry Grant, New Haven 2006
168 Tingley, Witter Kinney, M.D., Norwich 2330
* 5 Tomlinson, Charles Abraham, Milford 30
204 Trowbridge, Edmund Quincy, 100 Broadway, N. Y. 3926
190 Trowbridge, Hayes Quincy, New Haven 4369
92 Trumbull, Hon. Jonathan, Norwich 780
97 Turner, Luther Guiteau, Torrington 908
*H2 Wakeman, Robert Peel, Southport 1965
63 Walker, Professor Williston, D.D., New Haven 604
*I58 Ward, Brownlee Robertson, M.D., New Haven 2177
1 8 Warren, Herbert Cleveland, New Haven 559
82 Webster, William Reuben, Bridgeport 623
175 Welles, Roger, Commander, U. S. N 3145
83 Wheeler, Hon. Ralph, New London 624
185 White, William Henry, Waterbury 3445
217 Whitmore, Franklin Gray, Hartford 4093
* 89 Whitney, Eli, New Haven 777
193 Whittemore, James Madison, Brigadier-General
U. S. A., New Haven 1006
199 Wilcox, Frank Langdon, Berlin 3923
206 Williams, George Goodwin, Hartford 392&
156 Williams, Winslow Tracy, Yantic 2009
169 Woolsey, John Munro, 5 Beekman St., New York City 2393
80 Woolsey, Professor Theodore Salisbury, New Haven 621
* Life Members
3
34 Members, Officers and Committees
MEMBERS ADMITTED WHOSE PAPERS HAVE NOT YET
BEEN COMPLETED
Marvin, Loren Pinckney Waldo Hartford
Maxwell, William Rockville
Hooker, Thomas Williams Hartford
Burns, Samuel Austin Bridgeport
Cooley, Charles Parsons Hartford
DIED
STATE GENERAL
SOCIETY SOCIETY
No. No.
6 Pond, Nathan Gillette, first Secre-
tary of the Society, July 29, 1894 2
* 33 Eaton, Professor Daniel Cady, first
Governor of the Society, June 29, 1895 574
* 62 Smith, Rev. Edward Alfred, Oct. 26, 1895 603
104 Hoppin, James Mason, Jr., Jan. 23, 1897
26 Miles, Frederick Plumb, Feb. 19, 1897 567
51 Curtis, Dr. Jonathan Strong, Mar. 31, 1897 592
*io8 Hungerford, William Allyn, Apr. 16, 1897
14 French, Dr. William Freeman, Jan. 27, 1898 555
9 Baldwin, Nathan Adolphus, May 19, 1898 12
* i Ward, Dr. Charles Samuel, second
Secretary of the Society, July 31, 1898 231
102 Trowbridge, Thomas Rutherford, Oct. 25, 1898 1957
16 Williams, Right Reverend John,
first Chaplain of the Society, Feb. 7, 1899 557
133 Hayden, Edward Simeon, Feb. 14, 1899 I986
76 Hungerford, Clarence Catlin May 2, 1899 617
43 Dennis, Rodney, June 2, 1899 584
119 Day, John Calvin, June 24, 1899 1972
47 Walker, Rev. George Leon, D.D., Mar. 14, 1900 588
* Life Members
Members, Officers and Committees
35
STATE
SOCIETY
GENERAL
SOCIETY
134 Turner, Elisha,
85 Warner, Charles Dudley,
55 Salisbury, Professor Edward El-
bridge,
127 Trowbridge, Ezekiel Hayes,
184 Hall, John Henry,
88 Brainard, Leverett,
54 Franklin, Major-General William
Buel,
30 Brown, Charles Edwin,
145 Wayland, Professor Francis, LL.D.,
27 Downes, William Elijah,
72 Brewster, Hon. Lyman Denison,
*i65 Trowbridge, Edwin Dwight,
53 Coit, Hon. Robert,
19 Smith, Edwin Porter,
147 Perkins, Nathaniel Shaw,
67 Chew, James Lawrence,
*ioo Greene, Col. Jacob Lyman,
49 Stearns, Henry Putnam, M.D.,
183 Williams, Harvey Ladew,
105 Seeley, William Elmer,
78 Whitney, Stephen,
129 Hammond, Andrew Goodrich, Major,
U. S. A.,
141 Smith, Archibald Henderson,
4 Trowbridge, Charles Hotchkiss,
56 Shipman, Hon. Nathaniel,
15 Baird, George William, General,
U. S. A.,
* 24 Cropper, John,
* 77 Bishop, Timothy Huggins, M.D.,
143 Smith, Stewart Woodruff,
*Life Members
Sept.
14,
1900
No.
1987
Oct.
20,
1900
626
Feb.
5,
1901
596
Nov.
30,
1901
I98O
June
25,
1902
3245
July
2,
1902
776
Mar.
8,
1903
595
Sept.
16,
1903
57i
Jan.
9,
1904
1998
Feb.
i,
1904
568
Feb.
14,
1904
613
Feb.
25,
1904
2327
June
19,
1904
594
Aug.
18,
1904
560
Feb.
8,
1905
2OOO
Mar.
9,
1905
608
Mar.
29,
1905
955
May
26,
1905
590
Aug.
4,
1905
3116
Aug.
25,
1905
1959
Sept.
3,
1905
619
Feb.
21,
1906
1982
Apr.
24,
1906
1994
June
24,
1906
65
June
26,
1906
597
Nov.
28,
1906
556
Dec.
6,
1906
565
Dec.
25,
1906
618
May
10,
1907
1996
36 Members, Officers and Committees
STATE GENERAL
SOCIETY SOCIETY
No. No.
142 Day, George Herbert, Nov. 21, 1907 1995
163 Merwin, Orange, Nov. 21, 1907 2182
174 Seymour, Professor Thomas Day, Dec. 31, 1907 3144
8 1 Woodward, Joseph Gurley, Mar. 5, 1908 622
25 Sanford, George Bliss, Colonel,
U. S. A., July 13, 1908 566
* 86 Tyler, Colonel Augustus Cleveland, Nov. 27, 1908 774
42 Taintor, George Edwin, Apr. 17, 1909 583
152 Williams, David Willard, June 8, 1909 2005
214 Curtis, Roderick Perry, Aug. 9, 1909 3973
35 Wessells, Col. Henry Walton, Sept. 26, 1909 576
TRANSFERRED TO OTHER STATE SOCIETIES
71 Deming, Judson Keith, to Iowa 612
66 Grant, Thomas Page, to Kentucky 607
2 Gunn, George M., to New York 7
RESIGNED
101 Almy, Leonard Ballou 956
172 Bishop, Professor William Henry 2436
44 Davis, Gustavus Pierrepont, M.D 585
7 Durand, William Cecil 47
21 Harrison, Hon. Lynde 562
29 Ingersoll, Colin Macrae 570
98 Isham, Charles 104
36 Parkhurst, Major Charles Dyer 577
64 Robinson, Lucius Franklin 605
*Life Members
Members, Officers and Committees 37
DROPPED ACCOUNT OF NON-PAYMENT OF
DUES, ETC.
STATE GENERAL
SOCIETY SOCIETY
No. No.
23 Bissell, Evelyn Lyman, M.D 564
22 Stoddard, William Buddington 563
10 Tibbals, Frederick Lemuel 551
164 Wayne, Rev. Henry Nicoll 2183
OFFICERS AND MEMBERS OF COMMITTEES
Since the organization of the Society of Colonial Wars in the
State of Connecticut, the following persons have aCled as Officers,
Gentlemen of the Council and Members of Committees.
GOVERNOR.
Daniel Cady Eaton 1893-1895
James Junius Goodwin 1895-1900
Frederick John Kingsbury 1900-1902
Theodore Salisbury Woolsey 1902-1905
Charles Edward Gross 1905-1907
Bela Peck Learned 1907-1908
Morris Beach Beardsley 1908-
DEPUTY GOVERNOR.
George Bliss Sanf ord 1893-1895
Frederick John Kingsbury 1895-1900
Theodore Salisbury Woolsey 1900-1902
Charles Edward Gross 1902-1905
Bela Peck Learned 1905-1907
Morris Beach Beardsley 1907-1908
Louis Richmond Cheney 1908-
38 Members, Officers and Committees
LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR.
James Junius Goodwin 1893-1895
Theodore Salisbury Woolsey 1895-1900
Charles Edward Gross 1900-1902
Bela Peck Learned 1902-1905
Morris Beach Beardsley 1905-1907
Louis Richmond Cheney 1907-1908
Arthur Reed Kimball 1908-
SECRETARY.
Nathan Gillette Pond 1893-1894*
Charles Samuel Ward 1894-1898*
George Dudley Seymour 1898-1905
Frank Butler Gay 1905-1908
Lucius Albert Barbour 1908-
TREASURER.
Charles Hotchkiss Trowbridge 1893-1904
John Edward Heaton 1904-1905
Ralph William Cutler 1905-
REGISTRAR.
Henry Walton Wessells 1893-1894
Frank Butler Gay 1894-
CHAPLAIN.
Rt. Rev. John Williams, D.D., LL.D 1894-1899*
Rt. Rev. Chauncey Bunce Brewster, D.D 1899-
HISTORIAN.
Morris Woodruff Seymour 1894-1
Williston Walker 1898-
* Died in Office
Members, Officers and Committees 39
GENTLEMEN OF THE COUNCIL.
Charles Edwin Brown 1893-1894
William Freeman French, M.D 1893-1894, 1897-1898*
Evelyn Lyman Bissell, M.D 1893-1894
George Hare Ford 1893-1895
John Edward Heaton 1893-1894, 1905-
Charles Samuel Ward 1893-1894
Charles Abraham Tomlinson 1893-1894
Ralph William Cutler 1893-1897, 1899-1902, 1904-1905
Abram Heaton Robertson 1893-1896
Frederick John Kingsbury 1894-1895
Gen. William Buel Franklin 1894-1896
Charles Dudley Warner 1894-1899
Rev. Samuel Hart 1894-1895
Lyman Denisoh Brewster 1894-1897
James Lawrence Chew 1894-1897
Eli Whitney, Jr 1895-1898
Jacob Lyman Greene 1895-1898
Arthur Reed Kimball 1895-1898, 1901-1904
John Kimberly Beach 1896-1899
Bela Peck Learned 1896-1902, 1908-
Robert Coit 1897-1900
Charles Edward Gross 1897-1900, 1907-
Timothy Higgins Bishop, M.D 1898-1901, 1903-1906*
George Dudley Seymour 1898-1901, 1905-
Stewart Woodruff Smith 1898-1901
Walter Nelson Capen 1898-1900
Morris Beach Beardsley 1899-1905
James Junius Goodwin 1900-
Frederick Farnsworth, M.D 1900-1903
Charles Frederick Brooker 1900-1903
Wilson Leslie Baldwin 1901-1904
William Elmer Seeley 1901-1904
*Died in Office
4O Members, Officers and Committees
George Edwin Taintor 1902-1905
Edward Villette Raynolds 1902-1905
Isaac Washington Birdseye 1903-1909
Carl Eugene Hunger, M.D 1904-1907
John Hoyt Perry 1904-1907
Prof. Theodore Salisbury Woolsey I9°5-
Morris Woodruff Seymour 1905-1908
Lewis Beers Curtis ; 1907-
William Converse Skinner 1907-1909
Francis Rexford Cooley 1909-
Edward Williams Hooker 1909-
COMMITTEE ON MEMBERSHIP.
William Cecil Durand 1893-1894
Henry Gleason Newton 1893-1895
Herbert Cleveland Warren 1893-1894
William Buddington Stoddard 1893-1894
Morris Woodruff Seymour 1894-1895
Edward Villette Raynolds 1894-1897, 1900-1901
William Hamersley 1894-1895
Charles Samuel Ward, M.D 1894-1897
Timothy Higgins Bishop, M.D 1895-1897
Rev. Edward Alfred Smith 1895-1896
Henry Putnam Stearns, M.D 1895-1898
J. Deming Perkins 1896-1897
Frank Butler Gay 1897-1898, 1909-
Louis Richmond Cheney 1897-1899
Rev. Samuel Hart, D.D 1897-1898, 1899-1900
Joseph Gurley Woodward 1897-1898
William Gibbons Daggett, M.D 1898-1899
Rev. William Given Andrews, D.D 1898-1900
John Marshall Holcombe 1898-1899
Phineas Henry Ingalls, M.D 1898-1899
Nathaniel Shaw Perkins 1899-1900
Jonathan Trumbull 1899-1900
Members, Officers and Committees 41
William Henry Bishop 1899-1900, 1902-1903
John Kimberly Beach 1900-1901, 1903-1905
Robert Peel Wakeman 1900-1902
Lucius Franklin Robinson 1900-1901
Herbert Knox Smith 1900-1902
Henry Cady Sturges 1901-1902
George Francis Eaton 1901-1902
Charles Anthony Ingersoll 1901-1902, 1903-1904
Atwood Collins 1902-1903, 1905-1908
Melbert Brinkerhoff Cary 1902-1903
Winslow Tracy Williams 1902-1903
Isaac Washington Birdseye 1902-1903
Louis Beers Curtis 1903-1907
Francis Rexford Cooley 1903-1905
Archibald Henderson Smith 1903-1904
Amos Foote Barnes 1904-1905
Arthur Reed Kimball 1904-1905
George Edwin Taintor 1905-1909*
John Day Jackson 1905-1907
Arthur Leffingwell Shipman 1905-1907
Wilson Leslie Baldwin 1907-1908
William Whitman Farnham I9°7~
Charles Archibald Goodwin 1907-
Charles Welles Gross 1908-
John Prince Elton 1908-
COMMITTEE ON HISTORICAL DOCUMENTS.
Frederick John Kingsbury 1894-1900, 1902-
Prof. Theodore Salisbury Woolsey 1894-1900
Rev. Francis Goodwin 1894-1900, 1902-1903, 1904-
George Edwin Taintor 1894-1894
James Lawrence Chew 1894-1894
Rev. George Leon Walker, D.D 1894-1899
Jonathan Trumbull 1894-1896, 1902-1903
Prof. Edward Elbridge Salisbury 1896-1900
* Died in Office
42 Members, Officers and Committees
Prof. Williston Walker 1899-1900
J. Deming Perkins 1900-1902
Prof. Thomas Day Seymour 1900-1902, 1905-1907*
Rev. William DeLoss Love 1900-1902, 1904-1907
Prof. Francis Wayland 1900-1902
Arthur Leffingwell Shipman 1900-1902, 1903-1905
William Hamersley 1902-1903
Carl Eugene Hunger, M.D 1902-1903
Rev. Samuel Hart, D.D .« 1903-
Prof. Frank Austin Gooch 1903-1904
Robert Peel Wakeman 1903-1904
John Prince Elton 1907-1908
Isaac Watts Brooks 1908-
Abram Heaton Robertson 1908-
* Died in Office
THE PEQUOT FIGHT
HON. FREDERICK J. KINGSBURY, LL.D.
jOOKER'S advance company reached Hartford,
after a painful journey of six weeks from
Massachusetts Bay, late in the fall of 1635. A
few settlers had preceded them earlier in the season and
located at Windsor, where a colony from Plymouth had
settled the year previous, and a lively fight was going
on between the two parties in regard to territorial rights.
There was also a small colony at Wethersfield. Eighteen
months from this time, when the whole river population
numbered, it is said, less than 300 — although this estimate
seems small — fifteen men from the three towns met
together in a representative capacity and passed the
following vote:
THE FIRST DAY OF MAY, 1637, GENrALL CORTE ATT
HARTEFORD.
.... It is ordered that there shalbe an offensiue warr agl
the Pequoitt, and that there shalbe 90 men levied out of the
3 Plantacons, Harteford, Weathersfeild & Windsor (vizt) out
of Harteford 42, Windsor 30, Weathersfeild 18: vnder the
Comande of Captaine Jo : Mason & in Case of death or
sicknes vnder the Comand of Rob'te Seely Leif\ & the 'Idest
Srieant or military officer surviving^, if both these miscary.
The year before (the winter of 1635-36), the people
came near starving to death. Many had tried to return
to the Bay; some had succeeded, and those who remained
were kept alive by provisions supplied by the Indians of
the neighborhood, who were their firm friends. In fact,
the settlers on the Connecticut came there by invitation
of these River Indians, who seemed to have maintained
46 The Pequot Fight
and lived up to their professions of friendship as well as
any people ever did.
The Pequots were their common enemies. The River
Indians having abundance of the best of land, and a broad
river to fish in, and being very comfortably fixed, were
naturally conservative in their politics, and greatly desired
to be let alone to enjoy their possessions. Whether the
Pequots were covetous of their lands, or whether they
enjoyed fighting for the fun of it, or a little of both, does
not so clearly appear; but whatever the motive was, one
thing is certain ; they rendered life a burden to those River
Indians. The Pequots were a truculent race. They had
come from nobody knows where; it is generally under-
stood, however, from the State of New York. They were
immigrants, and they "wanted the earth." Sassacus was
their "boss" or chief sachem, and there were twenty-six
minor or deputy sachems, each of whom claimed his full
share of the boodle under the threat of "breaking things"
if he did not get it, which threat was sometimes carried
out, as will appear in the sequel. Uncas was, or it is more
proper to say, had been, one of these minor sachems ; but
he had "bolted" sometime before, thinking, perhaps, that
he was a bigger man than old Sassacus himself, and he
and his band, who were the Mohegan band, had set up
for themselves. Uncas was evidently an Indian with
commercial views, and he thought if he could sell out his
interest to the English, or combine with them on the
cooperative plan, they could make things very lively for
Sassacus. There had been no commission to run the lines ;
but, roughly speaking, the Pequots occupied about one-
The Pequot Fight 47
third of the eastern end of the State, and made forays
both ways, as suited their convenience. Their capital, so
to speak, was in the present town of Groton, which lies
between the Thames and Mystic rivers, and here they had
two great forts or fortified towns, where large numbers
of them assembled and held "high jinks" during the
winter months, feasting, carousing, fighting, love-making,
howling, shouting and singing after the most approved
Indian fashion. Undoubtedly "there was a sound of
revelry by night," for some of Captain Mason's men got
near enough to hear it on the night before the attack.
In these two towns Sassacus had somewhere from 500
to 1,000 fighting men. There was no census commission,
and estimates vary. It is a very poor time to count
Indians, when they are coming at you with tomahawks
and bows and arrows. Undoubtedly they seemed at times
extremely numerous to Mason's men.
All this last year the Pequots had been growing ugly.
They had come over to the great river, the Connecticut,
and killed men while working in the field. Some of them
they had tortured. They had carried off women
and children. John Winthrop, Jr., had built a little
fort near the mouth of the Connecticut and left Lion
Gardiner in command. The Indians had harried him,
so that he could hardly let a man go out of the range of
the fort. And, perhaps, worse than all the rest, they had
openly and boldly insulted the English, had dared them to
fight, and had made light of them and their guns and all
their belongings. Puritan human nature wasn't of the
sort to stand this long.
48 The Pequot Fight
It is true that the Pequot historians, whose works were
unfortunately all burned in their wigwams, might have
told a somewhat different story. Stanton, the interpreter,
is reported to have said to them in the interview at Say-
brook fort: "We don't know one Indian from another."
Doubtless this was true, and it may account for a good
deal of trouble. If one Indian did any mischief, the first
Indian that was caught suffered for it, though he knew
nothing whatever about the mischief or its perpetrator.
An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, a life for a life—
that was the theory on which they acted, and the Indians
on their side were hardly more discriminating.
Some of the Block Island Indians killed one John Old-
ham. His friend John Gallup caught them at it and killed
about a dozen of them; but, not satisfied with this, the
Governor of Massachusetts sent Captain Endicott with a
force to ravage the island, kill the males and bring off
the women and children. Then he went over to the main-
land and did a good deal of mischief there. All these
things produced unpleasant feeling. Some of the Indians
engaged in the mischief at Block Island were said not to
be Pequots, but Narragansetts or Nehantics; however,
the white men did not know one Indian from another.
Each tribe was always ready to lay any mischief done to
another tribe; but they were also ready to divide plunder
with anybody who had any, and to do their best to protect
wrongdoers of any tribe from the whites. And so, after
all, for practical purposes, perhaps, Stanton's rule was
about as good as any. We do not understand the ethics
of a barbarous people. We cannot get hold of their stand-
The Pequot Fight 49
point. Perhaps we should not think much of it if we did.
A good deal of fine writing has been displayed on this
question, and much of it has been pleasant to read by the
side of a comfortable fire, and we have felt quite sweet
and affectionate for these Indians whom Captain Mason
burnt, and have thought how very disagreeable it must
have been. I presume, however, the people who were at
the siege of Lucknow, or with Gordon in the Soudan,
were better equipped with data for an opinion than most
of us. However, to cut a long story short, the question
with these English on the Connecticut was reduced to the
simplest terms. It was this: Which would you rather
do — kill the Indians or have them kill you? And on this
subject they hadn't the slightest doubt.
Nevertheless, it was a fearful undertaking. Half the
able-bodied men of a colony in the wilderness, eighteen
months after its settlement, start out to attack an enemy
ten times their number, fortified in a position difficult of
access and unknown as to its locality, but situated in what
was to them a trackless wilderness and to their enemy
familiar ground.
It was on May ist that the vote was passed, and on the
loth the little army started — ninety English and Uncas
with seventy Mohegans. All sorts of questions rise to
the mind in this connection ; such as, where did the Indians
board while they were getting ready to start? Where
were they just before that ? Certainly not living in Hart-
ford. The more we think of it, the more we feel how
little we know of the detail of life in that sturdy little
republic. What a ten days that must have been! They
4
5O The Pequot Fight
had three vessels to prepare — a pink, a pinnace and a shal-
lop. Webster says a pink is a vessel with a very narrow
stern; a pinnace is a small vessel propelled by sails or
oars, and formerly employed as a tender; and a shallop,
he says, is a boat, and suggests that we compare sloop;
but under "sloop" he says, "Cf. shallop." The authority
is good, but the information is scanty. It is evident that
they were not attractive craft with which to weather Point
Judith, in company with seventy seasick Indians. Then
they had to arrange their affairs for leaving, perhaps
never to return — their wills to make, their wardrobe to
get in order. How many tears and prayers went with
the stitches that were put into those soldiers' clothes ! And
then the parting! But at last they are off. May loth
they start down the river. But the water is very low.
They run aground. The dredging boats were not out that
spring. They make slow progress, and finally the Indians
say they would prefer to get out and walk. This they
were allowed to do; and instead of running away, as
perhaps Mason thought they would, they turned up at
Saybrook all right, having had one fight on the road, killed
seven Indians and caught and tortured to death one
Indian spy. They also brought with them Captain Under-
hill, who seems at that time to have been attached to the
Saybrook fort, whom they had met somewhere on the
road, who vouched for their report of the fight and the
seven dead Indians, and who seemed so pleased with the
whole prospect that he offered to accompany the expedi-
tion with nineteen men, if Gardiner, the commandant of
the fort, was willing. Gardiner consented. And now
The Pequot Fight 51
comes one of the most remarkable things, to my mind, in
the whole story. Having received this reinforcement,
Mason sent back twenty of his own men to defend the
river towns during his absence. Doubtless they needed it
badly enough; but to do it under the circumstances was
an act of high heroism.
They had spent five days in getting down the river.
It was now May I5th. War was declared on the 1st.
An Indian runner could go easily from Hartford to
Sassacus' headquarters in two days. Spies were plenty.
Sassacus would know long since of their coming, and be
prepared to meet them. Two captive girls who had been
rescued from the Pequots, and were now at the fort,
informed them that the Pequots had sixteen guns, and
knew how to use them. Here was a quandary. Mason's
instructions had been to land at Pequot Harbor (Thames
River), and proceed from there. Under the circumstances
he saw that this was folly. But his councilors in the
expedition feared the home government. They thought it
was "theirs to do or die, and never ask the reason why."
But Mason was equal to the occasion. He resolved to
appeal to a higher power. Rev. Samuel Stone, brave as
the bravest, had accompanied the expedition as chaplain.
Mason laid the case before him with arguments, and asked
him to submit it to the Lord.
Mr. Stone did so over night, and in the morning
reported to Mason that the Lord agreed with him, or
words to that effect, and thereupon the whole company
submitted; and there being no telegraph or telephone to
Hartford, Mason rested easy in his mind.
52 The Pequot Fight
Straight on by Pequot Harbor they sailed, and
Sassacus saw them and laughed. He thought they were
afraid. Who heard him laugh, or how they knew what
he thought, I have not ventured to inquire, but I think
Captain Mason tells the story, and even at this day I would
prefer not to have any dispute with him. Historians in
those times were expected to know a great deal. It would
seem as if Sassacus was a case of "whom the gods intend
to destroy they first make mad."
Where he thought those people were going with pinnace,
pink and shallop it is hard to imagine. The fleet rounded
Point Judith and went up the bay to some convenient
point* where they landed as soon as they could, but
although they reached there Saturday, May 2Oth, it was
Tuesday, the 23d, before they landed, they having in the
meantime kept Sunday in a proper manner. They had
Indians with them who knew something of the country,
and the very first night they went some miles into the
interior, to the fort of Miantinomoh, chief sachem of the
Narragansetts. He was a wily savage. He received them
kindly, and wished them well, but thought they had
underestimated the Pequot strength. During the night a
runner came informing them that Captain Patrick was
at Providence with a small body of men from the Bay
to assist them, and asking them to wait. So Patrick knew
where they were, and his runner came straight to them.
* NOTE. — Coffin, in his recent child's history says they landed west of Point
Judith, but Mason says they went into the bay, and Palfrey says they landed
at the foot of Tower Hill. This is a few miles above Narragansett Pier.
Underhill wrote an account of the expedition which I have not seen.
Perhaps Palfrey follows him.
The Pequot Fight 53
What was the matter with Sassacus? Mason thought
time was worth more than men — if he had other thoughts
he kept them to himself — and pushed on, going twenty
miles on the 24th to where there was another Narragansett
or Nehantic fort. These Indians would not let them in,
so Mason returned the compliment by putting a guard
around the fort so that none of them could get out, and
went to sleep. On the morning of the 25th they were
joined by 200 Narragansetts whom Miantinomoh had sent
after them, having evidently come to the conclusion that
they meant business. Then the Nehantics, those people
who would not let them into the fort, all wanted to go,
too, and so Mason started off with 500 Indians to take care
of. That day was hot, and they suffered much from
hunger. They marched twelve miles to a ford in the
Pawcatuck, the river that separates Rhode Island from
Connecticut, showing that their route must have been
inland to avoid the estuaries of the tidal rivers. After
resting here awhile they pushed on, having now learned
for the first time that there were two Pequot forts, which
shows how little they really knew of the country into which
they were going. Having, as they thought, very nearly
reached the nearest fort, they put out their pickets and
got a few hours' rest. Two hours before daylight on the
morning of Friday, the 26th, they made their attack.
Meantime, the Narragansett Indians had lost their
interest. Mason sent word to them not to run away, but
to stand as far off as they pleased and see whether English-
men would fight. The Indians in the fort, who had been
having a good time, were in deep sleep. A dog barked,
54 The Pequot Fight
there was a shout, and the English were upon them. The
fort was full of Indians ; they were scurrying and fighting
and hiding everywhere. Mason had meant to drive them
out and save the plunder, but there were more than seventy
wigwams in the fort, and the risk with these hiding-places
was too great ; so, very reluctantly — not on account of the
Indians but on account of the plunder — with his own hand
he applied the torch, and in a few minutes the village was
in flames. The Indians who came out were killed, and
those who stayed in were burned. Some say 300 and some
700 thus met their death. There were hair-breadth
escapes in plenty ; many, of course, known to nobody ; but
Mason has preserved the record where one Indian had
drawn his arrow upon him to full head, when Sergeant
Davis opportunely clipped the bow-string and then, prob-
ably, clipped the Indian.* Two of the English were killed
and twenty wounded.
* NOTE. — This statement is in Dr. Benjamin Trumbull's History of Connedi-
cut, and was taken by him from Church's History of the Indian Wars, but
a copy of this paper having fallen into the hands of Rev. Horace Edwin
Hayden of Wilkesbarre, Pa., he wrote to me saying that there was a tradi-
tion in their family that it was not Sergeant Davis but their ancestor,
William Hayden, who cut the bow-string. Dr. Stiles in his History of
Windsor, 2d edition, Vol. II, page 369, says : "William Hayden first
appears at Hartford, where he received land in the first distribution of 1639,
served under Captain Mason (whose life he saved) at the Pequot fight in
1637, for which he was granted a lot in the Soldiers' field at Hartford to
which the Court, after his death, added fifty acres more for his heirs." In
the History of Hartford County, Vol. I, page 242, it is said of him that he
served in the Pequot war and that in 1671 land was granted to his heirs for
his services. I find no mention of any grant to him in his lifetime nor of
any special service. Referring to Mason's own account of the fight, he says,
after mentioning by name a number of persons who had very narrow
escapes : "Many such providences happened ; some respecting myself ; but
since there is none to witness them, I shall forbear to mention them." The
The Pequot Fight 55
They had achieved a wonderful victory, but now they
were in a very tight place. The vessels had been sent
around to Pequot Harbor to meet them, but Sassacus, now
fully aroused and wild with anger, having a larger force
than the one just destroyed, came down upon them. The
English force was now less than seventy, with twenty
wounded men to carry and care for. But Uncas and his
Mohegans remained faithful. They carried the wounded
men, leaving the English free to fight. Underhill, the
valiant volunteer, commanded the rear guard with great
ability ; luckily the powder held out, and after a few fruit-
less attacks the Pequots gave up the pursuit and retired
statement about Davis and the bow-string first appears in print in Church's
Indian Wars. Drake, in his edition, Vol. II, page 267, note, says : "This is
the author's interpolation; Mason does not refer to it in his history, though
he mentions Sergeant Davis." Church, in his preface, says : "I shall in the
last place give this following account thereof left either under the hands of
such as Commander-in-Chief in that action or from the mouths of some
faithful witnesses that were not only then present but personally concerned
and engaged in that service."
Drake adds (note to page 6, Vol. II) : "As the author was born fifteen
years before the Pequot war, he was contemporary with all the actors in it;
and was doubtless personally acquainted with Endicott, Trask, Underhill,
Houghton, Patrick, Davenport, etc., as with the Connecticut Captains. It is
therefore a contemporaneous history and holds a place of first importance
with the personal narratives of Mason, Underhill, Gardiner and Vincent.
As to the letters concerning the war, few are extant."
Family traditions, or traditions of any kind, are to be considered as sug-
gestions rather than as dependable evidence. They are very liable to become
distorted. Indeed statements of eye-witnesses and participants are to be
received with some caution. I myself remember an old man who had been
a captain in the French and Indian wars, and who in his later years always
said that he took a boat-load of troops down the Falls of Niagara. I do not
think any one ever questioned the statement in his presence, and I presume
some of his children believed it. He doubtless did go down some rather
tough rapids somewhere, — and it was simply a mistake in the name.
F. J. K.
56 The Pequot Fight
to tear their hair and indulge in whatever answered the
Indians for profane language, and the English went on
safely to their boats. Poor old Sassacus had a hard time.
His sachems told him that he had not lived up to his party
platform, and threatened to kill him then and there; but
he had a few friends who prevented this ; still the Pequot
power was broken ; they could not rally — and a little later
they burnt their remaining fort and left for New York
and the West. Sassacus finally reached there, but his old
friends cut off his head and sent his scalp to Hartford;
some authorities say Boston.
In three weeks from the time they left, Captain Mason
and his men were back in Hartford. They held a public
thanksgiving, and Mason was made Major-General.*
* NOTE. — He is frequently spoken of as Major-General in historical works
of high character, but on a careful examination of the printed copy of the
Colonial records of the State of Connecticut, I do not find that he held any
legal title beyond that of Captain until twenty years or more after the time
referred to.
In an order passed by the General Court September 8, 1650, Mason is
called Captain. His name does not appear again until May 18, 1664, when
he is mentioned in the record among the magistrates just chosen as "Major
Mason." Thereafter he is usually spoken of as "The Major." It is true
that he was, soon after the Pequot fight, formally placed in command of all
the troops of the colony — "equivalent," as one writer says, "to the position
of Major-General." Daniel Denison, of Ipswich, who held this position in
the colony of Massachusetts, had the formal title of Major-General given
him. Mason was the general captain if not the Captain-General, and the
title of Captain-General, for some inscrutable reason, is a higher one than
Major-General. So is the title of Lieutenant-General. Some one has sug-
gested that General-Major was equivalent to Major-General, but, as I have
said, Mason was not Major till twenty years after the Pequot affair.
Another suggestion, that a Connecticut Major was equivalent to a Massa-
chusetts Major-General, falls to the ground for the same reason; besides
being liable to be otherwise misunderstood. The truth is, the Connedicut
people were never fond of titles, and were very economical in their use. With
them the thing counted for more than the name; and the thing Mason had.
The Pequot Fight 57
It is not strange that they thought the Lord had fought
their battles, nor is it easy even now to find a better way
of explaining this wonderful success.
Considering its importance to the settlers, to the colony
or to the country, few battles in history take higher rank.
CAPTAIN JOHN MASON AND THE MEMORABLE
EXPEDITION AGAINST THE PEQUOTS
IN 1637
REV. JAMES GOODWIN
HE Englishman Bagehot has said that the
"Monotonous periods of history have at least
this interest. — they prepared men for times
which were not monotonous." This remark has been
applied by another Englishman, Doyle, to the colonial
period of our own history here in New England.
In his view the first hundred years after the settle-
ment of the Puritan colonies had but little of
the romantic or the picturesque, little of the stirring
or the impressive, among the events which go to
make up their history. By comparison with the his-
tory of Europe during those same years, the English-
man saw few happenings of note. The great figures, the
dramatic scenes, the pomp and pageantry of court and
camp, the splendor and the woe of European story, seem
to him to dwarf utterly the little clusters of farmers lost
in the forests of the New World. And yet, to the seeing
eye, the forces at work in those remote communities are
of an intense interest. The hope of the future is there.
And, by comparison, the glories of the crumbling systems
of the Old World are interesting only as evidences of the
passing of the outworn and imperfect, whose places were
to be filled by new truths, new liberties, new hopes, in
short a new ideal of civilization. And this new ideal was
born and nourished up during those same years of unevent-
ful monotony. Yet, too, to the lover of New England the
monotony is only on the surface, even if it exist at all.
In the events, the men and women, of our early history,
62 Expedition Against the Pequots in 1637
there is plenty of incident and interest, plenty, if one knows
how to look for it, of the dramatic and the picturesque.
The forces which, by and by, are to renovate the earth, are
all at work, and giving clear evidence of their vitality and
their efficiency.
That which is of especial interest is the human element,
in its remarkable fineness of quality, its breadth of
vision, its power of initiative, and its habit of going
directly to the heart of things. The truth is, as we all
more or less perfectly recognize, the founders of New
England were a picked body physically, mentally, morally.
They were in some important respects beyond their own
times. They were, without doubt, the most remarkable
company of colonists the world has ever seen.
I want, this evening, to call your attention to one of
our own early Connecticut leaders, a man to whom, pos-
sibly less attention has been paid than he deserves, — John
Mason, colonial soldier, — the conqueror of the Pequods, —
by whose energy and genius the second great epoch of
New England colonial history was successfully launched.
John Mason came to New England in 1629. He is called
"Captain" in the records. He was certainly a soldier and,
like Miles Standish, had seen service in the Low Countries,
admirably fitting him for the exigencies of colonial life.
He settled finally in Windsor in Connecticut, and it is
as a Connecticut soldier that he won the victory which
has made his name memorable.
The war against the Pequods marks an epoch in our
history of no small importance. In 1637 it became clear
that a life and death struggle was impending between the
Expedition Against the Pequots in 1637 63
English settlers and the natives in southern New England.
In February of that year several men were killed by the
Pequods, the most powerful and warlike of the tribes of
the region. This was followed by further outrages. In
April, Wethersfield was raided, six men killed, and three
women and two girls taken captive and carried off. It
was thought that a general rising of all the native tribes
would speedily take place. There was great danger of a
massacre of all the whites and the destruction of the
colonies. At a court, holden at Hartford on the first
of May, 1637, it was ordered, "There shalbee an offensiue
warr agt the Pequoitt." Hartford was called upon for
forty-two men, Windsor for thirty, and Wethersfield for
eighteen ; Captain John Mason took command. The little
force was embarked in "one Pink, one Pinnace, and one
Shallop." Mr. Stone, teacher of the Hartford Church,
went with them as chaplain. The Rev. Mr. Hooker, the
pastor, addressed the men before starting, and encour-
aged them by declaring, "that the Pequots should be
bread for them." Then they started on their adventurous
voyage down the river. Let us glance for a moment at
the situation. What was the nature of the military
problem before Mason and his men? There were five
tribes between Plymouth and the Connecticut River,
beside the Pokanoket tribe near Narragansett Bay. The
most formidable of these tribes was that of the Pequods, —
the name is variously spelled, — whose general region was
the country bounded by the Connecticut and Mystic
Rivers, on the west and east, by the Sound on the south,
and by dense forest on the north, altogether thirty-five
64 Expedition Against the Pequots in 1637
miles east and west, by sixty miles north and south.
There were two chief villages. One, the more important
of the two, was on the Mystic, about four miles from
the Sound. The Pequods had evidently prepared for a
decisive struggle. They had sent many of the wives and
children of their chief men over the Sound to Long Island
for safety. They had fortified their principal village with
great care and a good deal of ingenuity. It was walled
around with tree-trunks set on end so as to form a strong
stockade, impenetrable to bullets. Two narrow openings
on opposite sides, scarcely wide enough for a man to
squeeze himself through, served for ingress and egress.
Within were crowded the flimsy wigwams. Here were
gathered some seven hundred warriors under Sassacus,
chief of the tribe.
The attitude of the Pequods was one of the results of
the colonization of the Connecticut valley. The English
were brought into close contact with the largest and most
powerful tribe in southern New England. Just previous
to this period there was trouble between the whites and
the Narragansetts, whose territory lay just east of that
of the Pequods. An expedition under John Endicott
destroyed their corn and generally damaged their posses-
sions, but accomplished nothing. Finally the good and
humane Roger Williams, a man whose spirit seems far
removed from that of that hard and merciless age, con-
ciliated the Narragansetts and they made an alliance with
the English. But the Pequods remained hostile. With-
out doubt they meditated the destruction of at least the
Connecticut colonies. It was a critical moment in the
Expedition Against the Pequots in 1637 65
history of New England. To oppose the preparations
of the Pequods were the three little colonies of Windsor,
Hartford and Wethersfield, and, at the mouth of the river,
the fort, under Gardiner, at Saybrook. Massachusetts
was indifferent. The only topic which occupied the minds
of all in that colony was "Did the ministry preach a
covenant of grace; or a covenant of works?" So
absorbed were they, that they seem to have been deaf to
all appeals for aid from Connecticut. Finally, however,
early in 1637, they did send twenty men to reinforce the
garrison at Saybrook. "While Plymouth and Massa-
chusetts were wrangling over questions of theology, the
men of Connecticut were up and doing," so writes the
English historian Doyle. For this reason the Con-
necticut forces had a problem to face sufficient to test both
their military ability and their courage to the utmost. If
the Plymouth and Massachusetts Bay colonies would have
cooperated with those of the Connecticut, the matter would
have been much simplified. A simultaneous attack might
have been made upon the Pequods upon three sides, — on
the northeast, northwest and south, effectually enclosing
the tribe. But this was now out of the question. The
authorities at Hartford endeavored to limit Mason and
his men to what seemed, at that distance, the only feasible
plan, — they were to go down the River to Saybrook, secure
reinforcements from the garrison, and then sail on to the
mouth of the Pequod River. There they were to disem-
bark and march inland against the enemy. Upon the
arrival of the little fleet at Saybrook a delay occurred which
was occasioned by Gardiner's unwillingness to spare any
66 Expedition Against the Pequots in 1637
of his garrison to strengthen the expedition. At last he
agreed to substitute twenty of his men for twenty of the
least fit of Mason's men.
It seemed a desperate undertaking. The little army,
much hindered by the provisions and armor with which
they were burdened, were to capture a strong fort gar-
risoned by seven hundred warriors, eager and ready for
war. It was at this moment that Mason's genius becomes
especially apparent. He quieted all murmurs. He boldly
discarded the crude plan of campaign furnished by the
church members at Hartford; and he decided to attack
the enemy on the lines of the most approved military
science, by taking them in the flank, where he was not
expected. Our own century has yielded no better method
of making war upon a savage, or half-civilized foe. It is,
I believe, a recognized principle of military science, that
savages usually await a frontal attack, but cannot stand
under a flank movement. This was the plan: — to land
further up the coast, approach the fort by a flank move-
ment from the east, and north, and cut the savages off
from the forest in their rear, driving them toward the
Sound and the Connecticut River. He would have the
further advantage of landing at a point where he was
wholly unexpected. His men did not share their leader's
confidence, they were opposed to his soldier's plan. To
remove their opposition Mason had recourse to an expe-
dient which adds lustre to his genius for dealing with
men.
He went to Chaplain Stone and desired him that night
to "commend their Case and Difficultyes before the Lord."
Expedition Against the Pequots in 1637 67
The chaplain, accordingly, having spent the night in
prayer, "arrived," as Dr. Walker says in his History
of the First Church of Hartford, "at the same view of
the edible character of the Pequods which Mr. Hooker
had entertained before the expedition left Hartford."
He informed Captain Mason, that "though formerly he
had been against sailing to Narragansett and landing
there, yet now he was fully satisfied to attend to it." This
stopped the mouths of the gainsayers, and "they agreed
all with one accord to go on."
They sailed along the coast, and landed on May 23rd, in
the Narragansett country, well to the east of the Pequods.
At this moment Plymouth and Massachusetts awoke from
their theological discussions and determined to act.
Plymouth sent fifty men, and the northern colony two
hundred, with orders to hurry on and reinforce Mason's
command. Forty of this new force hastened to give
immediate aid to Captain Mason, but the stout-hearted
Connecticut soldier would not wait for them, rightly fear-
ing to lose the advantage of his flank movement. He was
joined by two hundred Narragansetts and made one day's
march westward to Niantic. He seems to have considered
dividing his command in order to attack the two Pequod
villages simultaneously, but his soldierly instinct led him
to concentrate his whole force on their principal fort on
the Mystic. His plans had been entirely successful. The
Pequods, who had expected a landing near their fort, had
seen the flotilla sail by them to the eastward, with exulta-
tion. They concluded that the English did not dare to
attack them. Mason set about the work before him
68 Expedition Against the Pequots in 1637
methodically. They had arrived on Saturday evening at
Narragansett. They kept Sabbath next day on board their
vessels ; and, owing to a heavy wind, did not actually land
until Tuesday at sunset. It was not until Thursday at
eight of the clock that in strict silence the march began.
The heat was great, the men weighted with their armor and
provisions, the going hard. The Narragansetts dropped
to the rear, their courage oozing out. That night they
camped about two miles from the Pequod fort.
Their outposts heard the Indians chanting in their
peculiar fashion the cowardice and general inefficiency of
the English. Indeed they were celebrating the supposed
failure of the expedition against them. Before daylight
Mason was moving. The column marched silently up to
the fort. They found the Pequods, as Captain Mason him-
self says, "in a dead, and, as it proved to be, their last
sleep." The alarm was given, but the English were at
the two entrances of the fort in a moment. It was all
over in a short time. The Indians made a feeble and
ineffectual attempt at defence. Mason himself dashed a
firebrand into their flimsy, inflammable wigwams. In a few
minutes the fort was a sea of flame in which the dazed,
half-awakened Pequods were burned alive. Those that
tried to escape were shot down, or driven back into the
flames.
Some seven hundred were believed to have perished.
Not fifteen, all told, were left alive. The blow was com-
plete. It happened that one hundred and fifty men had
been sent but a little while before from the other Pequod
fort. These perished, too, in the destruction. The victors
Expedition Against the Pequots in 1637 69
had two men killed and about twenty wounded. Their
plight was a hard one, for the surgeon had remained
behind with the flotilla at Narragansett. Moreover, their
provisions were nearly exhausted. Matters were further
complicated by the approach of the Pequods from the
other fort. When they saw the destruction which had
been wrought, their grief and amazement knew no bounds.
They attacked the English, but were quickly driven off.
At this juncture the little fleet came sailing into the Pequod
River, and rest and refreshment at last were within reach.
It is hardly necessary to say more. The unfortunate
Pequods fled westward, only to be pursued and dispersed.
They found no welcome anywhere, but were slaughtered
wherever they were by Indians friendly to the English.
Their scalps were brought in for months. The tribe was
literally annihilated.
It was an epoch in the history of Connecticut which
deserves more than passing notice. All danger from the
local tribes was practically over, with Mason's memorable
campaign, for nearly forty years. When, in 1675, the
greatest of all conflicts with the natives of New England,
King Philip's War, broke out, the colonies were strong,
united, well-prepared, and the issue was never really in
doubt. And this condition they owed to the terror
inspired by Mason's memorable campaign. Of him, the
Rev. Thomas Prince of Boston writes, nearly one hun-
dred years after the event I have described, "Two brave
Englishmen bred to arms in the Dutch Netherlands, viz. —
Captain Miles Standish of Plymouth, and Captain John
Mason of Connecticut: Gentlemen of tried valour, Mili-
7o Expedition Against the Pequots in 1637
tary Skill and Conduct, great Activity and warm Zeal for
that noble Cause of Pure Scriptural Religion, and Religi-
ous Liberty, which were the chief original Design and
Interest of the Fathers of these Plantations; and who
were acted with such eminent Degrees of Faith and Piety
as excited them to the most daring Enterprizes in the
Cause of God and of his People, and went a great way
to their wonderful Successes. . . . Both" were "the
Instrumental Saviours of their Country in the most critical
Conjunctures : And as we quietly enjoy the Fruits of their
extraordinary Diligence and Valour, both the present and
future Generations will forever be obliged to revere their
Memory."
v
I
JOHN PLUMB.
The Plumbs were Normans. The first of the name is found on the
"Great Roll of Normandy" in 1 180, during the reign of Henry II of Eng-
land and in 1 195, during the reign of Richard I.
They bore the following arms:
ARMS:
Ermine, a bend vair, or and gules, cotised vert:
CREST :
Out of a ducal coronet, or, a plume of ostrich feathers, argent:
MOTTO:
Ardua vinco.
John Plumb was born on his father's estate at Great Yeldham, Essex
County, England, in 1594. He was the second son of Robert and Grace
Plumb of Ridgewell Hall, Ridgewell, Essex County, England, where he lived
as late as 1 634, and where all his children were born except one daughter, Dor-
cas.
He sold the estate in England, inherited from his father, and came to
Watertown — now Wethersfield, Connecticut, in 1635. He was a member of
the General Court from Wethersfield, from March 8, 1636, until 1642, and
he held many other offices of public trust. "Prior to January, 1 639, when the
fundamental articles of government of the Colony were formed, John Plumb
had been added to the list of members of the upper Section called Magistrates,
i i
WILLIAM HOUGH.
He was born in West Chester, Cheshire, England, the son of Edward
Hough. He first appears in the town records of New London in 1 650, as a
member of the Congregation of Rev. Mr. Blinman, with whose party he came
to New England. On October 28, 1645, at Gloucester, Massachusetts, he
married Sarah, daughter of Hugh Calkin.
He was Sergeant of the first Military Company of New London. He was
a volunteer in King Philip's War, the order for his enrollment being number
1 36. He was appointed one of a committee of seven to attend to the fortifica-
tion of New London and of the six points fortified he had personal supervision.
For his services he was granted land in the "Cedar Swamp Lots" in Narragansett
Township, now Voluntown, Connecticut, granted to the English Volunteers by
the General Court of Connecticut.
The restrictions of the Connecticut grant to "English" volunteers shut out
the Indians who formed a large contingent of the forces, and also the white
men who were pressed into the service. He died, 1683.
HOLDRIDGE OZRO COLLINS.
HULL, GEORGE 1590-1659
ARMS:
Ip a rhpvrnn prminp frpfwppn tVirpp falbots' hpafU prased.
7o Expedition Against the Pequots in
tary Skill and Conduct, great Activity and warm Zeal for
that noble Cause of Pure Scriptural Religion, and Religi-
ous Liberty, which were the chief original Design and
Interest of the Fathers of these Plantations; and who
were acted with such eminent Degrees of Faith and Piety
as excited them to the most daring Enterprizes in the
Cause of God and of his People, and went a great way
to their wonderful Successes. „ . . Both" were "the
Instrumental Saviours of their Country in the most critical
Conjunctures : And as we quietly enjoy the Fruits of their
extraordinary Diligence and Valour, both the present and
future Generations will forever be obliged to revere their
Memory."
/>_.. __A-__ . r *S - " J A— jfi- - / - "
DEACON STEPHEN HART.
ARMS:
:en three
CREST:
AKMS:
Gules, a bend between three fleurs-de-lis, argent:
CREST:
A castle triple towered, theron a flaming heart, proper:
MOTTO:
Coeur fidele.
He was born in Braintree, Essex County, England, in 1605, whence he
came to Massachusetts Bay in 1 632, with the Company that settled Braintree,
Massachusetts. He was one of the first settlers of Cambridge, and was ad-
mitted a Freeman in I 634. He was deacon of the Original Church formed
by Rev. Thomas Hooker. He was one of the twelve explorers of the Connec-
ticut Valley, known as the "Adventurers," in 1635, and one of the company
of Hooker which went to Hartford in July, 1636, of which he was one of the
original proprietors, his home lot being on what is now Front street, near the
river.
He was one of the soldiers from Hartford in the command of Captain
John Mason which embarked May 10, 1637, to engage in the Pequot War.
He served through that campaign and participated in the battle of May 25. He
was one of the eighty-four proprietors of Farmington in 1 672, and he was Deputy
from Farmington to the General Court of Connecticut for fifteen sessions from
May, 1647, to 1655, and once in 1660. He was one of the "Seven Pil-
lars" and the first deacon of the Farmington church. He died in 1 683.
HOLDRIDGE OZRO COLLINS.
JOHN PLUMB.
The Plumbs were Normans. The first of the name is found on the
"Great Roll of Normandy" in I 1 80, during the reign of Henry II of Eng-
land and in 1 195, during the reign of Richard I.
They bore the following arms:
ARMS:
Ermine, a bend vair, or and gules, cotised vert:
CREST :
Out of a ducal coronet, or, a plume of ostrich feathers, argent:
MOTTO:
Ardua vinco.
John Plumb was born on his father's estate at Great Yeldham, Essex
County, England, in 1 594. He was the second son of Robert and Grace
Plumb of Ridgewell Hall, Ridgewell, Essex County, England, where he lived
as late as I 634, and where all his children were born except one daughter, Dor-
cas.
He sold the estate in England, inherited from his father, and came to
Watertown — now Wethersfield, Connecticut, in 1635. He was a member of
the General Court from Wethersfield, from March 8, 1 636, until 1 642, and
he held many other offices of public trust. "Prior to January, 1 639, when the
fundamental articles of government of the Colony were formed, John Plumb
had been added to the list of members of the upper Section called Magistrates,
which had powers over life, liberty and property such as no body of officers
since their day, has been entrusted with."
He was one of the soldiers from Wethersfield, in Captain John Mason's
command during the Pequot War and he fought in the battle of May 26, 1637.
He owned the ship that carriecf Mason's command around from the mouth of
the Connecticut river to the Narragansett. His home, in Wethersfield, was upon
the land now occupied by the Connecticut State Penitentiary. In 1 644 he
moved to Branford, where he died, 1 648.
His oldest child was Robert Plumb, who married Mary, daughter of
Sylvester Baldwin and Sarah Bryan, his wife.
Sylvester Baldwin was the great-grandson of Richard Baldwin of the
Parish of Aston Clinton, Buckinghamshire, whose will was dated 1 6, January,
6 Edward VI (1552-3). Sylvester died at sea June 21, 1638, while on his
way to America. He bore the Arms, Crest and Motto described as follow:
ARMS:
Argent, a chevron, ermine, between three hazel sprigs, vert.
CREST:
A squirrel, sejeant, or, holding a hazel sprig, vert.
MOTTO :
Vim, vi repello.
The second child of Robert Plumb and Mary Baldwin, was John
Plumb, born August 12, 1646, who married Elizabeth, daughter of John
Norton, whose arms and crest are described as follow:
ARMS:
Gules, a fret, argent; a bend, vair over all.
CREST:
A griffin, sejeant, proper, winged gules, beak and fore legs or.
HOLDRIDGE OZRO COLLINS,
PITKIN. WILLIAM 1 636- 1 694
He was born in London, England. From 1 675 to 1 690, he was a
Deputy to the General Court of Connecticut: Attorney General in 1664: Treas-
urer in 1676: Assistant from 1690 to 1694. In 1678, he was Commissioner
from Connecticut to the United Colonies.
WILLIAM NORTHROPE COWLES,
EDWIN TAYLOR POLLOCK.
POMEROY, MEDAD 1 638- 1716
ARMS:
Or, a lion rampant gules, holding in the dexter paw an apple proper, with a bord-
ure engrailed, sable:
CREST r
A lion rampant, gules, holding an apple as in Arms:
MOTTO:
Virtutis fortuna comes.
He was the son of Eltweed Pomeroy, born at Beaminister, England, who
emigrated to Massachusetts in 1 630. Medad was born in Windsor, Connecticut,
and he died in Northampton, Massachusetts. He was Deputy to the General
Court from Northampton, 1677, 1683-1684, 1686, 1690 and 1692, and he
served in the "Falls Fight," May 19, 1676, King Philip's War.
ARTHUR BURNETT BENTON.
PRATT, JOHN 1607-1654
He was a son of Rev. William Pratt of Stevenage, Hertfordshire, Eng-
land, where he was born. It is believed that he came to America, with Rev.
Thomas Hooker, in 1 632. In 1 634, he was of Cambridge, Massachusetts,
when he became a freeman. In 1 636, he removed to Connecticut and became
one of the founders of Hartford. There he was an honored and influential
citizen, the Town records showing that he served in many capacities as an of-
ficial, etc.
In 1 639 and later, he represented Hartford as a Deputy to the General
Court of Connecticut.
ORRA EUGENE MONNETTE.
PRATT, DANIEL 1 639- 1 69 1
A descendant of the Pratts of Stevenage, Hertfordshire, England, he was
born in Hartford, Connecticut, and was an active and influential citizen there
until his death. In 1 65 7-8, by commission of the General Court, he was ap-
pointed a Trooper in the First Connecticut Cavalry under the Command of Ma-
jor John Mason.
ORRA EUGENE MONNETTE.
PRENCE, THOMAS 1 600- 1 673
In 1634, 1638 and 1657, he was Governor of Plymouth Colony, and
Assistant in 1 635 : Member of the Council of Wars and he served against the
Pequot Indians in 1637. In 1645, he was a Commissioner from Plymouth for
the United Colonies.
FREDERICK LEONARD BROWN.
THE GREAT SWAMP FIGHT
HON. JOHN HOYT PERRY
JOHN BRONSON.
He was one of the Company of Rev. Thomas Hooker which went to Hart-
ford in 1636 from Cambridge, Massachusetts. He was one of the soldiers
from Hartford, in the command of Captain John Mason in the Pequot War,
and he participated in the great fight of May 26, 1637. In 1640, he lived
upon the lot in Hartford, given him for services in the Pequot War. In 1 64 1
he moved to Tunxis, or Farmington, and upon the organization of the Farming-
ton church, October 13, 1 652, he was one of the "Seven Pillars." In May,
1 65 1 , and at subsequent sessions, he was Deputy from Farmington to the
General Court of Massachusetts. He died 1 680.
HOLDRIDGE OZRO COLLINS.
PITKIN, WILLIAM 1 636- 1 694
He was born in London, England. From 1675 to 1690, he was a
Deputy to the General Court of Connecticut: Attorney General in 1664: Treas-
urer in 1676: Assistant from 1690 to 1694. In 1678, he was Commissioner
from Connecticut to the United Colonies.
WILLIAM NORTHROPE COWLES,
EDWIN TAYLOR POLLOCK.
POMEROY, MEDAD 1638-1716
ARMS:
Or, a lion rampant gules, holding in the dexter paw an apple proper, with a bord-
ure engrailed, sable:
CREST:
A lion rampant, gules, holding an apple as in Arms:
MOTTO :
Virtutis fortuna comes.
He was the son of Ellweed Pomeroy, born at Beaminister, England, who
emigrated to Massachusetts in 1 630. Medad was born in Windsor, Connecticut,
and he died in Northampton, Massachusetts. He was Deputy to the General
Court from Northampton, 1677, 1683-1684, 1686, 1690 and 1692, and he
served in the "Falls Fight," May 19, 1676, King Philip's War.
ARTHUR BURNETT BENTON.
PRATT, JOHN 1607-1654
He was a son of Rev. William Pratt of Stevenage, Hertfordshire, Eng-
land, where he was born. It is believed that he came to America, with Rev.
Thomas Hooker, in 1 632. In 1 634, he was of Cambridge, Massachusetts,
when he became a freeman. In 1 636, he removed to Connecticut and became
one of the founders of Hartford. There he was an honored and influential
citizen, the Town records showing that he served in many capacities as an of-
ficial, efr
BUGBEE, JOSEPH 1 640-1 729
Born in Roxbury, Massachusetts, he was a son of the immigrant, Edward"
Bugbee (Bigby as the name was used till 1 700). The latter came in the
ship "Francis" of Ipswich, England, in 1634. Joseph Bugbee in 1675,
served as a soldier in King Philip's War, in the company of Captain Daniel
Henchman. April i>, 1 686, New Roxbury, Connecticut (afterwards Wood-
stock) was founded by a band of people from Roxbury, Mass. He joined the
movement, became a proprietor, town officer and prominent man in Woodstock
where he died. His wife was Experience Pitcher, daughter of Andrew, of
Dorchester, Mass, and the arms of the latter were:
ARMS:
In 1 1>:*4, I b35 and 1 65 7, he was Governor of Plymouth Colony, and
Assistant in 1635: Member of the Council of Wars and he served against the
Pequot Indians in 1637. In 1645, he was a Commissioner from Plymouth for
the United Colonies.
FREDERICK LEONARD BROWN.
THE GREAT SWAMP FIGHT
HON. JOHN HOYT PERRY
UR meeting to-day, as always, is determined by
the anniversary of an event which is believed to
be the first assumption of sovereignty by Con-
necticut and the declaration of the first war in which as a
colony it participated.
The events which thus constitute the raison d'etre of
our Society have never had adequate commemoration until
we recently erected a monument on the final battleground
of that war in Southport. I have been directed by our
Governor to prepare for you a brief account of the manner
and location of this closing struggle. My ability to decline
having been atrophied by long disuse, I regretfully obey,
for while I once professed to right wrongs I never pre-
tended to write history.
I am somewhat reconciled, however, to the labor since
the event occurred in my native town and procured its
settlement by men whose character long gave to Fairfield
a commanding place in the councils of the colony.
Bear with me, therefore, as patiently as you can while
I struggle with the unwonted task. The result will be a
compilation merely, with no original contribution of any
merit by myself.
An Indian band, offshoot from the Six Nations, — then
a fully organized aboriginal combine for raising hair and
the first great trust and producer of tainted wampum
known to American history — leaving the parent tribe on
the banks of the Hudson, had slowly fought its way east-
ward through quiet tribes long resident in upper Con-
necticut, or lower Massachusetts, until the Connecticut
\i
74 The Great Swamp Fight
River was crossed, and then turning southerly settled at
last upon the Sound. The date was about 1600, the name
Pequot or Mohegan, the disposition restless, treacherous
and bloodthirsty, the final location from the Connecticut
River eastward across the Niantic, Thames, Mystic and
Pawcatuck into what is now Rhode Island. It is quite pos-
sible that Mohegan was the proper name of the tribe and
Pequot, which is said to mean destroyer, merely a descrip-
tio personarum by the native Connecticut Indians.
When Hartford, Windsor and Wethersfield were settled
in 1635 the Dutch were occasionally somewhat in the way,
but the Pequots had to be reckoned with daily. They
numbered about 600 fighting men, and knew no other bus-
iness. The white settlers were a feeble folk. They could
neither hunt, fish, nor cultivate their fields nor travel at
home or abroad save at the peril of their lives. They must
needs keep constant watch in light and darkness and go
armed to their daily labors. Before they sat upon the
bench in meeting the butt of a musket found the floor.
They lay down and rose up in fear and danger. More
than thirty citizens had been murdered with accompani-
ment of torture and mutilation beyond belief when, realiz-
ing that the very existence of the Colony was at stake, a
Court is summoned to meet at Hartford on Monday, the
first of May, 1637.
Roger Ludlow, deputy Governor and the subsequent
founder of Fairfield, presided, and Andrew Ward, our
most distinguished resident, sat in the Court.
Its action was prompt and resolute, and is thus
recorded :
The Great Swamp Fight 75
"It is ordered that there shalbe an offensiue warr agt
the Pequoitt and that there shalbe 90 men levied out of
the 3 Plantacons, Harteford, Weathersfeild and Windsor
. . . . under the comande of Captain Jo'. Mason."
So complete are the features of statehood here that we
may fairly assign that date as the proper birthday of Con-
necticut. In this resolve behold the first act of sovereignty
by the infant colony, and therein Fairfield, as will here-
after appear, lay hidden. ,
Listen to a further item from this historic order pitiful
for its confession of youth and weakness:
"It is ordered that Windsor shall pruid 60 bushells of
Corne, Harteford 84 bushells, Weathersfield 36 bushells,
of this each plantacon to bake in biskett the on half if by
any means they cann, the rest in ground meale."
Down the river in "one pink, one pinnace, and one
shallop" went the little company, 77 in all when the forces
met. Sailing eastward to Narragansett Bay they landed,
and, after a wearisome and perilous march, in the early
morning of May 26th fell upon a band of the savages
sleeping in a so-called "fort" on Pequot Hill in Groton,
killed the flower of the tribe and burned the fort.
The Colonists returned in triumph to Saybrook and the
pall was lifted from the river towns.
I have thus sketched with exceeding brevity the intro-
duction to my task.
The last council of the Pequot Nation was held on the
day following the capture of the fort. The survivors from
far and near attended. It had been proved to be as impos-
76 The Great Swamp Fight
sible for them to resist these grim, fearless, pale-faced,
strangers as it was impossible to conceive the notion of
surrender for themselves. They came to a Roman resolu-
tion. The path of their original entry into Connecticut
along the river was now barred by the new English towns.
The only open route back to the Hudson lay westward
along the Sound.
Burning their villages and crops, they set out upon the
desperate venture. Sassacus, the greatest of their chiefs
and at the time Grand Sachem, was first, and Mononotto
apparently second, in command. Mason with Stoughton
and Patrick from Massachusetts took ships at Saybrook
to pursue them by the Sound, while the renegade Mohegan
Uncas with his followers trailed and harried them along
the shore. Roger Ludlow, representing the civil power,
accompanied the English. Near Guilford two Pequot
Sagamores with a few followers were overtaken. Swim-
ming across a small bay in their flight, they were shot by
the Mohegans as they landed. Uncas cut off the heads of
the chiefs and lodged them in the branches of an oak near
the shore, where they hung for years, giving the place the
local name of Sachem's Head. Thus the expedition fared
on westward. Of the subsequent events, and especially of
the great swamp fight in Southport, I know of but one con-
temporaneous account and but one by an eyewitness.
Much has been subsequently written on the subjed and
local traditions many deep overlie the place, but for an
account of what really happened we seem to be confined
to the two narratives above referred to. This is unfor-
tunate, for they are brief, the situation lends itself to
The Great Swamp Fight 77
•
romance, the local imagination is impatient of restraint,
and Southport pride is creative and boundless.
The contemporaneous account is found in a letter from
Gov. John Winthrop to William Bradford under date of
July 28, 1637, and the story of an eyewitness is a narra-
tive by Capt. John Mason himself, written at the Colony's
request after he had retired to private life in Norwich
some thirty years after the battle. Of this the blunt old
soldier, upon learning that it was to be printed, naively
says : "I never had thought that this should have come to
the Press until of late. If I had I should have endeavored
to have put a little more varnish upon it
I wish it had fallen into some better hands that might have
performed it to the life ; I shall only draw the curtain and
open my little casement that so others of larger hearts and
abilities may let in a bigger light." We may well be grate-
ful that it did not fall into other hands and that Mason
omitted "varnish."
Compelled often to borrow the very words of these two
narratives for adequate description, let me portray for you
the scene.
After the incident at Sachem's Head the Lilliputian fleet
soon sailed into the "Quinepiack" where is now New
Haven. Seeing a great smoke in the woods and supposing
some of their enemy might be there they hastened ashore,
but discovered only Connecticut Indians. Returning to
their vessels they remained a few days while a Pequot
captive — named .by the English Luz — was sent upon dis-
covery. To the quaintly expressed surprise of Mason the
78 The Great Swamp Fight
spy proved faithful, and, barely escaping with his life,
returned with tidings of Sassacus and the Pequots.
Sassacus, suspecting treachery and failing in his effort
to kill the Indian, became alarmed, and with Mononotto
and some twenty braves, left the band and fled precipi-
tately to the Mohawks; "so" — to quote from Winthrop's
letter — "our men missed of him; yet dividing themselves
and ranging up and down as the providence of God guided
them (for the Indians were all gone save three or four and
they knew not where to find them, or else would not) upon
the thirteenth of this month" (July, 1637) "they lighted
upon a great company viz. 80 strong men and 200 women
and children in a small Indian town fast by a hideous
swamp which they all slipped into before our men could get
at them." This so-called "lighting upon" is thus further
described by Mason. "We then hastened our march
towards the place where the enemy was, and coming into
a corn field several of the English espyed some Indians
who fled from them. They pursued them and coming to
the top of an hill saw several wigwams just opposite only a
swamp intervening which was almost divided into two
parts."
At this point, while the Indians are quiet in the swamp —
for they will not long remain so — let us briefly survey the
land.
Disembarking at New Haven we have "hastened" with
these militant Puritans through what is now Orange and
Milford and Stratford and Bridgeport, about 25 miles
in all, to what is known as Mill Hill, just north of
Southport. In our journey we have crossed the fertile
The Great Swamp Fight 79
corn fields of Millplain in Fairfield to the "fording place"
in Mill River, which the topography of the district shows
must have been then, as always afterward, just above the
present barns of Mr. Henry Sturges.
While in the last-named town we have traversed the
lands of the Uncoways and are now come to Sashqua-
auk, — meaning "Marshland," — the territory of the
Sasqua Indians, which extended from Mill River some
distance westward. Just across the river at the fording
place, and parallel with it, the long ridge of Mill Hill rises
abruptly. This must have been the hill to which Mason
in his quoted narrative refers. If you will climb it at
that point from the river you will see just under you the
northern end of "Pequot Swamp," immemorially so called,
now much cleared and considerably drained. Just across
are the upland pasture lots of Mrs. John Hawkins, on the
southerly side of which have been found indications of
early Indian occupation. Here then was "the hideous
swamp" and there or thereabouts the local Sasqua Indian
village, to which the quoted narratives refer. My own
early recollection of the uncleared swamp in question fully
justifies the describing adjective.
But geographical diversions must now wait upon
sterner business in this swamp, and such of my audience
as shrink from mud and heat and noise and bloodshed
would better stay upon the hill.
To quote again: "Our Captains were not then come
together, but there was Mr. Ludlow and Capt. Mason with
some ten of their men, Capt. Patrick with some twenty or
more of his, who shooting at the Indians Capt. Trask with
8o The Great Swamp Fight
fifty more came soon in at the noise." "Sergeant Palmer
hastened with about twelve men who were under his com-
mand to surround the smaller part of the Swamp that so
he might prevent the Indians flying. Lieut. Davenport
and some twelve more, not hearing the command, fell into
the swamp among the Indians in an effort to cross it and
reach the wigwams. The swamp was so thick with shrubs
and boggy withal that some stuck fast and received many
shot. Lieut. Davenport was dangerously wounded and
another shot in the head, so as fainting they were in
great danger to have been taken by the Indians, but
Sergeant Riggs and Sergeant Jeffery and two or three
more were rescued and slew divers of the Indians with
their swords. The rest of the English coming up the
swamp was surrounded.
"Our council being called and the question propounded
how we should proceed, Capt. Patrick advised that we
should cut down the swamp" — dauntless, unreflecting,
thorough Capt. Patrick — "There being many Indian
hatchetts taken. Capt. Trask concurred with him but was
opposed by others. Then we must pallizado the swamp,
which was also opposed. Then they would have a hedge
made like those of Gotham, all which was judged by some
almost impossible and to no purpose, and that for several
reasons, and therefore strongly opposed. But some others
advised to force the swamp having time enough it being
about three of the clock in the afternoon, but that being
opposed it was then propounded to draw up our men close
to the swamp, which would much have lessened the circum-
ference, and with all to fill up the open passages with
The Great Swamp Fight 81
bushes that so we might secure them until morning and
then we might consider further about it. But neither of
these would pass, so different were our apprehensions,
which was very grievous to some of us who concluded the
Indians would make an escape in the night as easily they
might and did. We keeping at a great distance what better
could be expected? Yet Capt. Mason took order that the
narrow in the swamp should be cut through which did
much shorten our leaguer. It was resolutely performed
by Sergt. Davis."
By these quotations, principally from the narrative of
Capt. Mason, the scene at the swamp is almost photo-
graphed, and from them you will also readily discover that
stubborn differences of opinion among men brave and true
in the face of common danger is not a monopoly of the
Citizens Union Committee of New York.
Let us continue the quotation. "We being loth to de-
stroy women and children as also the Indians belonging to
that place, Mr. Thos. Stanton, a man well acquainted with
Indian language and manners, offered his service to go
into the swamp and treat with them, to which we were
somewhat backward by reason of some hazard and danger
he might be exposed unto; but his importunity prevailed,
who going to them did in a short time return to us with
near two hundred old men, women and children who
delivered themselves to the mercy of the English, and so
night drawing on we beleagured them as strongly as we
could."
"So they continued all the night, standing about twelve
foot one from another, and the Indians coming up close
82 The Great Swamp Fight
to our men shot their arrows so thick as they pierced their
hat brims and their sleeves and stockings and other parts
of their clothes ; yet so miraculously did the Lord preserve
them as not one of them was wounded save those who
rashly went into the swamp as aforesaid."
Mason in another place mentions what he calls some
"special providences" in these Pequot battles, which are
worth repeating.
"John Dier and Thos. Stiles were both of them shot
in the knots of their handkerchiefs being about their necks
and received no hurt. Lieut. Seeley was shot in the eye-
brow with a flat-headed arrow, the point turning down-
wards. I pulled it out myself. Lieut. Bull had an arrow
shot into a hard piece of cheese, having no other defense,
which" — Mason observes — "may verify the old saying,
'A little armor would serve if a man knew where to
place it/ "
To return to our narrative :
"About half an hour before day the Indians that were in
the swamp attempted to break through Capt. Patrick's quar-
ters, but were beaten back several times. They making a
great noise, as their manner is at such times, it sounded
round about our leaguer. Whereupon, Capt. Mason sent
Seargt. Stares to inquire into the cause and also to assist
if need required, — Capt. Traske coming also in to their
assistance, — but the tumult growing to a very great height
we raised our siege, and marching up to the place at a
turning of the swamp the Indians were forcing out upon
us, but we sent them back by our small shot. We waited
a little for a second attempt. The Indians in the mean-
The Great Swamp Fight 83
time facing about pressed violently upon Capt. Patrick,
broke through his quarters and so escaped. They were
about 60 or 70 as we were informed."
"Thus did the Lord scatter his enemies with his strong
arm."
Hubbard, in his Indian Wars, deducing the facts from
sources not now known, thus describes the final scene :
"A little before daybreak (by reason of the fog which
useth to arise about that time, observed to be the darkest
time of the night) twenty or thirty of the lustiest of the
enemy broke through the besiegers and escaped away.
The rest were left to the mercy of the con-
querers of which many were killed in the swamp like sullen
dogs that would rather in their self-willedness and mad-
ness sit still and be shot to pieces than receive their lives
for asking at the hand of those into whose power they
were now fallen. Some that are yet living and worthy of
credit do affirm that in the morning, entering into the
swamp they saw several heaps of them sitting close
together upon whom they discharged their pieces laden
with ten or twelve pistol bullets, at a time putting the
muzzles right under the boughs within a few yards of
them ; so as besides those that were found dead . . . .
many more were killed and sunk in the mire and never
were more minded by friend or foe."
In such manner the curtain fell upon the Pequot Nation.
The story is a brief one, for the last act was quickly
over. It was piece work performed by experts con amore.
The original accounts of this battle from which I have
generously quoted make it certain that it took place in
84 The Great Swamp Fight
that section of the swamp visible to one crossing the hill,
and in the smaller of two divisions of it caused by tongues
of upland projecting into and nearly meeting across the
miry bottom. Near where the present Connecticut Turn-
pike crosses the old morass, the Society of Colonial Wars
has recently erected the commemorative monument to which
at the outset I referred. It consists of a massive block of
granite bearing an inscription, easily read by the hundreds
who daily pass upon the electric cars, which recites that
"The Great Swamp Fight here ended the Pequot War,
July 13, 1637," for as "The Great Swamp Fight" it soon
came to be known in all Connecticut histories.
It is, of course, impossible at this late day to tell pre-
cisely where "Capt. Patrick's quarters" were, or the exact
spot where the final struggle actually took place.
The "hideous swamp" of the contemporaneous narra-
tive is easily and certainly identified by tradition, unvary-
ing since the time itself, as the well-known Pequot (or, as
it is sometimes locally called, Picket) Swamp; but that
the fight occurred where the monument is will probably
not go unchallenged.
During recent years, since such matters have come to
excite a special interest, various theories upon the subject
have been held; only one of which, however, claims to
rest upon any evidence. That one located the place near
the present residence of Michael Otis, on Centre Street,
and is based upon the fact that when Centre Street was
built through the swamp, in 1836, a curious mound of
gravel surrounded by mud was found just there and
utilized for the road.
The Great Swamp Fight 85
This came to be known as "the fort" and then as "the
Pequot fort," and the tradition thus taking root, grew
apace. It having always been common local knowledge
that the fight took place somewhere in this swamp, it is
not strange that the idea of a fort should become associated
with it, and that a place apparently so well adapted by
nature for that purpose should be elected to the office.
Little fault could be found with this belief were it not
for the requirements of the only authentic narratives of
the affair now brought to light, and in large part just
read to you. These show conclusively that there was no
fort and no time to build one, that the Indians were over-
taken in a rapid flight across the state from Groton to
the Hudson River, and finding themselves discovered,
plunged into the nearby swamp, not for the protection of
a fort, but of the impenetrable thickets and bottomless
mire. Even if the native Sasqua Indians had used the
mound in question for any purpose — as very likely they
had — Capt. Mason makes it certain that the mound played
no part in the Pequot battle. That was an impromptu
tableau of bushes and trees and mud.
The reference by Mason to a narrow place in the swamp
between two encroaching points of upland, separating it
into a small and a much larger section, furnishes literally
the only signboard to the spot we seek.
An examination of the locality, after eliminating the
changes of recent years, makes it evident that one of those
projecting points is the one near the end of which
stands the present monument. The other must have
been one of the two which approach it from the west. In
86 The Great Swamp Fight
either case the smaller section of the swamp in which the
Indians were impounded would be the part (now partly
filled by the Connecticut turnpike) where the monument is
erected. Confirming this, I am told by old residents of the
locality that, before Centre and Spruce Streets were built,
a well-worn foot path crossing the swamp (and for that
purpose of course selecting its narrowest part) left the
upland close to the site in question. At all events the
battlefield must have been nearby.
Trumbull well says of that war in which the struggle
which we have been considering was the final act: "Few
enterprises have ever been achieved with more personal
bravery or good conduct. In few have so great a pro-
portion of the effective men of a whole Colony, State, or
Nation been put to so great and immediate danger. In
few have a people been so deeply and immediately inter-
ested as the whole Colony of Connecticut was in that
uncommon crisis. In these respects even the great arma-
ments and battles of Europe are comparatively of little
importance. In this, under the Divine conduct, by a few
brave men Connecticut was saved, and the most warlike
and terrible Indian nation in New England defeated and
ruined The conquest of the Pequots
struck all the Indians in New England with terror, and
they were possessed with such fear of the displeasure and
arms of the English that they had no open war with them
for nearly forty years. This happy event gave great joy
to the Colonies. A day of public thanksgiving was
appointed, and in all the churches of New England devout
The Great Swamp Fight 87
and animated praises were addressed to Him who giveth
His people the victory and causeth them to dwell safely."
So wrote that discriminating and pious chronicler.
It is difficult to determine whether the struggle which
we have been considering should be classed among land or
naval combats, for the field of battle was of such tenuous
consistency that when search was made several of the dead
were found to have disappeared beneath its surface.
At least twenty of the Pequot braves are known to have
been killed and one hundred and eighty men and squaws
taken prisoners; or, in the language of that day, "capti-
vated." Among these were the squaw and children of the
Sachem Mononotto. Those who escaped became so weak
and scattered that the Narragansetts and Mohegans con-
stantly killed them and brought in their heads to Hartford
and Windsor. Sassacus with his band escaped to the
Mohawks, who surprised and slew them all, except
Mononotto, and sent the scalp of Sassacus to the English.
Mr. Ludlow, going into Massachusetts in September, car-
ried a lock of it to Boston. Thus early had that city
impressed upon the world at large its preference that
tribute should be paid to it only in products of the head.
When Connecticut was saved Fairfield was born. It
had not before existed either as a town or settlement. It
was known simply as "the region beyond Pequonnocke."
Roger Ludlow, the foremost mind of the Common-
wealth, keeping one eye always single to his task, and the
other intent on its environment, accompanied the soldiers,
as we have seen, in their march to the swamp, and it is
related of him by his biographer that "on this march and
88 The Great Swamp Fight
in scouting the adjacent country ....... fair
Uncowa with its hills and streams, rich intervales and
forest lands captured his imagination."
Early in 1639 the General Court commissioned him to
begin a plantation at Pequonnocke. He bought a large
trad of land from the Pequonnocke Sachems, and, recall-
ing the attractive region beyond, he — to borrow again the
language of the time — also "set down" there, having pur-
chased much of the territory embraced in the present town
of Fairfield to which he gave its name.
On his return to Hartford he was taken to task
for exceeding his commission, but justified his course
by the plea that having come to Pequonnocke —
"his apprehensions were that some others intended
to take up the sayd place" (viz. Uncowa) "which
might be prejudiciall to this Commonwealth, and
knowing himself to be one of those to whom the disposal
of that Plantacon was committed he adventured to drive
his cattle thither, make provision for them there, and to
sette out himselfe and some others house lotts to build on
there, and submitts himself to the Court to Judge whether
he hath trangressed the commission or not."
Gov. Haynes and Thos. Welles were appointed to visit
the place, investigate what Ludlow had done, and report
to the Court. They reported that "upon due considera-
tion of the same they had thought fit, upon Mr. Ludlow's
assenting to the terms propounded by them, to confirm the
same." And thus a fair domain and a position of great
strategic advantage and strength was won for the parent
The Great Swamp Fight 89
Colony when the later controversies with New Haven and
the Dutch arose.
At first some eight or ten families came down from
Windsor with Ludlow, who made his home on what is the
present Main Street of Fairfield just east of Mrs. William
Glover's house, and was naturally the principal planter and
man of affairs. These were speedily followed by another
company from Watertown and a third from Concord.
The town soon obtained a patent under the name given to
it by Ludlow, and as Trumbull avers, "at an early period
became wealthy and respectable."
Its wealth has gone, but those of us who dwell there
venture to hope that it is still respectable.
I have thus sought to discharge the task imposed upon
me by our Governor. If I have interested you in our first
Colonial war — literally a life and death struggle of the
Colony — and made intelligible the price then exacted for
our right to remain and live and become a commonwealth,
I shall be satisfied.
It is certainly a justifiable source of pride for us all that
it fell to the lot of this Society worthily to commemorate
the event.
EARLY COLONIAL WEAPONS
PROF. WILLISTON WALKER, D.D.
VERY member of a patriotic society like that of
the Colonial Wars, which claims descent from
those who fought to maintain, or to extend, the
institutions of New England colonial life, must wish that he
could see the New England colonial soldier as he appeared
in the events which we commemorate in our organization.
We have, indeed, a notable example of the appearance
of the colonial soldier just on the eve of American
independence in the Governor's Foot Guard, which pre-
serves so much of the British colonial uniform of the
period. Those gorgeously equipped companies which lend
distinction on public occasions to the official head of our
commonwealth represent the colonial soldier in his highest
development of equipment and uniform. But they must
not be regarded as typical of that soldier in general, whose
uniform was relatively of simple sort, or frequently was
totally absent. For a very considerable part of those who
shared in our colonial struggles were, like the Boers in
the late war in South Africa, clad in home-made garments
and equipped with weapons which they used for the hunt.
To understand the arms and accoutrements of the
colonial warrior we have to glance briefly at the history
of English armament for a very considerable period
anterior to the coming of our ancestors to these American
shores. The warriors who overran England under the
leadership of William the Conqueror have left record
of their armament in the tapestries of the period and are
shown to us as equipped for defensive armor with a
hauberk, which might be described as a combination of
94 Colonial Weapons
coat and trousers made, probably, of leather and sewed
all over with flat metal rings, thus rendering it compara-
tively impervious to thrusts of a sword or the points of
arrows. On the head of the better equipped knight of the
period a conical helmet was worn, covering, however, but
little of the face, though the nose was defended by a bar
of iron projecting from the brow of the helmet, which
must have given a curious appearance to the wearer. The
nobles and knights were armed for offense with a lance,
sword or mace. The latter weapon, simply a club of
improved form and sometimes of heavy wood, though
often made of metal and always armed with metal spikes,
was a favorite weapon at the time of the conquest of Eng-
land, and was used by William the Conqueror himself.
The foot soldiers of the period were more simply armed.
Their defensive protection was comparatively crude, and
their offensive weapons were principally the mace, often
in the rude fashion of a home-made club, and the long
bow. The bow was not reckoned a noble weapon, but it
was a great favorite of the Norman peasant, and certainly
proved itself in his hands extremely effective. In the battle
which determined the possession of England, Harold was
killed by an arrow shot, and in Norman use it was soon
to become the popular weapon of England.
From the time of the Norman conquest to the end of
the reign of Queen Elizabeth armor for the use of nobles
and knights was steadily improved in quality and defensive
value. The first alteration that followed the simple sewn
rings of which mention has been made was the introduction
of linked mail, in which, instead of being fastened upon
Colonial Weapons 95
a leathern jacket, the rings were interlaced, much after
the fashion of the chain purse. At the same time, the
solid helmet was extended so that it more and more covered
the face and neck. This armor of linked mail still had
the disadvantage of affording scanty protection from the
bruising effects of severe blows. If it could not be pene-
trated readily, its flexibility allowed the force of a blow
to pass through it comparatively unchecked, and to the
great damage of the man beneath the armor. The result
was that, from 1400 onward, pieces of plate, as affording
better defense, were more and more introduced into
armor, covering, at first, the joints of limbs, the hands,
the feet, and other more exposed parts. Armor-making
steadily improved, and by 1450 full plate suits, such as we
usually associate in imagination with the armed knight,
were in general employment. They grew constantly
heavier, and armament of a weight as great as 200 Ibs.
was sometimes employed for tournaments. But the pen-
dulum soon swung the other way, and by the sixteenth
century armor was being lightened as musketry came into
increasing employment, and its protective value was
reduced. One can well appreciate the remark of the witty
Scottish-born king, James I. of England, that he liked
armor not merely because it protected the wearer, but
because it kept him from injuring others. One can picture
the cumbrousness of movement which must have char-
acterized even the most agile knight equipped with so
heavy a defense. All through this period the favorite
weapons of the knight continued, as they had been during
96 Colonial Weapons
the time of William the Conqueror, the lance, the sword
and the mace.
While the chivalry of England was thus equipped, the
more immediate ancestry of our colonial warrior was the
foot soldier, — a relatively humble and simply outfitted
man. From the time of William the Conqueror his armor
had been sometimes a leathern jacket, or if of more
financial means, one of mail; his weapons the club, the
long, sharp-pointed knife, and the long bow. At first
regarded as a relatively insignificant and unimportant
element in the armies of that age, the wars of Edward
III. with France, marked as they were by victories at Crecy
(1346) and at Poitiers (1356), won principally by the foot
soldier, gave an immense increase in the estimate placed
by military men upon his value. With this augmenting
consideration came an improvement in his arms. He now
wore a solid helmet, though seldom one covering the face,
a jacket of chain mail, and carried oftentimes a sword
instead of his long knife, and an axe, which soon became
one of his favorite and effective weapons in addition to
the long bow. As the wars with France went on, some
foot soldiers, especially the cross-bow men, wore plate
armor, and all were equipped with sharp stakes to resist
cavalry, the crude predecessor of the later pike or more
modern bayonet.
Of these foot soldiers in the wars with France, the long
bow was the favorite weapon. One great recommendation
was its cheapness. Under the reign of Edward III, a bow
of the same height as the soldier himself, and of sufficient
strength to tax his powers well to draw it, cost but a
Colonial Weapons 97
shilling, and arrows but a shilling twopence for a sheaf
of twenty-four. Another reason of the prevalence of the
long bow was the quickness with which its arrows could
be fired, and the extensiveness of their range. For the
most part these arrows were shot upward at an angle of
about forty-five degrees, and when so fired would reach
easily four hundred yards with sufficient force to pene-
trate an inch of hard wood. The infantry who thus
proved their skill with the long bow stood in solid masses.
At Crecy bodies of a frontage of two hundred men and
forty ranks deep were thought shallow, but it requires
little imagination to picture the showers of arrows that
such a company, firing rapidly, must have dropped like
rain on the heads and horses of the on-coming French
cavalry. While the long bow was thus preferred in Eng-
land, the cross-bow was the favorite weapon on the Con-
tinent, and in spite of the fact that English prejudice
rather despised it as a continental weapon, it came increas-
inglyNinto use in England from the time of Edward III.
The cross-bow was in many respects the ancestor of the
modern musket. The flight of its discharge was shorter,
indeed, than that of the long bow; its range scarcely
exceeding two hundred yards, but it was aimed directly
at the object intended to be hit, and the course of the flight
of its missile by reason of the strength of the bow was
much flatter than that of the arrow from the long bow,
as usually employed in battle. The cross-bow was com-
monly equipped with a strong steel arc too powerful to
be drawn by the hands, and therefore bent by a small
windlass attached to the stock, the string thus drawn taut
7
98 Colonial Weapons
being held in place by a catch, which was released by a
trigger when the bolt was discharged. The winding of
this windlass required the use of both hands, and since
the man thus engaged was peculiarly exposed to attack,
cross-bow men in battle came to have attendants whose
duty it was to hold seven-foot shields called parvises, or
porches, before them while they prepared their weapons
for discharge.
But in spite of the growth of the use of the cross-bow
and the beginnings even of the employment of fire arms,
the long bow was highly valued for many years. At as
late a period as 1613, Sir John Hay wood, an eminent
English authority on military tactics, gave as his reasons
for preferring the bow to any fire arms that had been
developed, that it was quicker in discharge, more certain
to hit, and that more men were able to fire at once, so that,
therefore, it was, all things considered, a better weapon
than the musket for general use. Bows were employed
in the Parliamentary forces as late as 1643, and by the
Scotch Highlanders at an even more recent period.
As infantry grew more important and were less
regarded as secondary forces, their capacity to resist
cavalry was emphasized, and it was felt that something
better than the sharp stakes of the time of Edward III.
was necessary to enable them to withstand the charges
of horsemen. This desire to develop the defensive powers
of the infantry led to the introduction of three weapons
into England. The first of these, and one which came
into general use in the fifteenth century, was what was
known as the bill-hook, a modified pole-axe or long
Colonial Weapons 99
wooden staff with a head having a hatchet blade for
striking on one side, and a hook on the other, designed
to seize the horseman and drag him from his seat in the
saddle. At the same time, what was known as the halbard
came into extensive use. This was a combined axe and
spear, the head of metal being mounted on a staff of
from five to seven feet in length. That head was carried
on to a spear point, while one side of it was fashioned
as a hatchet blade. It was thus adapted to chop and
stab, and was regarded as a peculiarly efficient weapon.
The halbard long persisted, and for some reason, by the
seventeenth century, after its serious use in warfare had
diminished, it came to be regarded as a weapon of ceremony,
and as such crossd the Atlantic and was in use among
our colonial ancestors. The Governor of Massachusetts
was accompanied by halbardiers on ceremonial occasions,
and in the Antinomian dispute of 1637, the four halbard
bearers of the Guard refused to honor Governor Winthrop
because of the religious animosities engendered in that
debate. Most important of these newer weapons was,
however, the pike; — the modern representative of the
ancient spear, so well known in classical antiquity. This
weapon, used by the Scotch in all the later middle ages,
was brought into great repute by the Swiss in their war-
fare with Charles the Bold, and by Queen Elizabeth's time
had largely displaced the bill-hook and the halbard in
actual fighting. Shafts of tough and supple wood some
eighteen feet long, surmounted with a spear head of metal
and held by determined men placed six or eight ranks
deep, made a formidable means of resistance against any
ioo Colonial Weapons
cavalry charge, and such hedgehog formation constituted
the backbone of an English military force from Queen
Elizabeth's time through the period of the civil wars.
With the increasing use of fire arms in the sixteenth cen-
tury, however, a certain portion of each regiment was
armed with muskets for more efficient attack; but the
main reliance for defensive purposes was the pike. Eliza-
beth's men were armed with pike, sword and dagger for
offense, and for defense with metal corslets from which,
for the protection of the lower part of the body, a loose
apron of metal plates, known as tasses, depended. The
head was protected by a helmet and the lower limbs with
leg pieces, while mailed gauntlets were worn, the more
effectively to defend the hands which held the pike. But
the increasing use of fire arms led to lighter defensive
armament, and by the time of Charles I. the footmen's
armor was a helmet shaped very much like an inverted
kettle, covering simply the top and back of the head and
not the face. Breast and back pieces, each of one solid
mass of metal, and loose tasses, covered the body. The
cost of such a defensive equipment was reckoned in the
time of the Parliamentary wars at two pounds two
shillings.
Here, therefore, we take up the older colonial arma-
ment, which was that of the Stuart period of the home
country. Our colonial ancestors were progressive. They
brought with them the latest devices of the home-land in
military affairs. Though bows and arrows were still used
in the home country, none were employed save by Indians
in America. Yet very much that would appear strange
Colonial Weapons 101
to us seemed necessary for the accoutrement of the colonial
warrior. That which was most odd to our fancy would
probably be the defensive armor which was employed by
the Plymouth Pilgrims and Puritan settlers of Massa-
chusetts alike. It was reduced, indeed, to smaller elements
than in contemporary England, embracing only a head
piece and the corslet covering front and back, and discard-
ing the tasses, which were still thought necessary in the
home-land.* Such armament as this was regarded, how-
ever, as absolutely essential, and Winthrop was unwilling
to speak of a man as armed unless he had on his helmet
and corslet. The Pilgrim explorers took these defensive
weapons with them in their cold journeys in November
and December on Cape Cod, and, in 1638, the little colony
of river towns to which the name of Connecticut was
attached ordered fifty corslets provided at public expense,
and assigned twenty-one of them to be kept in Hartford,
some of which were placed in the meeting-house that they
might be more readily available for use in sudden attack.
It may be said that this provision was justifiable by the
fact that the corslet and helmet made an excellent defense
against Indian arrows. In the Pequot war Capt. Turner's
life was saved by his corslet, and Capt. Underbill's by
his helmet, not so heavy a head piece as we would imagine,
yet one which he desired to leave at home, but which the
insistance of his wife had induced him to wear, with
the happy result that she was not left a widow. Iron,
however, was scarce and precious in the early days
*The writer is indebted to Mr. Robert Sterling Blair, of New York City,
for valuable suggestions.
LOS ANGELAS MUSEUM
EXPOSITION PARK
IO2 Colonial Weapons
of New England, and hence leathern jackets, called buff
jackets from their color, were largely used as a substitute,
and these were frequently strengthened by home-made
devices. Thus, in the year 1642, the colony of Connecti-
cut ordered ninety coats prepared, each to be basted with
cotton batting as a defense against Indian arrows; and
as late as 1675, in King Philip's war, Capt. White fortified
a leather coat with paper. The usefulness of all such
devices, however, rapidly passed away, for by 1660, in
spite of efforts on the part of the colonists to the con-
trary, the Indians had become largely possessed of fire
arms, and these made such home devices as cotton batting,
or even stout leathern jackets, of little value, while the iron
armor was found to be extremely cumbersome in woodland
warfare.
Turning now to his offensive weapons, we should find
the colonial warrior very much equipped. In 1629, the
Governor and Company of Massachusetts Bay made pro-
vision for a force of one hundred men for its military
service, and provided for its armament. The captain and
lieutenant were each provided with partisans. Three
sergeants were equipped with halbards, a weapon already
described, and like the partisan at the time, largely a
badge of distinction. The serious work of fighting was
to be done by the privates, and for their equipment ten
full muskets were ordered, each with barrels four feet in
length, furnished with rests, from which they were fired,
and discharged by means of match-locks. Besides these
full muskets, which were the heaviest armament of the
company, eighty of its members were provided with bas-
Colonial Weapons 103
tard muskets, so called, a lighter weapon than the full
musket, fired without a rest, and discharged by means
of a flint-lock, known as a snaphance. For the supply
of ammunition of these ninety musketeers, ninety bande-
leers were provided, a broad sash-like band going over
one shoulder and crossing the body to the opposite side
at the waist. From this band, as if they had been a series
of tassels, there depended little boxes, hung each to the
bandeleer by a thong, and each containing a charge of
powder, and where the bandeleer crossed at the waist there
was fastened a pouch containing the bullets. Besides this
armament of musketry, each member of the company was
provided with a sword, and sixty of the hundred were
equipped with corslets, the same number with pikes, and
twenty more with half-pikes, a shorter weapon, designed
for the men of less physical strength than was required
to wield the heavy pike. It is evident that in thus planning
the equipment of a company for service in the new raw
wilderness on this side of the Atlantic, the Massachusetts
authorities had in mind the practice of England of their
day rather than the unfamiliar needs of colonial warfare.
The pike so largely used in England was certainly never
a necessity on this side of the ocean. With the musket
the case was different. From the first that was a main
reliance in the New World, and to keep up the supply of
ammunition for its effective use was one of the chief
endeavors of the colonists. Connecticut, early in 1638,
ordered that each man liable to military service should
have constantly in his possession half a pound of powder,
two pounds of bullets, and, if his piece was a match-lock,
iO4 Colonial Weapons
a pound of match. This equipment was afterwards
doubled. Massachusetts had an even more extensive
requirement, demanding the maintenance of the supply
of one pound of powder, twenty bullets and twenty
fathoms of match; and, in order to secure the fulfillment
of this requirement the Massachusetts colony, in 1635, made
musket bullets of full weight legal tender at a farthing
each to the number of forty-eight. One can imagine his
ancestor of that period paying his score at the tavern, or
making his contribution in the church, with a pound or
two of musket balls.
The musket for which all this provision was made
is said to have been of Italian origin, and to have
become known in England in the latter part of
Queen Elizabeth's reign. As first introduced, and
as described in the equipment of the Massachusetts
company, the full musket was extremely heavy and cum-
bersome, so much so that it was fired from a rest carried
by the musketeer and discharged by the match-lock.
The manual of arms of the period shows its cumbrous-
ness and gives us some explanation why Sir John Hay-
wood should have preferred the long bow as more effective
in battle. To discharge the piece involved ten movements :
i. hold the lighted match in the left hand; 2. clean the
piece from foul powder; 3. insert the charge of powder
from the bandeleer; 4. take the bullet from the bag; 5.
ram home the bullet; 6. pick the breach vent with a pin;
7. place the match in the lock; 8. set the rest in position;
9. lay musket in the rest and aim; 10., and lastly, fire.
It is evident that in all this complicated process a con-
Colonial Weapons 105
siderable number of accidents were liable. The burning
match, much like the punk which Fourth of July cele-
brators use, was, during the most of this process, sizzling
and spitting in the left hand of the musketeer and was in
imminent danger of coming in contact with the powder
charges attached to the bandeleer, an accident of not
infrequent occurrence, and resulting in serious damage to
the appearance, if not to the life, of the soldier. The rest,
moreover, was attached by a string to the left wrist and
must have seriously incommoded the free use of that hand,
and the match was always a source of annoyance, being
difficult to keep alight in wet weather, when it was often
placed in the soldier's helmet for more efficient protection ;
and, if once extinguished, being hard to relight in those
days before friction matches were invented. Indeed, the
Pilgrim party in its exploration of Cape Cod, in 1620, had
to wait until someone could bring a brand from the camp-
fire by which the matches could be lighted, before they
could resist the Indian attack. Notwithstanding all these
disadvantages match-locks remained in use to some extent,
in early Connecticut and Massachusetts, as late as the
time of King Philip's war.
One is not surprised, however, to find that the first set-
tlers largely preferred a lighter and more serviceable
weapon. The Massachusetts company, of which mention
has been made, had eighty bastard muskets, or culivers, as
they were sometimes called, while only ten of its members
were equipped with the full musket, the cumbrousness of
which has just been described. As compared with the full
musket, the culiver was a much more convenient weapon,
106 Colonial Weapons
though doubtless that convenience was obtained by the
sacrifice of power. It required no rest, being lighter than
the full musket, and what was much better, it was fired,
not by a match-lock but by one of the primitive forms
of that flint-lock which persisted well into the nineteenth
century in all military equipment. The flint-lock is indeed
of very early origin, having been invented, it is generally
supposed, in Nuremberg in 1515. But in its original form,
in which the flint was held against a wheel revolved by a
spring, it was thought to be a very expensive and, unfortu-
nately also, a very uncertain, device. The general use of
the flint-lock in musketry came about through the Dutch
invention of the snaphance, a lock which differed from the
later and perfected flint-lock with which most of us are
acquainted, chiefly in that it had no covered pan, the flint
striking instead a hinged bar of iron swung from the front
side of the pan and roughened at the end that sparks might
be struck the more certainly. With the use of the snap-
hance came the introduction of cartridges abroad and to
some extent in New England, though on this side of the
Atlantic 'the powder horn and bullets were often pre-
ferred, both being much more effective and less dangerous
devices than the old-fashioned bandeleer. By 1665, the
flint-lock, in some form, was in general use in New Eng-
land, and the modern flint-lock, in which the pan is covered
and the powder thus protected from the rain, an invention
made in France about 1630, was taking the place of the
snaphance of early colonial days.
Naturally the uncertainty of these early weapons led
to large reliance on cold steel. Swords were part of each
soldier's outfit at the beginning of the New England
Colonial Weapons 107
colonies, and were used effectively in the Pequot war. At
as recent a period as 1666 Connecticut Statutes required
that twenty out of each hundred soldiers should be armed
with pikes, not less than fourteen feet in length; yet the
pike, as already pointed out, was merely a relic of old
world conditions, and proved of little use in fighting in
early New England history.
The older weapons passed away with great rapidity
when the Indians gained fire arms. That acquisition made
both parties equal, as far as individual equipment could
make them so, in the struggle for the possession of the
soil of New England, and it necessitated, therefore, the
adaptation of armament to the conditions of woodland
warfare. A great simplification was effected. Armor,
pikes, full muskets and swords all proved useless. By
1700 all had been abandoned. The equipment of Love-
well's party in the famous fight of 1725 is typical of the
changed conditions of warfare. Each was then armed
with a gun, a knife and a hatchet. The colonial warrior
had thoroughly adapted himself to the demands of his
environment, and the skill in the use of these weapons,
by Indians and whites, was practically equal. This type
of warfare, and even more the constant use of the flint-
lock in the hunt, was the training of most of New England
for the American Revolution.
I have said very little of the heavier armament of the
colonies, for relatively little use was made of it during
the earlier colonial period. Yet that was not absolutely
forgotten. In providing for the equipment of its forces
in 1629, the government of Massachusetts remembered
their need also of large armament, the names of which
io8 Colonial Weapons
seem strange enough to our altered age. One whole
"culvering," two "demie-culverings," three "sakers," and
two "iron drakes," were ordered for its heavy ordnance ;
and in 1635, the two drakes were loaned by the Massachu-
setts colony to the infant colony of Connecticut. It may be
worth our while to note that the heaviest of these weapons,
the "culvering," carried a ball of seventeen and a half
pounds in weight, the "demie-culvering" one of nine and
a half, the "saker" one of five and a half, while the
"drakes," such as were loaned to Connecticut, were even
smaller pieces of artillery, their shot weighing, probably,
not more than one pound. This heavy ordnance, if such
it can be called, played no considerable role in the early
history of Connecticut.
After all, it is not so much the armament as the man
who uses it. Upon him the success of any military
struggle depends. Not but that our colonial warriors were
well equipped, as judged by the military knowledge and
requirements of their own day. As we have seen, they
were progressive in this as in other matters. They dis-
carded fairly promptly those weapons and defences which
had been employed effectively in Europe, but which the
conditions of warfare on this side of the Atlantic rendered
undesirable. They adapted their armament to American
conditions, but all this would have availed little had it
not been for the bravery and skill and character of the
colonial warrior himself. It is to these qualities of his
brain and heart that stood back of the weapons that he
used that we owe the land that he wrested from the
wilderness, and to which he gave freedom and political
independence.
THE THREE MEMORIALS
FORREST MORGAN, ESQ.
THE SWAMP FIGHT MEMORIAL AT SOUTHPORT
years ago, and eight years after the
formation of the Society of Colonial Wars,
this body was formally urged to a com-
memorative act which lay at the forefront of its
reason for existence. This was the creation of some
tangible monument to mark the place where the one great
war within its own colony was ended by the extermination
of the foe; the one great peril which had menaced the
colony's growth removed wholly and forever ; its existence
as more than a feeble and petty outlier of Massachusetts,
perhaps its independent existence at all, made possible.
Begun in the woods near Mystic, the war was finished in
a swamp of old Fairfield. Not far away are the present
natural and artificial highways along which daily travel
great numbers in ignorance or forgetfulness of place and
event. Hence arose a desire to erect there a memorial, that
some at least of those hurrying hosts might see and note
it. Perhaps this memorial might awaken a new sense of
gratitude to the brave forefathers whose valor and sacri-
fice made our own peaceful commonwealth a possibility;
perhaps it might serve to countervail the uninformed or
over-sentimental detraction which too often makes a
reproach of the very work that has given the detractors
and their whole society a being.
This scheme, first pressed by Mr. R. P. Wake-
man of Southport in 1901, and favorably reported
1 1 2 The Three Memorials
by the Council, was seriously taken up two years
later. At a meeting of the Council March 10, 1903,
Governor Woolsey appointed a committee consisting
of Hon. Morris B. Beardsley, Hon. John H. Perry,
and R. P. Wakeman, to report upon plans and ways
and means. Subscriptions were asked for, and a liberal
response was made, to the amount of above $700; the
Society added a small amount from its general funds ; and
a handsome granite monument was cut, engraved with a
suitable inscription, and put in place the latter part of 1904.
It consists of a granite base and die, resting on a concrete
foundation thirteen feet deep. On the front of the die,
in polished letters raised above a sunken shield, is the
following inscription:
THE
GREAT SWAMP FIGHT
HERE ENDED
THE PEQUOT WAR
JULY 13, 1637.
The rear of the base bears in small incised capitals the
words: "Erected by the Connecticut Society of Colonial
Wars, 1904." Its site, just west of the village of South-
port, is close beside the electric railroad which runs from
Fairfield to Westport.
Despite all that has been said and written upon this
most momentous struggle, strangely enough its full issues
have never been brought out; and some factors even of
the problem itself are often misunderstood, and in conse-
THE GREAT SWAMP FIGHT MEMORIAL IN SOUTHPORT
The Three Memorials 1 1 3
quence the actors misjudged. A brief review of its ele-
ments will make clearer the justification of our memorial,
and how thoroughly both men and deeds deserve it, not
only in might but in right.
Not far from A. D. 1600, a fierce Algonquin tribe west
of the Hudson — possibly sharing with the equally fierce
and stronger Mohawks the sentiment of the Kilkenny
cats — migrated in search of better hunting grounds or
weaker neighbors. They found one or both in the district
between the Mystic and the Thames. Ousting the Nar-
ragansett occupants, they became the most formidable
Indian power in New England, in combined numbers and
aggressiveness; — we purposely do not say native power,
for they were foreigners just as much as the later whites,
only red foreigners. Their power lay not in any civiliza-
tion superior to the rest, or better use of their lands, but
in sheer ferocity and military leadership. They held all
Connecticut to tribute, enforced by the tomahawk ; so that
the whites when they came were the natural allies of all
the other Indians there. The Pequots were quick to take
the alarm at their arrival ; not at all from any far-sighted
apprehension of danger to an Indian system which did not
exist, but from natural fear of irresistible arms liable to
be turned against themselves and reinforce their enemies.
They pretty certainly shared in the great Indian plot of
1630 to exterminate the Massachusetts settlements; soon
afterward they were embroiled in a war with the Dutch;
during its course they massacred the crew of a Massa-
chusetts trading vessel, and soon after were accused of
harboring the murderers of another. Massachusetts
ii4 The Three Memorials
visited them with a punitive expedition, in which Connecti-
cut joined under protest; it was so bungled as to rouse
the unharmed tribe to a war of life or death, not against
Massachusetts, which was out of reach, but Connecticut,
which lay close at hand. After enduring some months of
the miscellaneous murder and torture of Indian warfare,
with no one's wife or child safe in going out of doors, the
colony drafted half its fighting men to assail the heart
of the Pequot power ; a revolted section and rival claimant
for chieftainship of the latter would help them, and the
Narragansetts at worst would be neutral toward a deadly
enemy. Capably handled, and reinforced by a body of
Narragansetts who did nothing and of Mohegans who
fought, the little army struck the Pequots in the rear, and
annihilated from a third to a half of the tribe with one
of their two fortresses. The remainder were still for-
midable enough to prevent any one from caring to meddle
with them except in self-defense; and a civilized people,
even so heavily hit, would have held their ground and
fought or made terms. But an Indian tribe had few or
no ties, material or sentimental, to one district more than
another; and the Pequots were themselves recent immi-
grants, valuing the territory only as a feeding-ground and
point of vantage, and were in mortal fear lest the English
should repeat the blow. They burned their remaining
stockade and wigwams, and started west, probably for
their old district. But the whites dared not let them con-
tinue to exist as a power ; in a fury of revenge they might
turn up anywhere in a sudden raid or slaughter, and no
family would have an hour's security. Massachusetts and
The Three Memorials 1 1 5
Connecticut joined in resolving to break up their organized
existence altogether. Pursued along the coast, a few score
were killed or captured in a swamp near the Thames ; the
rest, corralled in the Fairfield swamp, were offered their
lives but mostly preferred to fight, and were almost all
slain, or captured and sold as slaves. Their fugitive chief
was killed by the Mohawks, despite the Indian laws of
hospitality, which exist chiefly in literature.
Let us suppose the war had failed, and the Pequot
power had remained unbroken, even if the white "army"
escaped with its life: what would have been the result?
Prophecy is not often as secure as in this case it can be.
First, new settlers would certainly not have come to
Connecticut while the hostility of the Pequots continued,
their raiders murdering every man, woman, or child
caught straying far from a block-house. The settlements
might have held their own, and grown slowly from internal
increase; but they would not have spread to any ex'tent
even west of the river, much less east, where savagery
would have held full sway. And this in turn would have
meant that the northeastern part of the present State
would have been settled from Massachusetts and become
part of that colony; that the southwest would have been
settled from, or a claim established by, New Netherlands,
and thus gone to swell New York; that the centre would
have been too weak to rebuff the claim of New York up
to the Connecticut, and might well have been absorbed by
it; that even if it had retained its independence, it would
not have been large enough to induce the English court
to give it New Haven, which itself would probably have
n6 The Three Memorials
fallen to New York; that at most there would have been
a small, weak colony, another Rhode Island, in place of
our Connecticut, and more likely nothing at all. What
our forefathers did, then, at the Mystic fort and the Fair-
field swamp, was in part to create Connecticut as it is and
Vermont as it is, to change the conditions of all southern
New England, and, remembering what Connecticut con-
tributed to framing the Constitution, perhaps to determine
the destinies of the Western Hemisphere. They may
perhaps also have prevented a Pequot and Narragansett
league, which would have put even Massachusetts in the
gravest peril ; but of that we cannot be so sure.
THE MIANTONOMO MONUMENT
At about the same time with the effective movement for
the Southport memorial, the ground in Greenville, Nor-
wich, where the monument to Miantonomo so long stood,
was sold for building purposes. This enforced a removal
of the stone; and it was suggested that that stone be
reset about two hundred feet away, on a sharp little bluff
whence it would be visible for a long distance, a conspicu-
ous feature in the landscape. With the aid of the Society,
and the funds gathered for this and the preceding monu-
ment, this was accomplished. The monument, erected in
1841, is a granite block eight feet high and five feet square
at the base, carved with "Miantonomo, 1643." It replaced
a cairn of stones which an unknowing farmer had used
The Three Memorials 117
as a foundation for his barn, and which had been thrown
one by one upon the original heap by passers-by for two
centuries; a heap marking the place of the chieftain's
capture and supposed also to mark the place of his
slaughter and burial, a tradition now doubted.
The issues of Miantonomo's fate cannot compare with
those of Sassacus and his tribe; yet they have been the
subject of so much acrimonious controversy, and so much
ill-informed or prejudiced libel on our ancestors, that they
are worth a brief restatement.
Miantonomo's tribe, the Narragansetts, formed from
the first the greatest single uneasiness of Massachusetts,
just as later the Pequots did of Connecticut, each dreading
its formidable neighbor. Open war with them would have
brought down a swarm of other tribes and well-nigh
driven the earliest settlements into the sea; a league such
as the Narragansetts attempted almost at the first settle-
ment of the Bay would certainly have accomplished this.
And they never left the whites long without omens of
hostility. Canonicus threatened the Plymouth men;
Miantonomo swaggered about Boston most menacingly;
only a chance prevented the League of 1630 from taking
effect ; in the Pequot war, their councils were divided and
they waited to see which of two enemies would be victori-
ous. No gratitude was due to Miantonomo for his action,
any more than for his ill-will ; both were a case of policy
and self-interest. But the destruction of the Pequots
only raised up Uncas and his Mohegans. They attempted
to take the same position of dominance which Sassacus
and the Pequots had held. They placed them in the same
n8 The Three Memorials
position of irreconcilable enmity to the Narragansetts. A
war was only a question of time, and in 1642 it came.
Miantonomo was nominally an ally of Massachusetts.
Thus guaranteed against aggression from others, he had
corresponding obligations. Uncas was an ally of Con-
necticut. Miantonomo, therefore, asked permission of
both colonies to fight Uncas, and graciously received it.
Both could bear with fortitude all possibility that their two
Indian allies should destroy each other. Miantonomo
was defeated and captured. Uncas would naturally have
made a bonfire of him for the delectation of the Mohegans ;
but he was afraid to take the great chief's life without
the permission of the whites. He therefore lodged his
prisoner at Hartford, while the Connecticut authorities
were deciding whether he should be given back as a legiti-
mate prize of war. They wished Massachusetts to take
her share of the risk of a decision which would enrage
one tribe or the other, and referred the case to the New
England commissioners, composed of delegates from both
Colonies. The issue was one of pure policy ; there was no
moral side to it whatever, except the surrender of an actual
prisoner of their own to torture, something in fact they did
not do. Their treaty gave Miantonomo no guaranty against
the results of voluntary battle. He was Uncas's prisoner
by fair capture, and an attempt to force Indians to spare
the lives of their prisoners of war would be simply silly.
But as a matter of policy, to compel Uncas to give up his
crowning prize and let the Narragansetts have their war-
chief again would justly anger and alienate the Mohegans.
They were much the more likely to keep peace with the
whites, and were the weaker of the two; this without
The Three Memorials 1 1 9
strengthening any continued peace with the Narragansetts.
Still, to give Miantonomo back to Uncas would insure the
certain and undisguised enmity of the Narragansetts.
Only one alternative remained, — to keep Miantonomo
permanently a prisoner; and this was not only absurdly
impossible, but would make enemies of both tribes.
Utterly unable to decide, and feeling uncertain whether
Christianity would allow them to give over a prisoner to
death, the commissioners left the decision to a convention
of ministers then sitting. They decided unanimously that
the Scriptures did not forbid such a surrender ; and in all
the denunciation and sarcasm loaded upon them for their
bloodthirstiness, no one has ever alleged that their theol-
ogy was not sound. They advised that Uncas be per-
mitted to take Miantonomo away and kill him, with white
witnesses to see that no torture was inflicted. After two
hundred and seventy years, no better solution of an insol-
uble problem has been suggested. Their policy was as
sagacious as a political blind alley allowed. In fact, it was
fully justified by the event. The Narragansetts were
angry, but had to take it out in anger. They dared not
begin war alone, and could not form a league. They took
part in King Philip's War, but they would have done so
in any case. As to the allegation that the ministers
murdered Miantonomo, it is senseless. They gave him an
easier death than he would have found but for Uncas's
fear of the whites; and, had they forced Uncas to let
him go, the blood of many a better man would doubtless
have been on their heads. There can be no question that
the monument, not so much to the man as to the event, is
deserved.
120 The Three Memorials
THE CHARTER OAK MEMORIAL
For many years it had been the purpose of the Society
to mark the site of the vanished Charter Oak with a suit-
able memorial, to prove that Hartford was neither unmind-
ful of, nor ungrateful for, the services for which it stood.
So long ago as 1896, the site nearest the tree was secured
for a nominal consideration from Mrs. Zeno K. Pease, who
would accept no payment for the land, since it had been
the wish of her late husband to see the monument erected
there, and she was glad to have our Society undertake the
task. On January 19, 1897, a committee consisting of
James J. Goodwin, Ralph W. Cutler, and Charles Dudley
Warner, was appointed to carry out the plan. On Mr.
Warner's death in 1901, Rev. Francis Goodwin was
appointed his successor. The peculiar difficulties and
limitations of the site made the task a hard one; the
Pequot and Miantonomo monuments for a time diverted
the energies of the Society; and it was not until June, 1903,
that Mr. Charles A. Platt of New York, the distinguished
architect, was commissioned to prepare a design, which in
1905 was approved and contracted for. A year later the
monument was put in place; but the boundaries were
found to be uncertain, compelling changes in the layout
and the street grades. In 1907 all was completed; a hand-
some iron fence was set around the monument; by the
generous aid of Mr. G. A. Parker, superintendent of the
Hartford parks, the grounds were planted; and a young
The Three Memorials 121
scion of the old tree was secured and set out, which we
trust in time will rival its venerated parent. The total cost
of all was about $5,000.
The hiding of the charter was not technically a colonial
war nor an incident of one, as were the two foregoing
events ; but it was a colonial victory of the first order, in
a struggle for independent colonial existence. That was
lost at the moment; but secured as a finality, through as
curious an alliance of the unlikeliest luck with otherwise
unfruitful refractoriness as any in history. An abstract
of the history will bring out the real perils and achieve-
ment in a way not usually presented.
There are three main elements of the situation to fix
our minds upon. First, Connecticut was in a much more
precarious position than Massachusetts, aside from its
lesser strength. The latter would be the chief backer,
and one retaining much of its individuality, in any com-
bination into which it entered; but Connecticut was in
perpetual danger of partition and extinction if too contu-
macious. Massachusetts wanted part of its territory, New
York the rest; and New York meant the king himself.
Democratic Puritan Connecticut as minor partner with
royalist Episcopalian New York would have been in per-
petual purgatory, paralyzed and paralyzing. Second, the
plan to consolidate New England was not a caprice of
James, but the permanent policy of all English statesmen
of the time: William was as convinced of its judicious-
ness and as loth to abandon it as James, only he had not
the power. Third, Connecticut itself was irreconcilably
divided on the wisdom of opposition. The weight of
122 The Three Memorials
numbers was in favor of holding to independence until
it was wrenched away; the weight of leadership was in
favor of doing cheerfully what there was no rational hope
of averting, and thus retaining English good-will and a
share in the new government. The chief men thought the
others foolish mules; what the other party thought in
return is not on record. The people impartially elected
both parties anew, evidently willing to abide by whatever
decision their best men settled among themselves, and
abstained from interference. Some at least of the leaders,
forced as mouthpieces of the majority to write official
"stand-offs" and execute a system of contumacy which
they thought impolitic, tried to placate the higher powers
on their private account by letters indicating a willingness
to comply. They wished themselves to remain on top in
any event ; they are not to be blamed, but at this crisis in
Connecticut's fate it was not even united. The scheme
to preserve the charter even after it was supposably waste
paper seems to have had no sympathy from the chief
officials ; that it had their help was for other reasons.
The immediate result justified their views. The Crown
took over the government of both Rhode Island and Con-
necticut. In both cases Andros asked for the charters,
and in both cases failed to obtain them. There is no
evidence or likelihood that he cared much: probably he
considered the performance childish, as but for the hap-
pening of- the unexpected it might still be characterized.
Those who arranged the dramatic scene in Hartford can-
not have foreseen the overthrow of the reigning house.
But it soothed the feelings of the sore majority, retained
The Three Memorials 123
their good-will for the executive chiefs, and probably
pleased even the latter so long- as it did not offend the
supreme power. They were Connecticut patriots after all,
bearing no good-will to Andros or the new regime, and
something might turn up for which the charter would be
useful.
What, then, did the rescue of our copy of the charter —
there was another in England — accomplish? Far more,
possibly, than any historian has ever intimated. The situa-
tion of affairs after the downfall of James suggests a fair
inference. William and his advisers wished and attempted
to perpetuate James's plan of a New England union. Now
it is quite certain that had no charter stood in the way, they
would have done so, since the Massachusetts charter was
already gone. But for the ability of the old Connecticut
leaders to produce their old charter at once, their warrant
for taking a vote on the resumption of the old government,
there would almost certainly have been either an inter-
regnum, or a protest of illegality which would have had
the same result. The mere existence of the second copy
in England might not have been enough: it would have
taken too long to get it here. The blow could have fallen
first. Even if Rhode Island had had to be left out as still
possessing its charter, the union would have gone through ;
so small a section would not have been allowed to balk so
great a scheme. In such case it is more than probable that
to complete the union the Rhode Island charter would have
been vacated by later proceedings, as that colony was not
strong enough to make effective resistance. But William
did not care in his precarious position to begin a struggle
124 The Three Memorials
with two colonies at once, and therefore both preserved
their individuality, as thus did Massachusetts and New
Hampshire as well. Even Massachusetts as predominant
factor of a fusion would not have been the Massachusetts
of history. We may fairly assume, therefore, that to the
rescue of the charter Connecticut and also all the other
New England colonies owe a saved individuality, with
its contribution in influence to the shaping- of our national
life.
THE CHARTER OAK MEMORIAL
DEDICATED JUNE FOURTEENTH
1907
IOVERNOR CHARLES E. GROSS had charge
of the exercises in connection with the unveil-
ing of the monument which has been described
in The Courant. He spoke briefly of the work of the
committee, for which James J. Goodwin then made report
as follows:
The committee beg to report that on the iQth of June, 1896, the
site nearest the tree was secured for a nominal consideration from
Mrs. Zeno K. Pease, who refused payment for the land, as it had
been the wish of her late husband to see a suitable memorial erected
on this spot, and she was glad to entrust this labor of love to our
Society.
At a meeting of the council on January 19, 1897, it was voted to
proceed to ereCl such a monument, and James J. Goodwin, Ralph
W. Cutler and Charles Dudley Warner were appointed a committee
to carry out the wishes of the Society. Owing to the death of Mr.
Warner, Rev. Francis Goodwin, D.D., was appointed his successor
on March 14, 1901.
In the meantime various efforts were made to obtain a fitting
design for such work, but owing to the peculiar difficulties and limi-
tations of the site, it was found almost impossible to get a satis-
factory solution of the problem before us.
While we were struggling with the task, we relaxed somewhat
our efforts in order not to delay the marking of other historical
sites in which the Society was interested: the Miantonomo at
Norwich and the Swamp Fight at Southport monuments.
We finally secured the services and co-operation of the well
known architect, Mr. Charles A. Platt of New York, in June, 1903,
who gave most careful thought and study to the work, but it was
not until 1905 that the present model was approved and selected,
and the work put under contract. Nearly a year passed before the
monument was in place, and then the uncertainties of the
128 The Charter Oak Memorial
boundaries were discovered and alterations in the layout of the
ground and in the street grades were made necessary.
This spring everything having been satisfactorily arranged, the
fence was erecled around the enclosure and the grounds were
planted through the generous aid of Mr. G. A. Parker, superin-
tendent of the Hartford parks, to whom we are greatly indebted.
We were also able to secure a young scion of the old oak, which
now bids fair to grow and will in time, we hope, prove to be a
worthy descendant of its famous ancestor.
You have borne, gentlemen, very patiently the many delays in
the fulfillment of our trust. We hope the result before you will
prove that our labors have not been entirely in vain, and we
herewith surrender our trust to the Society.
Governor Gross spoke in recognition of the services of
the committee and its chairman and said that it was proper
at this time to bear in mind the man who made the Charter
Oak historic. Mr. Gross paid tribute to the loyalty,
courage and quickness of mind of Captain Joseph Wads-
worth, without which the charter would not have been pre-
served. His children's children to the sixth and seventh
generations erected this monument as a lasting memorial
to a man's loyalty. He hoped that the little Charter Oak
would live to protect and shade the memorial to its
grandsire.
George E. Taintor then offered the following, which
were adopted :
Voted, That the report of the committee on the Charter Oak
Memorial be and the same is hereby accepted, and the committee
discharged with the thanks of this Society, which fully recognizes
and appreciates the value of their services, and especially those of,
and the financial aid rendered by, its chairman, James J. Goodwin,
Esq.
The Charter Oak Memorial 129
Voted, That this Society now accepts and dedicates the memorial
as marking the place where stood the Charter Oak, memorable in
the history of the colony of Connecticut.
Voted, That this Society will tender to the city of Hartford the
piece of land upon which said memorial has been erected, to be
maintained by it as a public park of said city in the expectation and
hope that it will always stand as commemorating "Loyalty to the
State."
Voted, That upon the acceptance by said city of Hartford of said
tra6l of land and said memorial, James J. Goodwin, Esq., who now
holds title to said land, be and he is hereby requested and
authorized to convey said property to said city as a public park.
No attempt had been made, by announcing the exact
time of the unveiling, to attract a crowd and the number
of those who witnessed the ceremonies was not large, but
those who were there were interested spectators. Among
them was the venerable Dr. Gurdon W. Russell, who is
sixth in direct descent from Captain Joseph Wadsworth.
THE DUTCHMAN IN CONNECTICUT
REV. PROF. M. W. JACOBUS, D.D.
ilHEN one realizes that the Dutch discovered the
river on whose banks we are gathered to-night,
almost a quarter of a century before Mr. Hooker
with his faithful congregation pushed their way through
the ninety miles of trackless forest to this place, and
before the Massachusetts Colony from which they came
was thought of, and when, further, one considers that of
the territory which the Dutch had thus peacefully and
honestly acquired along this river they were gradually
dispossessed by these same Massachusetts men, promptly
if without consent, and effectively if without payment, it
is not unnatural for one who has been so courteously asked
to represent before you to-night the Holland Society to
feel that whatever unpleasantness may have existed in this
region between his forbears and yours, it was not such
as was in any way responsible for the Colonial wars.
There are several ways to leave a place when one has
to go, but the Dutchman left these places that he had once
possessed peacefully at least, if not altogether silently, and
as he looked back upon his ventures apparently had no
other consciousness regarding them than that which the
Irishman had of the drubbing he had got from his friend,
when he said that the only thing wanting to make it a
success to himself was the success it was to the other
fellow.
In fad, it is a matter of somewhat large surprise that,
with all the pioneer hardihood and commercial aggressive-
134 The Dutchman in Connecticut
ness of the Dutch in their American settlements, and with
all the advantage which the long establishment of these
settlements had given them, their virtual surrender to the
English was accomplished without anything more than a
blustering protest on their part, and the English rule and
government accepted with nothing beyond the pessimism
of a grumbling discontent.
The historians, to be sure, would have us understand
that this is to be attributed partly to the enervation of a
long security of possession, and partly to the accident of
unpreparedness against a large force; doubtless this is
true; but the history of the Dutchman since that time,
the history of his church, the history of his school, the his-
tory of his letters and life, has shown such an exclusiveness
from all the development which has been going on around
him that we are forced to say, as far as the impressing of
himself upon that development is concerned, he has missed
his opportunity.
And I am afraid this throws light upon recent events in
other parts of the world, in which the Dutchman has been
deeply concerned. I know his grand struggle of three
hundred years ago for liberty and independence — a strug-
gle so much like our own. You can read about the resem-
blance in the book which is said to be the first book ever
printed in Hartford, a book written by a Hollander in
the English language, showing how similar were these two
revolts. That revolt of his across the sea was practically
the first blow which kept Spain restricted in her American
possessions, and determined ultimately the civilization of
this land of ours to be Germanic and not Latin. It is con-
The Dutchman in Conne client 135
sequently possible for me to say even in this presence
to-night that in some ways the year 1609 was more signifi-
cant to this country's destiny than the year 1620. I know
further the deep sympathy of the Dutchman with the
struggle of our own forefathers. Popularly, if not
officially, it was ahead of the sympathy of France. Gen-
erous it was with supplies and stores through the West
Indian channels, and with millions of money in the darkest
hour of our night. It was reckless even to the bringing
of England to a declaration of war against his country
for her help of us. His was the first country to salute
our flag and the second to recognize our independence,
the medals commemorating which event were unearthed
just a few years ago in the Museum at the Hague.
Now of all this the noble fight in South Africa may be
said to have been the natural and logical result; and yet
behind that desperate struggle lie long years of just this
same exclusiveness from the moving swing of civilization
round about him which the Dutchman has shown in this
land of ours. Long ago he should have seen the trend of
things. Long ago he should have adjusted himself to it
and influenced it for the common weal; but he did not,
and what has come upon him is simply what might have
been expected to come. It seems in fact as though what
he says about himself to-day were true. "We have made
a great struggle for liberty. We have lived a great history
in freedom and independence. We are quite content with
the past, and have no particular ambitions for the future."
Now, of course this is something about my people that,
if it has to be said, I greatly prefer to say myself, rather
136 The Dutchman in Connecticut
than have anyone else say it; and yet I do not know but
I have just enough of the Colonial Connecticut blood in
my own veins — that blood of the constitution, if not of the
nutmeg variety, that impelled forbears of mine to move
away from the New Haven Colony for the sake of civil
freedom — just enough of this to make me dare to say it
for the truth which it seems to press upon us, namely, that
a people's struggle for liberty is not over with the conflict
of the battlefield. The shock of war may be a great thing
to endure, and all sorts of glorious honors may be due
those who stand it, and through it teach the world again
the old lesson of liberty. But the strain of peace is almost
as great as the shock of war, and we come to reckon with —
we always have to reckon with — whether we crown or not,
those peoples who so impress themselves upon the move-
ment of the events of peace as to create the characteristics
of the civilization and the spirit of the age in which they
live. They may or may not have had their struggle for
liberty; it really matters little. But they must have had
their struggle with liberty and made it captive to their own
ideas.
Such struggle apparently the Dutchman did not have.
We turn over the pages of Irving' s Knickerbocker History
and dwell with pleasure on the delightful pictures he gives
us of those three Dutch governors whose names he uses —
Wouter Van Twiller, of capacious stomach and diminutive
legs, whose ideas were so large he could not turn them
over in his head, who ate four meals a day, smoked his
pipe eight hours, and slept the rest of the time ; Wilhelmus
Kieft, of fiery soul and flaming genius, who sought to
The Dutchman in Connecticut 137
annihilate the foes of New Netherlands by official procla-
mation; Peter Stuyvesant, that honest, bluff, strong-
minded, but warm-hearted old soldier, who knew how a
community ought to be governed, and governed it accord-
ingly. But unfortunately the reality behind these pictures
bears no resemblance to the pictures themselves, and does
not thrill us when we face it. For Van Twiller was an
adventurer of such outrageous proportions that he had to
be recalled from his position, and Kieft a tyrant of such
deep dye that the country could not stand him, and Stuy-
vesant a man of vanity and ostentatious display. These
are hardly the things from which our civilization has been
made.
To be sure, we may say the Dutchman has taught us
to be thrifty, to establish shipping, to build railroads, and,
as some one has said, to import Dutchmen and export
duchesses; but with all the fortunes that have been
amassed by Dutchmen here, there has not been that dis-
tribution of wealth that has put its impress on the great
development of this country's life.
As far as money is concerned, its colleges, such as
Rutgers, and its seminaries, such as New Brunswick,
might have been made magnificent educational institu-
tions, equipped for all the work of this century in which
we live, but no Dutch fortune has ever been given to them.
As far as endowment is concerned, the Collegiate
Churches of New York might have done great things for
the city in which they are placed. But however the money
came to them, it brought with it no spirit of impressive
and aggressive work. It is other churches rather which
138 The Dutchman in Connecticut
have laid hold of the city problems and touched with heal-
ing hand the city sores.
Also, we might say the Dutchman has taught us to be
religious, to value theology for what is teaches us about
God, and to take its teaching into life.
Well, he has certainly taught us a tremendous theology,
a theology that was in no sense a borrowed one, but one
that was born out of his own national life and was part
of his own personal living — a theology that was not a
doctrinal theology such as it was in Germany, but a
practical theology, because it was a political one that
swung around the problem of his country's life — a
theology that was not manipulated by a single man or
by a single set of men, as it was elsewhere, but one that
welled up from the common life of the common people,
unmanipulated by anything under heaven save the hearts
and consciences of the common folk.
All this is true; but it is also true that with all the free
field that such theology has had in this land of ours, the
spirit of confessional conservatism which it has come to
assume is not that which has marked the great advances
that doctrinal thinking has made among us.
I hold no brief for a radical freedom of religious ideas,
but I am free to say that the best conservatism is that
which has been constructive in its life, and the truest con-
fessionalism is that which has been evangelistic in its
service, and the record of Dutch theology here has
not moved in these directions.
At both these points of wealth and doctrine the Dutch-
man made his struggle long ago and won his fight; but
The Dutchman in Connecticut 139
the task of the great outworking of what he won — I will
not say that he has lost its opportunity, but I will say
it is yet before him.
May he be yet successful in its accomplishment, for after
all he has given us great things without which we would
be far worse off to-day than we care to think.
THE DUTCHMAN AGAIN
REV. PROF. M. W. JACOBUS, D.D.
T a gathering of this honored Society not long
ago, your courtesy gave me the privilege of
speaking to you of my countrymen in their early
and somewhat unsuccessful efforts to make this continent
Dutch.
I found the best thing I could do was gracefully to admit
the failures of the undertaking, saying myself whatever
of uncomplimentary nature there was to say about my
forbears, while I reserved for them a few bits of self-
suggested praise, just to render the confession a little
easier of utterance.
Our host has kindly suggested that I might speak on
the same theme again, doubtless with the idea that I might
thus have the chance, either to prove that what I had con-
fessed to really was not true, or at least to disclose the
fact that it really was. In either way of looking at it,
I found myself, as a Dutchman might be expected to find
himself, phlegmatically enthused, and have wondered how,
under this what I might venture to call gross expectancy
of the truth, I was going to be able to tell any truth at all.
Naturally I went to John Fiske for comfort — and dis-
covered that the facts behind my confessions were
emphasized and that there was little to add to those that
underlay the praise I had hazarded upon the people from
whom I had come. So I am going to address myself to
doing the only thing left to me to do — a thing that the
lawyer sometimes does to start with and the theologian
sometimes does to end with — I am going to try to account
for the facts.
144 The Dutchman Again
When good old Peter Stuyvesant, following up the
incident of the San Berninio in New Haven Bay, made
proclamation that New Netherland extended from Cape
Henlopen to Cape Cod, he doubtless considered it as just
judgment on the New Englanders for their commercial
impudence in ignoring his laws of trade and as a wise
stroke of policy for his own West India Company.
But when later in the year he made his historic journey
to Hartford and saw the prosperity and the strength of
the townships along the Sound, he was far too intelligent
a soldier to delude himself with the idea that his proclama-
tion could ever be carried out and far too wise a one to
decline the opportunity of a safe retreat from his unten-
able position.
So it came that while his conference with the Federal
Commissioners at Hartford began with a complacent dat-
ing of his statement at "Hartford in New Netherland,"
it ended with the signing of the famous Hartford Treaty —
in which all claim to New England territory was practi-
cally abandoned, the boundary line receding from Cape
Cod to Greenwich Bay on the mainland, and on Long
Island to Oyster Bay — where Dutch persistency in our
own day and administration seems to have laid down
several sheet anchors and to have succeeded in raising
over them a sweet consistency of storm — from which the
rest of us will have to get out the best we can.
Now the strange thing about this altogether wise
agreement is that Stuyvesant never said anything about
it to the Burghers of New Amsterdam. In his report to his
Company, the Governor withheld the text of the treaty —
The Dutchman Again 145
and though it was signed on the I9th of September, it
was not until late in November that news of its provisions
reached them — and though it was in the year of our Lord
1650 that it was sealed and delivered here on the banks
of the Connecticut, it was not until six years later that
an authoritative copy got to Holland and in a conscious-
ness of the inevitable was ratified by the States General.
But it was not so strange after all. This was but an instance
of the general spirit that then possessed the Dutch Colonies
in this land and the Dutch Nation at home, — a spirit of
commercial complacency that, unconscious of facts, made
them hesitate at no bravado, and when conscious of them
compelled to nerveless concessions that were not pleasant
things to acknowledge publicly or to have authoritatively
confirmed. A few years later and the English ships of
Nicolls appeared before New Amsterdam and, though the
doughty Governor stormed and raged, the white flag
finally flew from the ramshackle fort and the rule of the
Dutch in America — a rule which had found small care
from the colonists themselves, and less protection from the
Government at home — came to an end.
And now in our own day the drama has been repeated
in South Africa and again a great assertion of rights has
ended with whatever brave resistance in surrender and
retreat.
It is of no small interest, in these commercial days of
ours, to ask how it came that over those old patriots of
the Land of the Dykes — those old heroes of Haarlem and
Leyden — there came the spirit of such things as we have
spoken of. I am quite willing to admit that neither at
146 The Dutchman Again
New Amsterdam nor at Johannesburg was the question
of religious liberty at stake, but from those who had main-
tained this liberty at such cost, as the League of Beggars
had done, we would expect a different showing when
liberties even of other kinds were in question. May I say
that the love of liberty and the love of trade are never
likely to live together and maintain themselves in equal
power. The love of liberty being of the soul and the love
of trade being of the body, they must not only beget a
different line of conduct and breed a different cast of
character, but in some subtle way the development of the
one must bring about the atrophy of the other. For the
love of liberty demands a devotion which is of the essence
of unselfishness, and the love of trade demands a devotion
which is of the opposite, and these two cannot equally grow
and thrive.
To the love of liberty the burghers of the i6th century
had given themselves with a passion that stayed at no
sacrifice and stopped at no defeat, a passion that shot
across the channel and drawing to itself a kindred spirit
swept it across the seas to our own land. But with the
breaking of the Spanish power the spirit of commerce
(which at Amsterdam as at Venice had made the Inquisi-
tion impossible of importation) had found the seas its
own and the far East lands of spices and silks at its feet,
and the new Western world open before it for its gain.
So the spirit which had been its bulwark against religious
conquest came in turn to be the power behind a conquest
of its own which was as selfish as its defense against the
The Dutchman Again 147
other conquest had been self-sacrificing unto death. And
if we ask why selfishness should not have maintained in the
colonies the commercial position which had already been
secured, our only answer is that the selfishness of the Home
Government left the Colonies to themselves, and that the
selfishness of the Colonies never rose above the individual's
contentment with whatever rule would leave him free-
dom of trade. And yet in spite of all this, your Excellency,
I claim from my forbears an influence on our civilization
that is noble as it is real — not the influence of free educa-
tion of the people, for this came from Geneva rather than
from Delft Haven; nor the influence of free government
by the people, for this was present in other countries than
Holland before it settled itself in the town meetings of
New England. I look back to the Netherlands to find, at
a time when other countries were lands of feudal lords
and in their productiveness naught but undeveloped farms,
a national consciousness of the nobility of labor that made
that little country the workshop of the world. And I look
back to find yet more at a time when, in the countries from
which we have most derived our national stock, religion
was still a thing of state and politics, a consciousness of
the dignity of the individual's relation to his God that made
her land an asylum to the persecuted and her faith a
strength to those who knew what conscience meant in the
conduct of the soul.
I wish she had maintained this conscience unsullied and
unweakened through the years. I wish in these days we
might have fresh blowings on us of those pure winds that
148 The Dutchman Again
once swept over her, that we might be minded to drink
again of those pure fountains she held up to us in those
old days. • For we need — never more than now — to know
how noble labor can be and never more than now do we
need to know what conscience means towards God and
man.
THE PILGRIM
REV. JOHN CALVIN GODDARD
|N discussing this subject one soon discovers that
it has as many legendary layers as an onion,
some of them as rank. One lands at Plymouth
under the inspiration of
"The breaking waves dashed high,
On a stern and rock-bound coast,"
though, for anything one can detect, a more appro-
priate couplet would be that from the Walrus and the
Carpenter,
"They wept like anything to see
Such quantities of sand"
I saw the famous rock that Mary Chilton jumped upon
with both feet, and I saw the crack, but in that immediate
vicinity it is the only bit of stern and rock-bound coast
visible to the naked eye. Furthermore, after going around
among New England homes and tabulating all the cedar
chests, cradles, rush-bottomed chairs, spinets, and spinning
jenneys alleged to have been brought over in the May-
flower, one soon will total enough to load a Great Eastern,
and will begin to doubt whether the modest capacity of a
hundred and eighty tons usually credited to that gallant
vessel has been correctly reported. Again, we are told by
those who are competent to know that the captain origin-
ally steered for New Amsterdam, but that the needle was
providentially deflected toward Cape Cod by reason of the
cook's chopping wood for the galley fire on the north side
of the compass, which seems to be one more of those little
152 The Pilgrim
hatchet stories that serve a useful purpose in our early
annals.
We are told that the Pilgrims loved long sermons. It is
true that Elder Brewster on the Mayflower preached three
sermons a day. He had his congregation where they could
not get away. They had never heard of that parliamen-
tary rule prevailing in South Africa which decreed that a
man should speak in public no longer than he could stand
on one foot. You and I may like this one-foot rule applied
to speeches, but they would have regarded it as a heathen
practice, for the fathers had for ministerial prolixity that
Corinthian virtue which suffereth long and is kind.
A popular charge brought against the Pilgrim is that he
was austere:
"No children ran to lisp their sire's return,
Nor climbed his knee the envied kiss to share."
The fact is admitted; he did not wear his heart upon his
sleeve, and he is not alone in it. The Highlander never
tells his wife he loves her until he is dying. In the Gaelic
language there are said to be fifty synonyms of the word
"darling" ; the Puritan did not understand Gaelic. They
were familiar, rather, with the Dutch form of mar-
riage service, which began with the sombre declaration,
"Whereas married people are generally, by reason of sin,
subject to many trials and afflictions." Governor Bradford
stopped a party of newcomers from playing ball on Christ-
mas Day, and when they remonstrated, saying it was
against their conscience to work on Christmas, he retorted
that it was against his conscience for them to play while
The Pilgrim 153
others worked. Macaulay has contributed to the general
charge of austerity by his famous epigram, that the Puri-
tan hated bear-baiting, not because it gave pain to the bear,
but because it gave pleasure to the spectator.
That reminds me of the boy, Patrick Murphy, who was
given an example in arithmetic. The teacher said : "One
horse starts a mile ahead. The other runs a mile ten
seconds faster than the first horse. How soon will the
second horse overtake the first?" Patrick replied: "I
will never have anything to do with horse-racing !"
While he was austere, there was reason for it. . If you
and I had neither post-office, magazine, nor newspaper,
and had to take our intellectual pabulum for a whole week
out of the sermon, theology would be our happy hunting
ground. We must remember that to him heaven was far
away, the problem of life being how to get to it; but to us
the problem of life is far better stated as how to make
heaven begin below, how to live in the present tenses of
the blessed life.
There are certain circumstances that gave color to his
austerity, that would have done so in our own case. One
of these was the woods; he lived in the Black Forest.
Those of you who have read Stanley's March through
Darkest Africa will remember the stampede that ensued
as they approached the grasslands, and the exultant shout
that went up as they emerged from the forests. Well, the
Puritan could hardly be expected to shout until he got
out of the woods; it took a long time to clear them. A
second circumstance was his ever-present sense of peril.
"He thought of the bloody savages that lurked all round
154 The Pilgrim
about; of Wituwamet's pictured knife and Pecksuot's
whooping shout." It was a Pilgrim divine who preached
on the perils of youth as illustrated by Moses. "A goodly
child," said he, "but placed by his parents where he was
surrounded by the fang of the serpent, the claw of the
vulture, the jaw of the alligator, and the tooth of the
hippopotamus/' Then the stern realities of life oppressed
him; money was scarce, markets uncertain, produce
scanty. If the farmers of to-day were shut up to the thin
soil of Eastern Massachusetts, to poor tools and meager
seed, not so jocund would they drive their teams afield.
These things were enough to make him austere; they
would make gayety itself austere. In other words, if the
same causes were operative now, we would be austere.
Sometimes the charge of witch-hunting is brought
against the Pilgrim. It is a grievous charge, and griev-
ously hath Caesar answered it. General Horace Porter, at
a New England banquet, once said : "The Pilgrims were
kept busy keeping the Indians under fire and the witches
over it." He hath a pretty wit and we will concede him
all the liberty that goes with after-dinner speaking, but
after all, there was not a single witch burned in all New
England. Those who lost their lives lost them by the
humane gallows.
As to witch-hunting, all things are comparative. In
Virginia more witches were sentenced to death than in all
New England; yet, somehow, the reproach never clung
to the Cavalier as to the Puritan, perhaps because the
world expects less of him. It is calculated that in England
thirty thousand witches lost their lives, in France, seventy-
The Pilgrim 155
five thousand, in Germany a hundred thousand. If the
Salem delusion be laid up against the wisdom and piety
of our New England ancestors, I answer that in Great
Britain the most eminent and humane judge of the age,
Sir Matthew Hale, sentenced many a witch to death ; and
the gentle and learned Sir Thomas Brown, M.D., the
author of Religio Medici, was the court's expert medical
advisor. In other words, the Puritan in this matter was
not behind his age, he was merely a part of it.
Moreover, the delusion lasted for a shorter period with
him than with others. It was over in 1693, a short year,
by which time the Court of Oyer and Terminer refused
to receive spectral evidence, and two hundred persons were
released, the greatest jail delivery ever known in Massa-
chusetts. How was it elsewhere? Witches were hung in
England for twenty-three years after that practice stopped
in Massachusetts; in Scotland for twenty-seven years
after. As late as 1805, 112 years after the Salem delusion,
a witch was condemned to a year's imprisonment in Kirk-
cudbright, Scotland. The truth is that New England,
instead of being at the foot of the class, is at the top, and
has the best, sanest, most humane record on the witch
question of any locality in Saxondom.
The Pilgrim mothers were not lost in the census, but,
like the daughters of Zelophedad, had rights which were
respected. To begin with, they were not so indifferent to
dress as one might suppose, nor was their adornment alto-
gether that of the hidden man of the heart. It seems to
have had some reference to the outward man of the gallery.
The Reverend Francis Johnson, of Amsterdam, had mar-
156 The Pilgrim
ried a widow whom his family disliked, and especially his
brother George. George held that she dressed too fashion-
ably, though how anyone could regard Dutch fashions as
bewitching and dangerous to the soul does not appear ; at
any rate he was particularly grieved because she wore
"whalebone in her dresses and cork on her soles." All of
which goes to show both that George had an observing eye
and that criticism of ministers' wives on the subject of
dress began early.
But the mothers had all the higher graces of their kind
as well. The courtship of John Alden is a golden chapter
in Pilgrim annals, and literature is enriched for all ages by
the demure tact of Priscilla Mullins. Priscilla's ability at
fencing was matched, we are told, by another Pilgrim
maid, to whom said a cautious man : "If I should ask you
to become my wife, would you say Yes?" Said the equally
cautious woman to the cautious man: "If you thought I
would say Yes, would you ask me to become your wife?"
A fine romance was that of Alice Southworth's meeting,
after many years of separation, one who had loved her in
youth, and so becoming Mrs. Governor Bradford. To give
a later example, where will one find in any book a more
perfect love match than that of Jonathan Edwards and
Sarah Pierpont, or a more beautiful and touching descrip-
tion by a lover than his? It is approached only by a still
later Pilgrim lover, James Russell Lowell, in his ode begin-
ning, "Not as all other women are."
The mothers were powerful executives in the domain of
woman's kingdom, the home. You will not find in New
England history any account of bringing ladies over in
The Pilgrim 157
shiploads, as were told in the Virginia or the Hudson Bay
records. You will not find such entries as these : "Received
per ship 'Osprey,' Jane Goody, in good condition," or
"Received, Matilda Tillings. Returned in the 'Lapwing'
for not being in accordance with description contained in
invoice." We read of Abigail that "she was a woman of
good understanding." She understood how to deal with
men, giving them a little flattery and a good deal of some-
thing to eat. For, as Solomon said, or would have said if
he had not been distracted by domestic affairs, "Man's
affections may be won by flattery, but are to be retained
by cookery." Their cookery was such that the General
Court of Massachusetts passed a law in 1724 directed
against excessive eating at funerals. They were the
responsible authors, too, of that New England virtue some-
times known as "pizen neatness." It was in their blood to
begin with and always has been. It is related of the Eng-
lish ladies besieged at Lucknow that, precious as every
drop of water was, they nevertheless saved a few dashes
for use upon their faces. Thirst was easier to bear than
untidiness. Now, on top of that trait by nature, the
mothers had a Dutch training, and, according to the
Knickerbocker historian, the Dutch women lived so much
upon floors deluged by mop pails that certain of them
became web-footed. The result of this Saxon and
Dutch training can be readily imagined. It is stated
that a New Englander, having the misfortune to fail
in business, came home and announced it to his wife
in the words, "Martha, I'm ruined; the wolf is at the
158 The Pilgrim
door." "Is he?" replied Martha; "tell him to wipe his
feet."
The last criticism to be mentioned is the alleged philis-
tinism of the Pilgrim, his indifference to beauty. Yet one
cannot say that he was wholly lacking in artistic sensibility.
The children born at sea were named as by inspiration
Oceanus and Seaborn. We are indebted to them for the
retention of so many noble and stately Indian names,
Massachusetts, Connecticut, Narragansett, Quinnipiac,
Monadnock. And, a people who founded Harvard in 1636,
and Boston Latin School four years before that, can hardly
be termed indifferent to "the humanities."
Yet, in estimating the Puritan at this point one may well
be reminded of Anchises' noble but discriminating tribute
to the Romans:
"Others, I grant you, shall with more delicacy mould the
breathing brass; from marble draw the features into life;
shall better describe with rod the beginnings and courses
of the heavens, and speak of the rising stars. Be it thy
care, O Romans, to rule nations with imperial sway, to
impose terms of peace, to spare the humble, and to crush
the proud."
The Roman might lack in delicacy; he abounded in
strength. Even so the Pilgrim. And it is strength that
is necessary to the noblest forms of beauty. The feathers
of a butterfly's wing and the crystals of snow are beautiful,
but the divinest masterpieces are not these ephemeral,
evanescent, and elusive forms. They are to be found,
rather, in the sinewy form of the oak with verdure clad,
in the snowy mass of Hermon, offset with verdure green.
The Pilgrim 159
It takes geology plus botany to make the chief things of
the ancient mountains and the precious things of the last-
ing hills. Even so the perfect character must have in it
strength plus beauty.
O bury him in no common grave, this man of rapture
and of rock! This prophet of mystic eyes! This knight
who feared God and none other! Bury him beneath the
boulder, within the heart of the mountains, on the sides
of the north, facing the winter that he braved, facing the
polar star, emblem of his own Christocentric polarity that
had neither variableness nor shadow of turning, even as
they buried that other pilgrim, that soldier of the Lord,
Joshua the son of Nun, in Timnath-Serah, in the border
of his inheritance, on the north side of the hill Gaash.
"The knight's bones are dust,
And his good sword rust ; —
His soul is with the Saints, I trust."
GENERAL ROBERT SEDGWICK
REV. PROF. SAMUEL HART, D.D.
JHE material which I have used in the prepara-
tion of this paper is not new, though it has
been for myself but recently sought out. It
has to do with the career of one of the martial leaders of
an early generation of our New England history. He
was a man of good training, and as it often seemed, of
excellent opportunity; in his English home and in the
colonies of the western world he had experience of military
service; he gained the friendship of the ruler of England
and was commissioned by him for important duties; on
this side of the ocean he had the esteem not alone of his
friends and neighbors but also of strangers whom he was
set to govern; if he failed sometimes to accomplish the
result at which he aimed, it was because fortune snatched
the opportunity from him or because matters took such a
turn that no one could possibly succeed; and if he died
away from home and friends, a broken-hearted man, he
died trying to do his duty and to serve his generation.
Robert Sedgwick, a member of the Artillery Company
in London, came to Charlestown, Massachusetts, in 1635,
being not far from twenty years of age. He was success-
ful in business, associated with the younger Winthrop in
the establishment of iron works, a deputy to the Great
and General Court, one of the founders of the Ancient
and Honorable Artillery Company, Commander of the
Castle, a member of the Council of War, and finally Major-
General of the Massachusetts militia.
His neighbor, Captain Edward Johnson, in "The
164 General Robert Sedgwick
Wonder-Working Providence of Sion's Saviour in New
England," a book which, we are told, "best epitomizes
the Puritan philosophy," gives us this account of the man
and of his skill :
"The first Serjeant Major chosen to order the regiment of
Essex was Major Robert Sedgwick, stout and active in all feats of
war, nurst up in London's Artillery garden, and furthered with
fifteen years experience in New England's exacl theory, besides the
help of a very good head piece, being a frequent instructor of the
most martial troops of our Artillery men; and although Charles
Town (which is the place of his own companies residence) do not
advantage such o're-topping batteries as Boston doth, yet hath he
erected his to very good purpose, insomuch as all shipping that
comes in, either to Boston or Charles Town, must needs face it all
the time of their coming in ; the cost he hath been at, in helping on
the Discipline of his Regiment, hath profited much." *
In 1652, Robert Sedgwick was still in Massachusetts,
holding the title of Major-General. Soon after this, how-
ever, he returned to England; and about the same time,
or possibly with him, went a man whose name was for a
while associated with his in affairs of war and who became
his son-in-law, John Leverett, son of the ruling elder of
the Boston Church, himself a Captain of the Colony's
forces. Their reputation may have preceded them, and
may in fact have been the reason why they crossed the
ocean to the home-country; at any rate, their merit was
soon discovered by Cromwell ; they gained his friendship,
and served as officers in the army of the Commonwealth.f
But the Protector soon had pressing duties which he
* Book ii. c. 26, quoted by Fiske, Beginnings of New England, p. 305.
f Palfrey, History of New England, ii. 284, sqq.
General Robert Sedgwick 165
wished to have these men undertake in the new world,
and they were sent back, charged with a special respon-
sibility. To understand the immediate purpose of their
return, its failure, and what of success followed, it will
be necessary to go back a little in the history.*
By the so-called Treaty of Hartford, September 19,
1650, Peter Stuyvesant, Director of New Amsterdam, had
abandoned on behalf of the Dutch all the claim which
had been pretentiously put forth to New England territory.
He had seen enough on his journey to satisfy him that the
settlers in New Haven and Connecticut could never be
dislodged ; and he knew, moreover, that if they were dis-
turbed, he would be obliged to reckon with the force which
the other two of the United Colonies, Massachusetts Bay
and Plymouth, were ready to send against him. So after his
"bluff," as we should call it, of dating from New Nether-
lands a letter written in Hartford, and his consent, when a
reply to the letter was refused, to write as from "Conecti-
cott," he agreed with the English to leave the matter of the
boundaries between his jurisdiction and theirs to four arbi-
ters. As the English naturally appointed two of their own
people, and Stuyvesant also most unnaturally appointed
two Englishmen (though one of them, to be sure, was his
own secretary), a decision was easily reached. It was
agreed that on the main land the boundary line of the
governments should keep ten miles away from Henry
Hudson's river, coming to the Sound east of Greenwich
Bay, and that on Long Island it should run across to the
ocean from Oyster Bay; while in the neighborhood of
* See Fiske, Dutch and Quaker Colonies, \. 299, sqq.
1 66 General Robert Sedgwick
Hartford the Dutch were to hold jurisdiction over all that
they actually possessed, a phrase which could be easily
interpreted to mean nothing. In the summer of 1652, less
than two years after this agreement was made and per-
haps after Sedgwick and Leverett had crossed the Atlantic,
the first war between England and the Dutch Republic
broke out. Fear was naturally felt for the safety of New
Amsterdam; and the city was fortified by the pali-
sado wall that gave name to the street on which
are now controlled the financial affairs of a con-
tinent. Even with this defence, the Director was not
minded to hasten an outbreak of hostilities with the
colonies to the east; but there seemed to be reason for
believing that he was prepared, if Manhattan should be
attacked by the English, to call in the assistance of such
of the Indians as he could reach and trust. And indeed
he had reason to be troubled; for John Underbill, who
had once been "the savior of New Netherlands," was now
in revolt against him and had accepted something like
letters of marque from the Providence Plantations. Under
color of these he had sailed up the Connecticut river to
the abandoned House of Good Hope, had claimed to con-
fiscate it to the Connecticut government, and then selling
it had appropriated the proceeds. The General Court in
the next year, we may note in passing, calmly took posses-
sion of the property as belonging to the Colony; and the
Dutch were left no shadow of a claim on the banks of
the river or in its neighborhood. Stuyvesant had cause,
as was said, to be alarmed, and fully as much were the
settlements in New Haven and Connecticut colonies dis-
General Robert Sedgwick 167
turbed at the possibility of an attack from savage Indians
under the guise of war; and they proposed to call out
the forces of the New England Confederacy for an attack
on the Dutch. But Massachusetts, farther from New
Amsterdam and in no special fear of the Indians, but
rather disposed to look upon them as possible allies and
defenders, perhaps at this time more impartial in its judg-
ment of affairs, and certainly as the event showed more
practically prudent, was averse to active opposition. The
men of our colonies became impatient and excited; there
was hard talk at New Haven and Hartford about the men
of Boston, armed men assembled in Fairfield and Stam-
ford, and there was danger that the confederacy of the
Colonies would be dissolved. An appeal was sent across
the ocean to Cromwell, strengthened as it would seem by
a rumor of a plot for the destruction of all the English
colonists ; the agents of our Colonies at the court pressed
their case; and on the 8th of February, 1653-4, instructions
were issued to "Major Robert Sedgwicke, commander of
the Blacke Raven, and Captaine John Leverett, whoe is
joined with him," to take charge of a fleet of four vessels,
the Black Raven, Hope, Church, and Augustine, and sail
for the United Colonies with letters to the governors.
They were, so read their instructions, to give "intimation
to them" of their "arivall and expectation of a suddayne
Answer to the contents of the said letters." The document
proceeds : "If upon return from them you fynde an inclina-
tion and readinys in them to joyne in the present under-
taking for vindicating the English right and extirpating
the Dutch, you are without neglect of any opportunitye to
1 68 General Robert Sedgwick
address yourselfes to the worke by ordering the ships for
the Manhattos, and taking care that the soldgers from
the Collonyes may by a land march meet them there or
be taken into the ships as by advice may be judged most
advantageous. You being corned to the Manhattos, you
shall by way of surprize, open force, or otherwise, as you
by a counsill of war consisting of the commanders of the
ships and armie shall judge most conduceing to that end,
endeavour to take in that place in the name of the Lord
Protector of the Commonwealth of England Scotland and
Ireland for the use of the said Commonwealth. And you
have power to promise and give them faire quarter in case
it be rendered upon summons without hostile opposition;
the like alsoe you shall do to the fort of Auranea or
any other place upon Hodson's river."*
There is a state paper under date of the nth of Febru-
ary which speaks of the necessity of procuring masts for
the ships after they should cross the ocean; it enumerates
"hose, serges, cloth, rugs, blankets, bolsters, stuffs, iron-
ware," among the goods to be sent to New England for
the account of the Commonwealth, and to be disposed of
that masts might be purchased.
It was not far from the first day of June when the little
fleet arrived in Boston, and some time elapsed before the
soldiers were collected for the campaign. The four ships
brought 200 men, Connecticut raised as many more, and
New Haven two-thirds as many, to accompany them;
Massachusetts would send no part of her forces, but she
allowed 300 men to enlist as volunteers; while Plymouth
* Massachusetts Historical Society Collections, IV. ii. pp. 32, 230.
General Robert Sedgwick 169
promised 50 men, but did not send them. In all there were
833 under arms on the three vessels, a small enough army,
one would think, but doubtless so strong a force that had
a conflict taken place the Dutch must have been overcome.
But alas for dreams of heroic exploit and military glory,
and the hope that these brave men might secure for the
English the town and fortress at the mouth of Hudson's
River! Just as the fleet was to sail from Boston, on a
day late in June or early in July, 1654, tidings came from
across the sea that the Lord Protector and their High
Mightinesses of Holland had made peace and that there
was no further justification for hostilities. New Amster-
dam remained in the hands of the Dutch for ten years
longer, and in 1664 was surrendered to Colonel Richard
Nicholls, who had been appointed governor of the place
under the claims of the Duke of York; so that the glory,
such as it was, of the final transfer did not accrue to the
Massachusetts Major and Captain whose fortunes we are
tracing.
It appears, however, that Sedgwick and Leverett had
received from the Protector other instructions than to
carry out, if they could, the wishes of the southern New
England Colonies in defending them against the Dutch
and weakening or destroying the power of the New
Netherlands. England was not then formally at war with
France; but the force which seemingly and in all prob-
ability really had been prepared against New Amsterdam,
now that it could not be used for that purpose, was led
against the French settlements in Acadia.* La Tour, who
* Palfrey, ii. 285.
170 General Robert Sedgwick
had kept up in that land a conflict with D'Aulnay, petty
but not without its romantic side, after a chequered suc-
cession of loss of royal favor and return to it, which
probably meant of loyalty and disloyalty to Louis XIV.,
had incurred anew a suspicion that he was intriguing with
the English. He had indeed done something to strengthen
himself by taking to wife the widow of his rival, thus
quieting her claims and becoming responsible for the care
of her children; but it was only the appearance of Sedg-
wick's fleet which saved him from being called sharply to
account. England, or rather Scotland, had a standing
claim to the land, which James I. had granted to Sir
William Alexander as a fief of his former crown under
the name of Nova Scotia; and the home authorities
apparently felt at liberty to attempt the enforcement of
this claim whenever they might find it convenient. Crom-
well had evidently foreseen that the four ships which he
had sent to New England, and the eight hundred or a
thousand men whom they were expected to carry, might
want for employment; and, as is quite evident, he had
bidden them see, if the opportunity should be offered, what
they could do in Acadia. There is a clause in the instruc-
tions which appears to have been intended to mean this;
those in charge were "to proceed to the gaining in any
other places from the Enemie which upon advice with a
counsell of war may be judged feizable and conduceing to
the settlement of the peace and saiftye of the English
plantations." And in some way the need of masts was
given as a reason for the expedition; for a report to the
Navy Committee, dated July I, 1654, says that "masts
General Robert Sedgwick 171
not being ready, it was thought good to turn their design
against the French."* In that direction, therefore, Sedg-
wick sailed from Boston ; and the attack of his fleet upon
the French settlements led to a speedy victory. St. John
was soon captured; Port Royal surrendered on the i6th of
August without resistance; and the country from the
Gulf of St. Lawrence to the Penobscot became once more
Nova Scotia, subject to the protectorate of England and
Scotland.
Thus by little labor an important action was accom-
plished. We do not know what reward Sedgwick received
for his services; Leverett presented a bill of twenty
shillings a day for the two years in which he had been
on duty, and was promised three-quarters of what he
asked; but though he received a note or warrant under
the privy seal for the amount due him in 1656 (some
£4,750), there was still £4,000 due him at the Restoration.f
It was not a great military campaign in which our New
Englanders took the lead and for which our colonies
furnished most of the men; but its result was certainly
creditable to those who engaged in it, and for the welfare
of the state.
It was in the next year, 1655, that Jamaica, by a sort
of accident, fell into the hands of the English. Some sixty
years before, in 1596, during the alliance between Queen
Elizabeth and the government of the Low Countries and
the consequent war with Spain, Admiral Shirley had
invaded the island, but he had not attempted to occupy
it. Later, under Charles I., Col. Jackson had defeated
* Hazard, ii. 150. f Palfrey, ii. 388, note.
172 General Robert Sedgwick
the inhabitants at Passage Fort, but apparently he also
had not cared to take advantage of his success. Jamaica,
indeed, was not at this time considered as a place of much
importance. Its territory was a private estate, divided
into eight districts in the nominal possession of eight noble
families, and the total population was about three thousand
persons, most of whom were slaves of the few proprietors.
The natives had been practically exterminated; but there
were some descendants of slaves called Maroons who had
fled to the mountains and were still able to make trouble.*
Now Cromwell, who as we have seen had just despoiled
France of a province, had determined that it was for the
interests of England to make that country its friend and
to strike a blow against Spain.f His action was pro-
fessedly by way of reprisal for acts of hostility and rapine
committed in America or its islands, and it was to be
undertaken on that side of the ocean on which the offence
had been committed ; and practically it would be a denun-
ciation of war. He fitted out an expedition under two
admirals, Venables and Penn, and gave them a secret
commission to attack and capture Cuba and San Domingo.
They found themselves unable to carry out their instruc-
tions or indeed to take either of the islands; and, says an
historian, in words which may partially explain what must
be presently said, "the failure may be ascribed as much
to treacherous behavior of the persons commissioned by
Oliver in the equipment as to the injudicious choice and
bad execution of the officers and men by whom it was con-
ducted. The soldiers were for the most part the refuse
* Encyclopaedia Britannica, sub voce.
t [Edward Long,] History of Jamaica, i. 220, sqq.
General Robert Sedgwick 173
of the whole army; and the forces enlisted in the West
Indies were the most profligate of mankind." And again he
tells us of the men collected, whether as soldiers or as set-
tlers, at Barbados and the other small islands, that they were
"chiefly servants who had worked out the terms of their
indentures and had derived very little morality or decency
from their education, sphere of life, or habitual practices."
But the admirals were determined to be able to report that
they had done something, and they fell upon the defence-
less island which lay between the two that they had been
bidden to attack, and readily captured it; their own men
were not brave, but they were less cowardly than the few
Spaniards who came out against them. The forces arrived
off Port Caqua (now Port Royal) on the 9th day of May,
and within two days they made themselves masters of the
island, and gave to its history the only event worth record-
ing since its discovery in 1494 and its occupation by the
Spaniards in 1509. The admirals presently returned to
England to report what they had done and had not done,
and were promptly and properly sent to the Tower. The
army, such as it was, was left behind.
But though the island had not been wanted, it was
necessary, now that it had come under English sway, that
it should be guarded and kept. The soldiers had demol-
ished churches and houses and ravaged the plantations,
and had made preparations for many years of want and
suffering, and for this reason there was all the more need
that the few respectable inhabitants should have the
privileges of government and care.
For this duty and labor Robert Sedgwick, who had
returned to New England after his capture of Acadia, was
designated. He sailed from Plymouth in the Marmaduke
174 General Robert Sedgwick
on the nth day of July.* From Barbados Road he wrote
to the Navy Commissioners on the 6th day of September
that God had been pleased to smile on the squadron in a
very comfortable passage, and that he had arrived with all
the ships, we are not told how many, some days before.
When he wrote he had heard "no news from the leeward
save what they heard by a dogger boat after the repulse
at Hispaniola," and he was about to set sail for Jamaica
by order of "General" Penn, intending to touch at St.
Christopher's in order to inquire after friends. "I hope,"
he added, "God hath brought down our confident spirits
to fill us for some more noble work. When flesh begins
to glory, it is a mercy if God will stain the glory of it."
Besides, he thought that what had happened might not be
altogether a disciplinary providence : "Many think Jamaica
a more considerable island than Hispaniola, and that it
may effect more than the other." Then, noting that he
found both soldiers and seamen active and willing and not
discouraged, and therefore hoped God had yet a blessing
for them, and that their design was His and that He would
own it, Sedgwick came down to earthly things and
expressed his desire that those to whom he was writing
would "thank their honest brewer for supplying such good
beer," and that on account of this his good service he
would "find mercy for former offences."
On the same day Captain William Godfrey wrote
from Carlisle Bay, Barbados, that "Major General"
Sedgwick had taken in a supply of provisions for the
army, and was intending to sail that day for St. Christo-
* Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and West Indies,
addenda, 1574-1674, 221, etc.
General Robert Sedgwick 175
pher's and, if there he should have no word of the fleet,
to proceed to Jamaica. Thirteen days later he was still
there but intending to sail that day for San Domingo and
Jamaica according to instructions from General Penn.
Something, however, must have detained him longer ; for
we learn from a letter of his own that he did not arrive
at Jamaica with his squadron until the first day of October.
He found the army which had been left there less than six
months before suffering from dysentery and in lack of
everything. Fortescue, who in the absence of the admirals
had been in chief command, had made application for
"cloathing, smiths, and carpenters, tools, bread, oatmeal,
brandy, arms and ammunition, medicines, and other
necessaries" ; but if any of these useful things had arrived,
they had not been well cared for and used.* Thus Sedg-
wick wrote: "For the army, I found them in as sad,
deplorable, and distracted a condition as can be thought of.
As to the commanders, some have quitted the islands, some
have died, some are sick, and others in indifferent health;
of the soldiers, many are dead; and their carcases are
lying unburied every where in the highways and among
the bushes. Many that are alive appear as ghosts ; and as
I went through the town, they lay groaning and crying
out, 'Bread, for the Lord's sake!' The truth is, when I
first set my foot on land, I saw nothing but symptoms of
necessity and desolation. I found the shore strewed with
variety of casks, hogsheads, puncheons, barrels, chests, and
the like, and several dry goods belonging to the state,
such as linens, shirts and drawers, shoes, stockings, hats,
* Calendar, ut supra, 2,2-2, 223.
176 General Robert Sedgwick
armour, arms, and nails, with many other things, lying
without any shelter, exposed to all the damage that sun
or rain could do to them, and to the theft or rapine of
either soldiers or strangers, who without question embez-
zled most of them." Moreover, he found that the soldiers,
evidently the tractable part of them, were most unwilling
to be settled where they were, and hoped that the Protector
would weary of his design and abandon the island.*
In the same month of October a regiment commanded
by Col. Humphrey had arrived, having 831 young
healthy able-bodied men; in less than a month fifty of
their number, including five officers, had been buried;
Fortescue also had died. "Jesuits' bark" was unknown
then, and the remedy applied for malaria and dysentery
was bleeding, which, we are told, not much to our surprise,
"seldom failed of making the complaint more obstinate,
if not mortal."
On the 1 4th of November, Sedgwick wrote to the Com-
missioners of the Admiralty, first describing the desolate
condition of things in words such as those just quoted,
and then making this report of his action in one matter
of importance: "As to the wines arrived in Capt.
Crowden's ship, I have disposed of 60 butts to the army
and 170 to the fleet; the fleet had no need of them, but
how to dispose of them better we knew not." Then he
fell to moralizing: "What God will do with us here I
cannot tell. He at present seems highly displeased, and
shatters and breaks us to pieces, and in destroying goes
on to destroy us, but I hope will spare and pity a poor
* Long, i. 244, 245.
General Robert Sedgwick 177
simple people." Then he tells how the conduct of soldiers
and sailors distressed him. "This kind of marooning,
cruizing, West India trade of plundering and burning of
towns, though it hath been long practised in these parts,
yet is not honourable for a princely navy, neither was it
I think the work designed, though even if it may be toler-
ated at present." And for himself, though he had built
a house and was at work on a fort at the harbor's mouth,
he begs that his recall may be hastened, his constitution,
as he puts it, not agreeing well with this climate, which
he fears he shall not long trouble. In another letter
written the same day, he tells of the terrible sickness and
loss of life by the flux, saying that since his arrival 700
men had been laid in their graves and that the greater
part of those who survived were sick.*
In another communication Sedgwick tells of the rav-
ages committed in the island by the English soldiers. They
have killed, he says, 20,000 head of cattle, and destroyed all
the fruit and provision that came to their hand : "nothing
but ruin attends them wherever they go. The army claim
all the ground about the town; so that there is great
difficulty to accommodate five or six poor planters with
a little land. The men desire either to be employed in arms,
or sent home again ; dig or plant they will not, but would
rather starve than work." And we have further testimony
to the same effect from the Vice- Admiral : "They will
not now be persuaded to do any thing toward their bellies
or their security, except to fetch provender for the
magazine; so that if the magazine fails, they must
* Calendar, 236.
178 General Robert Sedgwick
inevitably perish. For the cattle, such of them as were
left in any degree tame have all been killed ; few or none
are left; and some regiments have tasted no flesh for a
long time, except that of horses, dogs, cats, and the like."*
Again, Sedgwick writes to Thurloe: "There are two
things principally enjoined by his Highness to the army,
fortification and planting. Should I give you a character
of the dispositions and qualifications of our army in
general (some few particulars excepted), I profess my
head would grieve to write, as it doth to think of them.
I believe they are not to be paralleled in the world ; a people
so lazy and idle, as it cannot enter into the heart of any
Englishman, that such blood should run in the veins of any
born in England ; so unworthy, slothful, and basely secure ;
and have out of a strange sort of spirit, desired rather to
die than live. The commanders and officers allege that the
soldiers will not plant, when it is certain they are not will-
ing the soldiers should plant, but still stand gaping to
go off the island, as after a gaol-delivery, and you may
be confident there will be little done in that way by this
sort of people. Such kind of spirit breathing in English-
men I yet till now never met with !"f
Such was the condition of things with the few inhabit-
ants left on the island, some 2,500 soldiers, who might have
been effective if they could have been kept from sickness
and idleness, and the small body of men who had come
with the general from New England; and such was the
report of affairs which reached the home authorities.
"The Protector," says the somewhat cynical historian of
* Long, i. 248, 250. f Long, i. 254, 255.
General Robert Sedgwick 179
Jamaica, "rebuked the vices of the soldiers with the solemn
air of a rigid divine." He was not inattentive, he con-
fesses, to the welfare of either their souls or their bodies ;
but he rightly judged that immorality was a principal
cause of their utter neglect of both. To attempt an
improvement of their condition, seven ministers at dif-
ferent times were sent to live with them and labor among
them, but six of these had either fallen in the common
mortality or returned, discouraged and broken down, to
England.
When Sedgwick came to Jamaica it does not appear that
he had any other than his ordinary military authority.
In process of time, however, there came from the govern-
ment in England a document bearing date October loth,
1655 (O. S.), addressed to Major-General Richard
Fortescue, Vice- Admiral William Goodson, Major Robert
Sedgwick, Daniel Searle, and Stoakes, under
the title of "Commissioners for governing our affairs in
Jamaica," the tenor of which is presented in this form.
They were "to secure by the best means the interests of
this Commonwealth in Jamaica, to endeavor the promulga-
tion of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and the power
of true religion and holiness, and the suppression of
idolatry, popery, superstition, and prophaneness, and to set
apart to that purpose from what shall come into their
hands upon the public account as they should find neces-
sary. And whereas we are informed of the horrible
prophaneness and wickedness of very many of the soldiers
and others belonging to the army, whereby the Lord hath
been justly provoked to leave us a reproval to our enemy
180 General Robert Sedgwick
at Hispaniola," they were "to use endeavors and to bear
witness effectually against the same." It was also declared
that the government had resolved to use all possible
endeavors to people and plant Jamaica, and to that pur-
pose had dispatched Daniel Gookin to New England with
instructions to make propositions to those who might be
inclined to remove thither, and in fact to urge them to do
so, and to conclude agreements with them.*
On the same day, October loth, instructions were sent
to Richard Fortescue, under the title of "Major-General
of the forces in America," to fortify especially the harbor
of St. Jago. He was reminded that supplies of men and
provisions had been sent him at the beginning of July last
with Major Robert Sedgwick, and he was bidden to use
his power and instructions according to his strength and
ability.
When the commission, with its solemn words and its
impracticable plans, reached the island, we do not know.
It must have been followed soon, apparently in the spring
of 1656, by an order to Sedgwick to take "the sole and
supreme command." This order from the Protector came
to a man "sick of his charge, wearied out with the
refractory temper of the army and the unprosperous con-
dition of the colony, and impatient to be recalled pur-
suant to his repeated applications. So undesirable a pre-
ferment"— I am using the words of the historian from
whom I have quoted before — "was not more welcome to
him than a death warrant. In short, when he reflected
on the impossibility of his fulfilling the Protector's inten-
* Calendar, 232.
General Robert Sedgwick 181
tions with such miserable instruments, of whose unfitness
for such a work he was fully sensible after a tedious and
irksome experience, and perceived how much the Protector
relied upon his single ability, he could not conquer his
diffidence, and the chagrin so deeply preyed upon his
spirits as to overwhelm him with melancholy."*
On the 3Oth of April, Captain William Godfrey wrote
from the Marmaduke that he was remaining on board the
vessel, "conceiving it is merely for the accommodation of
Commissioner Sedgwick who hath continued always on
board."f Vice- Admiral William Goodson (who was, it
will be remembered, one of the Commissioners appointed
in the preceding October), writing home a month later,
and complaining of the badness of the bread shipped in old
liquor casks, and of the great increase of vermin, and of
the lack of carpenters, notes that on the 23d day of May
he found Major-General Sedgwick very sick and that on
the following day "by the pale hand of death, they
were deprived of him"; he adds: "he truly feared God,
was of singular use in his work, and was generally beloved
by the soldiery." This latter statement is all the more
weighty when we remember how the deceased general had
been tried by the conduct of the soldiers and had opposed
their indolence and their seditious designs. In fact, he
had set himself against the officers as well as the men of
the rank and file; for when he and the Vice- Admiral had
united in an exhortation to the army, proposing an allot-
ment of land, the officers had opposed the acceptance of
the plan. But that he was truly mourned and that his
* Long, i. 257. f Calendar, 256.
1 82 General Robert Sedgwick
memory was honored by those whose slothfulness and
neglect had broken down his courage, there can be no
doubt. I quote again from the historian: "The general
regret which appeared in the fleet and army in consequence
of this event was a clear indication of his worth. The
honesty of his heart, the mildness of his disposition, his
gentleness of manners, and his competence of understand-
ing, qualified him to have been a most amicable governor
over any well settled and established colony. But he
wanted that severity, firmness, and fire, which were
requisite to subdue and awe the stubborn, restive, and
insolent spirits that had long distracted the army in
Jamaica, and which grew more intractable the less they
were controlled with a vigorous discipline."*
Thus his useful life came to an end in a strange land,
amidst utter discouragement and every appearance of
failure in a work against which he protested, but which
he attempted to discharge from a sense of duty. We do
well to remember his life with its episodes of service at
home and in England, against the Dutch and the French,
and finally on behalf of England against some of her sons
who were unworthy of her.
Robert Sedgwick's descendants of his name include
Theodore Sedgwick, a native of Hartford, statesman and
patriot in the time of the Revolution, Speaker of the
national House of Representatives and President pro
tempore of the Senate, and Judge of the Supreme Court of
Massachusetts. One of his sons, a lawyer, secured the
* Long, i. 257, 258.
General Robert Sedgwick 183
charter for a railroad across the Berkshires, and another,
also learned in law, acquired fame as an author, though
their sister, Maria, is probably better known to-day than
either of her brothers. Theodore Sedgwick of the third
generation also held an honored place in the world of juris-
prudence and letters. Another descendant, John Sedg-
wick, who was born in Cornwall in this State in 1813 and
was graduated at West Point, served his country faith-
fully in a campaign against the Indians in Florida, in the
Mexican War, and later in the War of the Rebellion ; after
showing great bravery and inspiring great confidence and
affection, he lost his life at Spottsylvania Court House in
1864.
John Leverett, companion and friend of Robert Sedg-
wick, himself later made a major-general, and Governor
of Massachusetts in the time of King Philip's War, married
Sarah, General Sedgwick' s daughter. Their daughter
Ann married John Hubbard, son of Rev. William Hub-
bard the historian, who was a member of the first class
graduated at Harvard College; and their daughter
Rebecca married Rev. John Hart, the first person educated
at the Collegiate School in Saybrook, now Yale College,
who received a degree from it. Thus the line of descent
reaches two great Universities and two States of a great
Union.
A few words may be added as to the after condition
of the island where Sedgwick fell the victim of a broken
heart. Cromwell tried in vain to persuade the colonists
on the continent to remove to Jamaica. The New Eng-
184 General Robert Sedgwick
landers politely but firmly refused to go, giving as their
excuse "the prophaneness of the soldiery, the great
mortality in the islands, and the continual hazard to the
lives of any peaceful settlers there from the skulking
negroes and Spaniards." We read of a vote of the English
Council to list a thousand girls and as many young men in
Ireland to assist in peopling the colony. Then, in 1674,
when by a treaty between Charles II. and the States of
Holland, the English gave Surinam in exchange for New
York, the English planters with their negroes, about 1,200
in all, were removed to Jamaica; twenty-five years later
the Scotch settlers on the isthmus of Darien were com-
pelled to leave that place, and a ' considerable part found
new abodes in the same island; and to them were added
some settlers from Barbados. Jamaica had a regular
government with an elective council, which was established
in 1 66 1 and continued more than two centuries, until in
1866 it became a crown colony. But the history has been
uneventful, and the island is best known for its place in
the commercial world as a source of supply for the fruit
markets of colder climes.
ON COLONIAL LITERATURE
PROF. BARRETT WENDELL
I HOUGH the literature of those colonial days
from which we all spring was copious,
it either always lacked or has long since
lost the quality which we are pleasantly disposed to
associate with copiousness. I hope I do not seem
wanting in loyalty to the pious memory of our ancestors
when I admit that, after years of experience, I have never
found their utterances precisely refreshing. Of course,
one may find quaint phrases among them — President
Stiles's reflection on assuming the sovereignty of Yale, for
example, who held that "at best, the diadem of a Presi-
dent is a crown of thorns." But I grow with the years
less and less apt to delight in the unmeant oddities of
others, and of other times. You cannot quite understand
anything, no doubt, unless you can see the fun of it; but
when you take to making fun of it, there begins to arise
a question as to whether you can understand it at all. For
understanding must mean sympathy.
To sympathize with the two men who attained literary
eminence in colonial America — Cotton Mather and Jona-
than Edwards — is not easy. One has only to remember
how they are commonly spoken of. Cotton Mather has
never been quite forgotten, but he is generally supposed
to have been a malignant old person whose favorite diver-
sion was the burning of witches. Jonathan Edwards is
far more clearly remembered; yet people seem apt to
imagine him in a condition of life-long satisfaction over
the circumstance that mankind in general — from which
group they suppose him to have held himself excluded —
1 88 On Colonial Literature
are inevitably bound for damnation; and therefore that
the saints may presently take such joy in their writhings
as Romans used to take in holidays which earthly
saints were occasionally butchered to make. There could
be few more unworthy caricatures of either Mather
or Edwards ; but the caricatures are not mine. They have
misshapen themselves in the fancy of unsympathetic
posterity.
Posterity is not without some palliative excuse. The
times are long past when most native Yankees can share
the favorite joy of old John Cotton, who loved to sweeten
his mouth with a piece of Calvin before he went to bed.
The letter of those old theologies so long ago cooled itself
about the spirit that many honest folks can find in them
only fantastic monstrosities, hardly more spiritual than
the shadowy things you can see for a dollar if you choose
to amuse yourself by visiting a materializing medium.
The wonder of it is that, beneath those fading pages which
we are prone to neglect or to reject, there should still glow
any true spirit at all. Yet a spirit does glow there, I think,
and glow — in its own peculiar way — immortally. It is a
spirit, too, which can teach a lesson to us all, even though
men like me, when nurtured in all the traditional heresies
of Harvard, cannot share the faith which brought it into
being.
For, after all, the faiths of mankind have always been,
and must always be, like men themselves, mortal things.
Now and again, men and generations face for themselves
the mysteries of life and of eternity, of the trivial things
we may know and of the infinities everywhere beyond
On Colonial Literature 189
them. These infinite mysteries men strive to imprison in
some forms of words. Each such form throbs at first with
the life of the truth which it has embraced. Each such
form is presently stiffened into a limitation of that truth —
and so what was enlightening becomes bewildering and
distorting. The gospels of mankind, for all the divinity
that is in them, must finally nod into laws. And then, only
some fresh gospel can awaken them again — in the full
new light whereof it is not always given to us to see that
there was even light before.
As I write such words as these, there comes to me a
sense of dismay. This is not the kind of thing which
hospitable people expect after dinner. It would be quite
fair that by this time some of my hosts should have begun
to wonder whether there may not be at hand something
more or less in the nature of a pulpit where I might con-
veniently be invited to deliver myself of what further
heretical eloquence I may have in store. And yet I do not
see quite how else I could have intimated just what colonial
literature has come to mean for me.
It means, in the writings of its two real masters, a brave
assertion of the faith that was in them. And that faith,
stripped of all its technicalities, seems to me the most
courageous assertion in human record of one immutable
aspect of truth — an aspect, too, which the commonplaces
of our triumphant democracy have been disposed to ignore
or even to deny. Let your standard, whatever it be, have
in it any trace of true ideals; and the men you measure
by it — all but a few — must always be found utterly want-
ing. In spite of that, whoever has true spirit in him will
never cease to strive toward excellence.
190 On Colonial Literature
The chances, he knows, are myriads that he can never
attain it. Until it be attained, he knows, too, there is
nothing in his whole being worth respect except that he
will not relax his effort, and all the while he knows that
he is doomed to make this effort in a world where most
men do and for ever shall relax theirs. The human race,
a punning class-mate of mine once said, is bad sport to
watch; the devil takes too many of the hindmost, and
all the rest are out of sight. So be it, those wonderful old
Puritan fathers said, in that very different dialed of
theirs: that is no reason why we should not strive for
excellence, and admit excellence; nor is it any reason why
we should deny the solemn fact that incalculably most of
us can never come near the excellence we strive for.
They phrased all this in the terms of their theologies.
To me it phrases itself, as you see, in terms so different that
they would doubtless have pronounced my utterances
damnable. Yet I like to fancy that at heart I grow nearer
to them with the passing years. For, if I am not all in
error, it is their courageous assertion of excellence which
still saves our country from yielding itself up to vulgariz-
ing falsehood of equality, mouthed for a century by the
gallicized commonplaces of unbridled democracy. And if
such brotherhoods as this, to which all of us ancestrally
belong, have any meaning, that meaning is that, through-
out the generations to come, amid we know not what alien
invaders and even conquerors, we may still assert the
highest native ideal of our own America — that ideal of
excellence which once gave true vitality to colonial
literature.
TWO COLONIAL AMERICANS
PROF. WILLIAM LYON PHELPS
[I STORY is always most interesting when
it is studied in the concrete. In the lives
of two great Colonial Americans every dis-
tinctive trait of American character, not only of the
early times, but of modern days, may be clearly seen.
These two men are Jonathan Edwards and Benjamin
Franklin. They were the exact counterpart of each other ;
one had all that the other did not have. They form a
most instructive and really dramatic contrast. They were
strictly contemporaries, Edwards having been born in the
year 1703 and Franklin in 1706. Edwards died in 1758,
and Franklin in 1790, so that you see how far the man
of the world outlived the man of God. Although both of
them were born in New England, their intellectual lives
were as far asunder as the East is from the West.
Edwards' father and grandfather were clergymen; he
himself was a graduate of Yale; a college tutor; a preacher
in New York and in Northampton; a missionary to the
Indians, not in Oklahoma, but in Massachusetts; and
finally after leaving Yale he became president of Prince-
ton College. He died there in a very short time.
At the age of ten years he wrote an essay ridiculing the
materialistic conception of the soul. After reaching man-
hood he spent thirteen hours a day in his study; his fav-
orite studies being logic, philosophy and metaphysics —
the same that the poet Milton, for some reason, has
assigned to the more intellectual devils as a pastime in
hell:
13
194 Two Colonial Americans
"Others apart sat on a hill retired,
In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high,
Of Providence, Fore-knowledge, Will and Fate —
Fixt Fate, free-will, fore-knowledge absolute —
And found no end, in wandering mazes lost."
Edwards' Resolutions and his Diary show his constant
introspection. In those days everybody wrote resolutions
and everybody kept a diary. He was burdened with that
terrible conviction of sin which, in Colonial days, pro-
duced so much mental anguish and such rock-like stability
of character ; which formed so large a part of the make-up
of the Puritan, but which to-day in many quarters is not
even understood. His outward life was uneventful, but
his spiritual life was a succession of hills and valleys ; the
sloughs of despond alternating with the delectable moun-
tains from which he had glimpses of the glories of the
saints of God. I read a short extract from his diary,
descriptive of his conception of the heavenly state :
"My support was in contemplations of the heavenly state, as I
find in my diary for May i, 1723. It was a comfort to think of
that state where there is fulness of joy; where reigns heavenly,
calm and delightful love, without alloy; where there are con-
tinually the dearest expressions of this love; where those persons
who appear so lovely in this world will really be inexpressibly more
lovely and full of love to us. And how sweetly will the mutual
lovers join together to sing the praises of God and the Lamb. . .
I continued much in the same frame, in the general, as when at
New York, till I went to New Haven as tutor in the college. After
I went to New Haven I sunk in religion."
Two Colonial Americans 195
You see that in those days New Haven was as desper-
ately wicked a place as it is universally admitted to be
to-day.
Edwards was not only of a deeply religious nature,
which found its sole outlet in religious passion, but every-
thing that you and I love to-day in music, in art, in out-
door life and in nature found but one expression in him,
and that was religion. This was the passion of his life.
His religion was not only emotional; it was of
that high philosophic order which refuses to regard life
as a riddle except as a riddle to be solved. He was one
of the very few men (there are not perhaps more than
one in a hundred thousand) who demand and obtain
absolute intellectual satisfaction in their religious lives.
We observe him accordingly seeking and finding — what
so few human beings have found — perfect consistency in
his religious beliefs, with the full courage of his con-
victions. Most of us, in order to get something done,
are obliged to allow ideas that are not entirely consistent
to harmonize as best they can in our minds. It was not
so with Edwards. He denied the freedom of the will, to
fit the doctrine of predestination. The doctrine that the
majority of people were predestined to be damned went
down rather hard with Edwards, for he was by nature
kind and lovable, but so great was the influence of his logic
over his natural disposition that he finally not only
swallowed the tenet, but insisted that it was palatable
and declared "This doctrine has very often appeared to
me exceedingly pleasant, bright and sweet."
His sermons were not always eloquent like those of
196 Two Colonial Americans
Jeremy Taylor and Phillips Brooks, but they had the
eloquence of "deeply felt thought." His perfect calmness
in the pulpit, glacial manner, subdued tones and simple
language added intensity to his utterances. He described
the torments of the damned not in a magic lantern or melo-
dramatic manner, but simply as if he were explaining a
mathematical demonstration. His quiet demeanor wa's
ten-fold more impressive because it had the whole weight
of the man's sincerity behind it, so that for the moment it
seemed like absolute truth. In speaking upon "Sinners
in the hands of an angry God," after giving a most
lurid description of the terrible torments of the damned,
he said, "It would be a wonder if some that are now
present should not be in hell in a very short time, before
this year is out. And it would be no wonder if some per-
sons, that now sit here in some seats of this meeting-house,
in health and quiet, and secure, should be there before
to-morrow morning."
Edwards has often been criticised for preaching that
sermon. In my opinion he should be commended. He
believed absolutely in the truth of what he said; he
preached precisely what he believed and he preached
it with all his might. I suppose that if any one had said
to him, "Why, Mr. Edwards, if we are all predestined
to be damned or to be saved what is the use of your preach-
ing," he would have replied, "And I am predestined to
preach."
Edwards was undoubtedly the greatest metaphysician
this country ever produced; but perhaps he was greatest
as an ancestor. As a philosopher he sometimes repelled,
Two Colonial Americans 197
but as an ancestor he was a conspicuous success, with the
exception that he was the grandfather of Aaron Burr —
but I do not hold him entirely accountable for his grand-
son. I think that to have had Edwards for a father would
have been a little strong, would have brought one too close
to the fire, but to have had him five or six removes away
would have been like having very desirable tonic-iron in
the blood. He did inculcate upon the people of his day,
to a large extent, a consciousness of conviction of sin, a
passion for righteousness and a degree of real and genuine
piety.
We learn of the chief fads of interest about Edwards'
life and his traits of mind and heart from his writings;
and the same may be said of Franklin, whose auto-
biography is as cheerfully candid as Pepys' Diary, and
was written not in cipher but openly, and addressed to
his illegitimate son. As Edwards represented the relig-
ious, Calvinistic, Puritanical side of Colonial life and
thought which is still prominent in American character,
Franklin represented the typical Yankee shrewdness, hard
common sense, practical judgment and caution ; which are
also striking qualities in the American of the twentieth
century. These two men are the two great sides of
Colonial life and thought, and each is a complement of the
other. A careful study of each man's life brings out every
important trait in our modern American character.
The late George W. Curtis said of Franklin's auto-
biography that it had all the attractiveness of the story
of Robinson Crusoe. What is the secret of its charm? I
think it is simply that, in reading the autobiography, we
198 Two Colonial Americans
are listening to the talk of an interesting old man. You
remember the beautiful conversation between Socrates and
the old man, with which Plato opens "The Republic" ;
wherein the aged person is told, "You know you will have
to die soon," and he is asked, "How do you feel about
it — do you regret the loss of physical prowess, the passions
of youth," and so on. One of the greatest pleasures in life
is to sit down and talk with an old man who has lived a
varied, active, useful life, and whose mind is still clear.
From such a source one gets wisdom at the fountain head
and gets it freely because old men are usually glad to talk
to younger persons.
In the very beginning of his book Franklin makes a
statement which I regard as most impressive, and I think
it affords a key to his character. I refer to his declaration
of his willingness to live his life over again. Though a
man of extraordinary experience, he was never pessimistic
nor cynical; never excitable, nervous or hysterical, but
always hopeful about the future, unlike so many old men
who believe that everything is going to the bad. It is
his individuality that makes the book so charming; since
his other writings, interesting as they are, lack this dis-
tinctive feature. I repeat that, wholly apart from his
genius, versatility, force and tact, there was a peculiar
personal charm about Franklin, one to which all his
acquaintances testified. A magnetic man, he talked freely
all his life, but he never bored anybody. What a splendid
testimonial that would be upon any man's tombstone, "He
never bored anybody !" I think that a man of whom that
can be truthfully said deserves a place in the front rank
of the celestial choir.
Two Colonial Americans 199
Although Franklin wrote his autobiography many years
ago . it is peculiarly applicable and useful in practical
affairs to-day. Let me tell you of one instance in my
own experience. I was visiting friends in Detroit, and
after a three days' visit, concluded that it was time to
take my departure. My host insisted upon the visit being
prolonged; and, while we were discussing the subject,
I happened to pick up Franklin's "Poor Richard's
Almanac," and, opening it at random, read the following :
"Fish and visitors stink in three days." The suggestion
seemed opportune, and on the afternoon of the same
day I bade my friend adieu.
In reading the autobiography, even the most practical
and callous reader is impressed with the fact that one great
deficiency in it and in the character of its author is an utter
lack of spirituality. By that I do not mean that he was
merely not orthodox; I mean that he showed no ideal-
ization, no spiritual exaltation and no mental suffering.
In Edwards this quality was salient, supreme. The resolu-
tions written out by each show clearly a total difference
in emphasis and point of view. Edwards' resolutions show
his realization of his duty to God and his desire to please
Him. Franklin's resolutions pertain wholly to matters
of this world. In respect to temperance he says, "Eat not
to dullness, drink not to elevation." Concerning tranquil-
lity he says, "Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents
common or unavoidable." How fortunate should we be
if we really lived up to a resolution like that. It would
be better for us than if we were to receive a legacy of a
million dollars. Concerning frugality he says, "Make no
2oo Two Colonial Americans
expense but to do good to others or yourself; i. e., waste
nothing."
Edwards' favorite study was metaphysics, of which
Franklin said, "The great uncertainty I found in meta-
physical reasonings disgusted me, and I quitted that kind
of reading and study for others more satisfactory."
Franklin seemed to have no religious fear, neither
fear of God nor of hell nor indeed of anything
else. Edwards would lie awake all night thinking of some
imaginary sin he might have committed during the day.
Franklin, if he had sinned grossly, would merely make
an entry in his diary, "Another erratum," and proceed
with the day's work. A practical man, he reached
morality not by conversion or dogma, but by reason.
Though not spiritually strong, as Edwards was, Franklin
was a practical Christian; for, like the Master, he went
about doing good. He had faith in two things, in which,
I am afraid, the modern skeptic does not believe; he
believed in prayer and in Providence. He believed that
his own life had been divinely guided.
But the keynote to Franklin's character is the word
"curiosity," used in its highest sense — boundless,
unquenchable curiosity. Reverence he did not have; no
tradition or convention hampered him; he must inquire
into everything for himself. It was this quality that pro-
duced his great discoveries in electricity. They alone
would have made his name immortal, and yet they were
only the outcome of a Saturday half-holiday in his busy
life. The Franklin stove was another of his inventions.
He had noticed that while people's houses were properly
Two Colonial Americans 201
heated they were made uncomfortable by smoke, and he
remedied this condition by his invention. He also brought
into existence the Street Cleaning Department and the
Fire Department. He was practically the originator of
the Public Library. An immense number of municipal
improvements owe their origin to Benjamin Franklin.
To Franklin everything that he saw, from a thunderstorm
to a lamp-post, was a problem to be solved, and he worked
out the solution for the benefit of mankind. He devised
many small but valuable improvements. Many of you
gentlemen to-night are wearing spectacles with double
lenses. It is Franklin's invention.
Is Franklin's teaching of economy petty and mean?
Jefferson Davis said of him, "Franklin was the incarna-
tion of the peddling tuppenny Yankee." The answer to
this is to be found in a study of Franklin's life. No man
was more wisely generous, none more regular in his sub-
scriptions and none better cultivated the habit of cheer-
ful financial assistance. He realized that God loveth
the cheerful giver. Nor did his teaching have riches as
the goal of life; he never said, "Try to be as rich
as you can." His precept was, "Make sure that you
spend less than you receive." Why? So that you may
be independent, so that you may not become a burden to
your family or the community. Franklin gave of his
means, in private, with the same pleasure and alacrity with
which he made public contributions, and he also gave in
that way which was calculated to result in the greatest
good.
Franklin has often been called "the typical American,"
2O2 Tivo Colonial Americans
but there is one American peculiarity that he did not
possess, and that is nervousness — "Americanitis." He
had the temperament of a Dutchman. It was his tranquil
way of doing things that enabled him to accomplish such
an enormous amount of work. I do not know how it is
in Philadelphia, but in New Haven many people are
troubled with nervous prostration, and it seems to be a
national characteristic. You cannot imagine Franklin
with nervous prostration.
Franklin's knowledge of the problems of the future is
one of the most conspicuous features of his career. I will
merely mention two things, one of less consequence and
the other of international importance. He urged that all
school children should be taught to write with both hands.
We know that that has been recently discussed in England
as a very necessary accomplishment. I have never met
but one person who could write equally well with both
hands. The thing of big importance was arbitration.
Franklin declared that "all wars are follies," that they
are very expensive and very mischievous. "When will
mankind be convinced of this, and agree to settle their
differences by arbitration?" We cannot to-day claim to
be wholly civilized while we still believe in war.
It has often been said of Franklin that the lesson of
his life shows what genius can do. He was one of the
greatest geniuses who ever appeared. I think he was
the greatest in the history of the western hemisphere.
Those of you who care to figure upon heredity will remem-
ber that Robert Burns was the son of a common plowman,
that Keats and Carlyle were of humble origin. Franklin
Two Colonial Americans 203
was one of seventeen children, of whom, except two, he
was the youngest. Neither his father nor mother nor any
of his brothers or sisters exhibited any traits of genius,
yet Benjamin Franklin became, in the language of Mat-
thew Arnold, "the greatest of all Americans." The wind
bloweth where it listeth, and nobody can explain why, in
that Boston family of seventeen children, the inspiration
of genius was given to but one alone. Franklin stood the
test of comparison with the best men of the earth. Like
Abraham Lincoln, his practical judgment in an emergency
was almost infallible. Although in his youth he had no
formal education, he early displayed qualities of the high-
est statesmanship. When he went to Paris he came in
competition, as a diplomat, with men who themselves and
whose fathers and grandfathers had been trained in
diplomacy ; yet he, an uneducated Yankee, proved himself
the greatest diplomat of them all and was so regarded
by them. He was a great scientist before there was any
organized science. His statesmanship was surpassed by
no contemporary in the world. One of the most popular
American books was written by him. He is the only
American who signed all four of those immortal docu-
ments, the Declaration of Independence, the French Treaty
of Alliance, the Treaty of Peace and the United States
Constitution. He was the most useful man of his age.
In municipal affairs he was a tower of strength — a
multitudinous blessing. If Jonathan Edwards were alive
to-day he would make a superb president for a theological
seminary. If Benjamin Franklin were alive to-day he
would make a splendid Mayor of New York City.
2O4 Two Colonial Americans
Let us hope that the American of the immediate future
will be, as I believe he will be, a happy union of the
qualities of these two great men. Let us hope it may be
common for an American to have the sincere piety of
Edwards, his religious earnestness and his passion for
righteousness, and also the tolerance, the intelligence, the
capacity for usefulness and the hard common sense of
Benjamin Franklin.
REMINISCENCES OF A COLLECTOR
GEORGE S. PALMER, ESQ.
HE desire for the strange, unusual and rare —
the predatory instinct which lures the huntsman
to infinite fatigue for the scanty rewards of the
chase, the vanity and conceit of exclusive possession —
veneration of the past expressed by reverence for its
remains; the craving to perfect a series of types to form
a rounded whole, love of the beautiful and wish to infuse
others with that love by juxtaposition of many beautiful
objects — these are a few of the attributes of human nature
which are found in the make-up of the true collector.
The prevalence of this instinct may easily be traced
through all grades of civilization back to the savage who,
if too poor to gather together other curiosities, is usually
found with a unique collection of wives.
In early times collections of precious objects were
largely made to denote wealth and political importance, or,
as now in India, for investment. Vast quantities of treas-
ure in gold and silver, costly trappings and especially
gems are hoarded by the rich men of the East to serve
as available funds in case of need. A rich Parsee recently
told me that ten per cent, of his income was annually
invested in precious stones. So had his ancestors done
for many years, and the shrewdness of their policy is
proven by the continual rise in value of such property.
However, the commercial aspect of collecting, even if
sometimes profitable, is not altogether pleasing, and we
turn with interest to that old Roman collector whose pas-
sion sprang from love of the beautiful and aesthetic
interest — evidenced by every piece of his collection of
208 Reminiscences of a Collector
antique silver, now one of the chief ornaments of the
Louvre.
Living at Bosco Reale in a fine villa upon the slopes
of Vesuvius, halfway between Pompeii below and the
summit, overlooking a region of such enchanting loveliness
as to be justly called Parthenope, picture his feeling of
anxious horror upon that fateful day in the year 79 as
he saw the heavens darken and felt the strange rain of
ashes enveloping him. We know that he did not lose his
self-possession, for his first thought was of his beloved
old silver things — antiques even at that time, of various
lands and marked of many makers. Carefully he gathered
them together, protected them from the ashes, ready to
take them with him if he had to go — he went — they
remained. Doubtless some sudden downpour of mud or
stones forced a hasty departure. We sympathize with his
loss and regret that he could not know that his loving
interest in fine old things has resulted in preserving for
us a hundred pieces of artistic silver work illustrating in
a quite unique way various phases of ancient domestic
life.
The Roman generals brought back from their conquests
the spoils of the Ancient World — in part to magnify their
triumphs but chiefly to adorn the public buildings of Rome
and those splendid villas in its environs — whence so many
choice works of antiquity have been recovered.
The Romans must have developed some famous col-
lectors, for we read of rare tables costing tens of thousands
of our dollars, and find the satiric writers ridiculing such
extravagance.
Reminiscences of a Collector 209
More than a thousand years later, when the Italian
despots had created oases of comparative stability amid
the general turmoil of Italy, they became enthusiastic col-
lectors and ransacked every nook and corner of the penin-
sula for antiques. It is not too much to assert that the
collections of ancient manuscripts, coins, medals, statues,
and other remains of antiquity they brought together were
largely responsible for the mighty creative impulses of the
Italian Renaissance.
Later Francis I. and Charles V. worked to the same
ends for France and Spain.
The spirit of collecting sped to the North and, in 1700,
we find Augustus the Strong of Saxony bringing together
at Dresden that marvelous assemblage of pictures and
works of art which will forever make his name honored
by those who love the beautiful.
Even Napoleon found time to gratify this side of his
nature and collected at Paris the finest works in painting
and sculpture filched without compunction from the
museums of conquered cities to which, after his downfall,
they were, however, reluctantly restored.
It is an interesting fact that many of the famous col-
lectors of old were preeminently men of action — men of
strenuous lives, whose work and thought were apparently
far removed and even hostile to that habit of reflection
and close observation necessary to enjoy artistic excellence.
Doubtless they were fascinated by the very contrast
between the stress of their world of action and the calm
of that world of art they occasionally entered.
So in modern times collectors are generally men of
14
2io Reminiscences of a Collector
engrossing activities, like Gladstone, Thiers, or with us
J. P. Morgan, J. J. Hill, C. T. Yerkes, and many others.
Those unthinking persons who accuse Americans of
loving no art but that traced by the geometric lathe upon
our currency have little conception of the intelligent
interest, patient effort and liberal expenditure scores of
our countrymen are devoting to the accumulation and
exhibition of the finest works of art of every kind. Much
of this work is so recent, many of the collections are so
new, that they are not well known. The exportation of
so many treasures is already exciting deprecatory com-
ment in Europe, but we can but rejoice at the improve-
ment of general taste and the stimulating effect upon our
native artists, surely consequent upon their presence in
our country.
Pardon me for dragging in such great names into an
informal talk more or less about myself. I do it not for
association or comparison, but to use them as vindicators
or apologists for my own acquisitive habits.
The true collector is constantly in a state of apologetic
contrition for undue indulgence in his inebriating passion.
Like the toper who imagines the whole world reeling while
he alone is still, so the collector is sure that his reason has
dictated the purchase and that his prize is a great bargain,
until some unsympathizing friend brings him to task with
cold arithmetic. His hope is to breathe only the atmos-
phere of his own enthusiasm and never to exhaust it.
Twenty-five years ago, when I began to purchase house-
hold articles, a friend suggested to me that old things
were better made than new — more attractive in form, not
more expensive, and salable with much less loss.
Reminiscences of a Collector 211
Taking his advice made me a collector. Possession of a
few old things stimulated the desire for many. The
various impulses noted above, growing veneration of the
past, an appreciation of the sentiment with which long use
envelops even ordinary things, desire to illustrate fully
certain phases of eighteenth century life in England and
the Colonies ; these are some of the influences which have
caused me to find a part of my recreation in rescuing from
ignorant and unsympathetic hands the quaint and beautiful
heirlooms of our forefathers.
I fully realize the dangers which beset our calling — the
tendency toward narrowness which specialization breeds —
jealousy and envy of richer or more fortunate rivals, greed
and conceit of possession — warped conception of the beau-
tiful and the truly artistic and general abnormality of feel-
ing and reasoning regarding our collected treasures.
However, I trust that these baleful tendencies are merely
weeds in those fields of asphodel through which the true
collector is always sauntering, rejoicing in prizes found,
enthusiastic in hope of others soon to appear, constantly
enlarging his knowledge of human nature, delving deeply
into historical studies and seeking to recreate the personal
and domestic aspects of a life which has passed away, by
assembling such relics of it as may exist. We may best
learn how to live by learning how the best have lived.
Nothing better illustrates the life of the past than the
materials of living which the past has left. The collector
is a valuable expounder of history.
Pursuing my subject in lighter vein, I should like to
relate a few experiences to indicate the dilemmas which
212 Reminiscences of a Collector
collectors frequently must face and incidentally to illus-
trate the wide variety of tactful qualities required success-
fully to master them.
Writers upon Colonial themes have dwelt upon the wide
variation in personal characteristics between the early New
England settlers and those of Maryland, Virginia and the
South. They contrast the narrow, hard-headed, earnest,
patient, God-fearing, simple-living Puritan with the dash-
ing cavalier — full of adventure, courageous, generous,
hospitable, elemental in passions, of riotous life and
profane speech.
The descendants of both may well allow that in the
final weighing neither can claim the balance of good,
but, as I recently had good occasion to note, heredity has
not failed to preserve the striking differences in modes of
thought and manner of expression so marked of old. Hav-
ing found out that a descendant of a very old Maryland
family had in her possession a magnificent silver cup — an
ancient heirloom so ample in size and so rich in workman-
ship as to be in itself an epitome of the luxurious old Mary-
land life — and having sought and obtained permission to see
it, picture me in the presence of the august owner, holding
the precious cup, gently caressing its surface and noting
its marks, with my mind half absorbed in forming a judg-
ment as to its genuineness and half in trying to formulate
a delicate tactful inquiry as to a possible sale. The stately
dame of fifty whose azure blood had been strained through
the veins of a score of aristocratic ancestors, shattered my
reverie by exclaiming: "It seems to me you are damned
slow. Why in hell don't you make me an offer?"
Reminiscences of a Colleclor 213
I had never before heard a lady swear. My tongue
was paralyzed ; fortunately relief came in a remark which
quickly followed — "The fact is, Mr. Palmer, I am damned
hard up and must have a certain sum of money." With
a person so sincere and candid bargaining was easy and
the sale was soon made.
I failed to discover any regret at parting with the grand
ancestral relic, but the touch of pathos seldom absent from
such transactions was immediately felt when the good
woman was asked to give up an old silver teapot which
she and her husband had found when travelling together
a few years before. So true is it that heirlooms, how-
ever splendid, from remote or unknown ancestors are
wont merely to minister to family pride without stirring
the emotions, while objects associated with those dear to
us excite and retain our liveliest affection.
It is not often, however, that a great prize falls to the
collector with so little mental effort. Occasionally indeed
are demanded a fertility of resource — a tact, a strategic
fervor and diplomatic qualities worthy of higher ends.
The truth of the following tale is vouched for by a busi-
ness rival of the hero and therefore must not be ques-
tioned. A London dealer in antiques having learned that
a certain nobleman had a fine collection of old things and
incidentally that he was somewhat cramped for ready
money, and realizing that a direct proposal to buy would
be indignantly rejected, hit upon the following ingenious
plan to accomplish his purpose.
Clad in the height of fashion, he took care to saunter
through the nobleman's grounds along the border of a
214 Reminiscences of a Collector
lake at a time when other guests would be near by. As a
group approached him, throwing up his hands with a great
cry he fell headlong into the lake. Of course they ran
to his assistance, dragged his apparently unconscious body
from the water, bore it to the palace and worked over it
until consciousness seemed to return. During a purposely
prolonged convalescence the dealer had opportunity to
meet his victim, and possessing cha'rming manners, he soon
convinced him that by replacing his antiques with copies
and selling the originals he could relieve his financial
embarrassment without hurt to his pride. Before the
dealer departed he had a bill of sale of the whole collection.
In general the collector must be content to see his
treasures accumulate piecemeal, one from this unexpected
place, another at that unexpected time, and hard
enough is it sometimes to induce the possessor of
a single desirable piece to let go his hold. But at
rare intervals there come golden opportunities to those
who have the wit to seize them. Perhaps a collector him-
self becomes weary of the burden, or possibly by some
untoward incident, baulked in his intention to bestow his
things upon the public, is embittered by the recoil of his
generous impulse from unsympathetic recipience.
By happy inspiration rather than foresight, for I was
ignorant of the conditions, it was my fortune once to take
such a swelling tide at the very flood and bear to port in
a single venture sixty pieces of antique furniture. It is
but fair to state that I was piloted over many fearsome
rocks and shoals by a Boston legal friend, whose knowl-
edge of human foibles is equalled only by his skill in track-
ing choice antique bits to their hiding places.
Reminiscences of a Collector 215
In a neighboring Connecticut city ten years ago two
brothers, the remnant of their race, lived in hermit-like
seclusion in a home built by their ancestors a hundred
years before. One was seldom seen, and I suspect spent
most of his time doing the simple housework of the pair ;
the trade of the other, that of upholsterer, kept him some-
what in contact with the outer world. The latter had in
early life imbibed a strong passion for things of the olden
time and had gathered a large collection of unusual types
which he guarded with jealous care. Admittance to the
house was seldom granted and then most grudgingly. He
had never been known to sell a piece except one to me
sometime before ; but that misstep was fatal to him. The
thought suddenly struck me one day, buy his whole col-
lection, and the next morning accompanied by my friend
I was banging to and fro his disconnected door-pull. At
length we were admitted and straightway began our
attack by boldly stating that we wanted prices put upon
everything in the house. We had come to purchase the
whole. A fleeting smile, somewhat sad and almost ghastly
(for his face is always very pale), spread over his coun-
tenance, but he made no direct refusal, which to us was a
great encouragement.
We began talking of the value of specific pieces and
finally induced him to join us in deciding what each should
fetch in case he were to sell — although of course he had
no intention of parting with a single thing. Noon arriving
we adjourned to a recuperative luncheon and to take
counsel for a final assault. Apparently we had not
advanced a particle, yet in both the faith was strong that
216 Reminiscences of a Collector
a determined onset would make the citadel ours. During
the whole of that sultry summer day we labored. Having
appraised the contents of every room we were allowed
to enter, the gross total was found and a plump offer based
upon it was made. Oh, no, of course, he could not accept
it; if he sold (and of course he would not sell) he must
get the full amount. We renewed the attack, offered the
full amount and then found that the brother must be con-
sulted. A moment's respite refreshed our flagging
energies, and when he returned we bore down upon him
with every physical power and mental faculty we could
use. Hours rolled away. The sun set in a lurid sky,
darkness came on and still we were arguing, cajoling,
bargaining, scolding, apparently vainly dashing our brains
and nerves against a human wall of calm, smiling, exasper-
ating silence and absolutely undisturbed indifference. And
yet some inner monitor told us to persevere, and finally as
the light was fast failing my cousin thrust the paper before
him, I thrust the penholder between his fingers and he
signed. We caught the last freight train home.
When the antique lovers of that city saw the ancient
house disgorge its long concealed treasures they were sore
hurt and freely intimated that we had used Satanic arts
to obtain them. I confess that I was a bit disturbed myself,
but a careful search of my conscience in the light of sub-
sequent knowledge of the facts convinced me that, if
hypnotic influence were present upon that occasion, it
emanated from the seller and not from us. In truth both
were satisfied. No doubt some kindly telepathic agent
intimated to my subconscious self that the old man had
Reminiscences of a Collector 217
conceived the idea of a sale. The warmth and presence
of our eagerness merely forced that idea to germinate and
fruit with extraordinary speed. But otherwise we should
never have obtained his treasures — too many others were
slyly waiting for them. It afterward transpired that a
heavy sewer assessment, which he considered unjust,
caused his native city to lose the gift of his collection. .
There is a painful side to this subject which I should
gladly gloss over were not shadows needed to tone the
picture. I shall not dwell upon the dispersal of long prized
and laboriously gathered collections by death or pecuniary
reverse, nor more than mention the pitiful relinquishment
into stranger hands of cherished heirlooms by those who
can no longer afford to keep them; what I refer to are
the gross frauds and detestable chicanery practised by
dealers in antiques upon the trustful ignorance of unso-
phisticated purchasers. The temptation to exploit the
credulity or over wise conceit of his customers is too much
for the honesty of the average dealer ; and my experience
both in Europe and America forces me to the opinion that
with very rare exceptions there is no truth in them —
caveat emptor.
The disastrous consequences which result to a collector
with imperfect knowledge of his subject, or too great
reliance upon unscrupulous dealers, are strikingly shown in
the following experience — an experience which also served
to disclose to me some of the most curious foibles I have
found in a human nature.
Last year I learned that a very rich collector of antique
china and silver would sell some of his plate. By appoint-
218 Reminiscences of a Collector
ment I went to his magnificent mansion in Fifth Avenue,
New York, at nine o'clock one morning and was ushered
into a very lofty but very dark, chilly hall. Passing along, I
felt the air grow warmer and suddenly two red eyes glowed
at me. As I grew accustomed to the duskiness I realized
that I was near a common base-burning stove. That
house — a veritable palace — had no central heating appa-
ratus, and the icy chill of its sixty rooms was but slightly
tempered here and there by various cheap stoves with ugly
pipes leading into carved and decorated fireplaces.
Ascending a noble stairway and passing through a steel
door bristling with bolts, I found myself in a fire-proof
room surrounded with cases filled with large and sup-
posedly rare pieces of old English plate. The special
objects of my visit appeared to be genuine, and upon a
further examination and with expert advice I purchased
them, but of the great mass of huge pieces less than half
have been found original, and their disillusioned owner
has recently acknowledged that he has twenty specimens,
for which he has .paid over two thousand dollars apiece,
all of which are fakes. Over fifty rooms of that house are
filled with china and porcelain objects by the thousands.
I hope that no expert will ever be called in to separate the
chaff from the wheat ; the resulting shock would paralyze
their owner.
In bringing together specimens of English and Colonial
cabinet work and silver, the finest examples I have
had the opportunity of buying, I have been moved
by two purposes, one to furnish a home in a dis-
tinctive way, the other more serious and important,
Reminiscences of a Collector 219
namely, to demonstrate the but imperfectly and recently
realized artistic tastes of our forefathers. The earliest
settlers literally hewed their homes and their furniture out
of the primeval forests. They were dominated by a
religious enthusiasm which so colored their daily life and
so permeated their literature that later historians and
students, ignorant or careless of other data no less import-
ant in estimating their character, have pictured them as
cold, hard and stern, indifferent to comfort and even
hostile to luxury. But I do not believe that the icy blasts
of their theology chilled their domestic atmosphere nearly
as much as we have t>een taught to believe ; and the perusal
of old inventories, the reading of old letters, sketches of
travel, and the minor or more intimate records of their
lives, indicate a comfortable and abundant living and reveal
deep currents of feeling and sympathy, even if they ran
in narrow channels. Further, a careful study of the
domestic articles upon which they spent their skill and taste
makes it evident that in appreciation of beauty of form,
of that indefinable but attractive quality called quaintness,
of the dignity of simplicity, and in the power to combine
these qualities in an artistic way, our forefathers were far
and away our superiors. In the building of our houses,
the fashioning of our furniture, and the modeling of our
silver and metal work we are to-day recognizing the
superiority of their work by copying it.
COLONIAL TAXATION
WILLIAM H. CORBIN, ESQ.
JRITES John Fiske: "In that strangely beauti-
ful story, The Cloister and the Hearth/ in
which Charles Reade has drawn such a
vivid picture of human life at the close of the
Middle Ages, there is a good description of the
siege of a revolted town by the army of the Duke of
Burgundy. Arrows whiz, catapults hurl their ponder-
ous stones, wooden towers are built, secret mines are
exploded. The sturdy citizens, led by a tall knight who
seems to bear a charmed life, baffle every device of the
besiegers. At length the citizens capture the brother of
the duke's general, and the besiegers capture the tall
knight, who turns out to be no knight after all, but just
a plebeian hosier. The duke's general is on the point of
ordering the tradesman who has made so much trouble
to be shot, but the latter still remains master of the situa-
tion, for, as he dryly observes, if any harm comes to him,
the enraged citizens will hang the general's brother. Some
parley ensues, in which the shrewd hosier promises for
the townsfolk to set free their prisoner and pay a round
sum of money if the besieging army will depart and
leave them in peace. The offer is accepted, and so the
matter is amicably settled. As the worthy citizen is about
to take his leave the general ventures a word of inquiry
as to the cause of the town's revolt. 'What, then, is your
grievance, my good friend?' Our hosier knight, though
deft with needle and keen with lance, has a stammering
tongue. He answers: 'Tuta-tuta-tuta-tuta-too much
taxes.'
224 Colonial Taxation
" 'Too much taxes' ; those three little words furnish us
with a clue wherewith to understand and explain a great
deal of history. A great many sieges of towns, so horrid
to have endured though so picturesque to read about,
hundreds of weary marches and deadly battles, thousands
of romantic plots that have led their inventors to the
scaffold, have owed their origin to questions of taxation."
"The issue between the ducal commander and the
warlike tradesman has been tried over and over again in
every country and in every age, and not always has the
oppressor been so speedily thwarted and got rid of. The
questions as to how much the taxes shall be are always and
in every stage of society questions of most fundamental
importance. And ever since men began to make history,
a very large part of what they have done, in the way of
making history, has been the attempt to settle these ques-
tions, whether by discussion or by blows, whether in council
chambers or on the battlefield."
REVOLUTIONS
Nearly all the great political revolutions have been
brought about by the attempt to compel the people to con-
tribute their property in what seemed to them an unjust
way, such as the secession of the ten tribes in Jewish
history; the Peloponnesian war, and the Protestant
secession from the Catholic Church led by Luther.
Wat Tyler's rebellion in England in 1381 was caused
by the attempt to collect an unjust poll tax. The "misuse
of taxes" caused the uprisings against Henry VI. under
the leadership of Jack Cade.
Colonial Taxation 225
The overthrow of Charles I. and the establishment of
the constitutional rights of the English people was caused
by a question of taxation.
The French Revolution of 1789, the most terrible
political convulsion of modern times, was caused chiefly
by "too much taxes/' and by the fact that the people who
paid the taxes were not the people who decided what the
taxes were to be.
Our own Revolution, which made the United States a
nation independent of Great Britain, was brought on by
the disputed question as to who was to decide what taxes
American citizens must pay.
The evils caused by unjust taxation including the exemp-
tions of the privileged classes, flagrant inequalities, and
the farming out of the collection to privileged speculators
which prevailed particularly in France, demonstrated the
desire to conform to the theory of taxation which prevailed
at that time with certain so-called economists, that the true
art of taxation was that of plucking the greatest amount
of feathers from the goose with the least amount of
squawking.
GENERAL VIEW
A large number of the colonists came to this country
to escape just such conditions, and they were particularly
appreciative of the liberty and freedom which they here
enjoyed.
"In examining the records of the American colonies"
says Richard Ely, "one finds that while there was mur-
muring at times on account of heavy burdens, and while
15
226 Colonial Taxation
complaints of unfair apportionment of taxes among towns
or occupations were not infrequent, less concern was
shown regarding the amount of the tax than with the
underlying principles of taxation the defence of which
ended in the struggle for independence. The spirit which
later resisted a petty tax because laid without the consent
of the colonists is plainly visible in the enactments of the
early assemblies. The provision that no tax should be
levied or collected except with the consent of the people
to be taxed, or of their representatives, was common to
all; and while it was violated and wholly disregarded at
times by royal governors, it was generally conceded to as
a matter of prudence and policy."
"In the earlier days of the colonies there was no great
need for taxes. The Mother Country asked no assistance
from them; quit rents satisfied the demands of the pro-
prietary or the company, who in turn promised at least
partial protection; fierce wars had not yet transferred
the burden of defence to the shoulders of the people; the
public wants of the colonists themselves were simple and
easily supplied; there were few officials, and these were
either wholly without compensation, or received but a few
slight fees."
"There were no heavy expenditures, no sudden fiscal
demands; merely a small steady expense account, which
would be met without the aid of organized administrative
machinery. In certain colonies the contributions were
voluntary and were applied to the support of the colonial
government and to the maintenance of schools, churches
and highways. But the colonists could not continue to
Colonial Taxation 227
rely on voluntary impulses when expenditures began to
increase. The honest and willing contributor soon became
the shirking taxpayer. The absolutely necessary expenses
of government had to be met, and the passage of laws
requiring compulsory contributions became necessary."
"Thereafter colonial revenues were derived largely
from fines, fees, forfeitures, quit-rents, lotteries, tangible
property and the sale of land. Grants of land were made
to officials, from which they were to meet the expenses
of their office and pay their salaries. Direct taxes were
levied upon all property or the income from it, or upon
the head."
COLONIAL METHODS
"Taxes increased in frequency," says Ely, "until they
became regularly recurring burdens, and contributions
which were once of a more or less voluntary character
became compulsory. There is an old proverb to the effect
that he who gives three times establishes a claim against
himself. This has been true in finance. New Haven offers
a curious illustration. In the autumn of 1644, the town
began its annual contributions for the support of poor
scholars at Harvard College. The offering consisted of
a peck of wheat, or the value of the same, from every one
'whose hart is willing/ The largess lost its voluntary
character and was regarded as a tax. The collectors of
college corn were regularly elected town officers until the
end of the colonial existence."
In this same year an interesting note in the Records
of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay in New England
228 Colonial Taxation
shows that a similar request was made in that colony. The
Records of the General Court read: "It is ordered yt ye
deputies shall comend it to ye sevrall towns (& ye eldrs
are to be desired to give their furthrance hereto) wth
declaration of ye corse wch was ppounded by ye said com-
missioners, & hath bene put in practice by some of ye other
colonies, vis; of evry family alowg one peck of corne, or
I2d in mony or othr comodity, to be sent in to ye Treas-
urer for the college at Cambridge, or wher else hee shall
apoint in Boston or Charlestowne." The implied voluntary
character of the offering is noteworthy.
It may be doubted whether in reality it ever had any
voluntary element at all. Our Puritan ancestors, with
their stern ideas of duty and their readiness to apply a
vigorous boycott to obnoxious individuals, would probably
have made things most uncomfortable for anyone who
should have objected to his share of the contribution. A
curious act of the Assembly of the Province of Mary-
land, dated 1650, is worthy of notice in this connection.
It is entitled "An Order for the Relief of the Poor, and
it directs that an "equal assessment" be levied on such
inhabitants of St. Mary's County as will not make a willing
contribution for the maimed, lame, and blind.
SUMMARY
Frederick Robertson Jones, in his history of Taxation
in Connecticut, gives definite information relative to
colonial taxation and I have taken the liberty of quoting
from him very freely.
"Direct taxation was the backbone of the colonial system
of taxation, the first and always the principal source of
Colonial Taxation 229
the commonwealth revenue. It was levied at first upon
land, property and polls, and later upon 'faculties' and
incomes. Land constituted a primary basis of taxation.
It was taxed, not according to its selling value, but accord-
ing to fixed rates for each kind, prescribed by statute,
which were thought to represent the average income it
would produce. Different kinds of property were listed
at fixed sums, determined by law, and polls placed in the
same list at a lump sum. Faculty was rated according to
gains, and, as a later development, direct taxes placed upon
incomes. All, however, was more or less determined by
statute and beyond the control of the listers, who made up
the different assessments into a grand total called the
Grand List, upon which taxes were levied in the form of
a certain per cent., as 'id on the pound.' The chief
official in collecting the tax was the constable. Indirect
taxation formed a very unimportant source of the public
revenue. It developed late, and was introduced to lighten
the burdens of the direct tax. As an excise it took the
form of a payment for license to sell and a tax on pro-
ducts ; while as an impost duty it was levied on exports and
imports. Local taxation was confined to direct taxation
and furnished the revenue for the support of the church."
MASSACHUSETTS SYSTEM
"The Massachusetts system of taxation was undoubtedly
transferred to Connecticut and formed the foundation
upon which the financial structure of the colony was built."
"The probability that the Connecticut settlers would
adopt the Customs of the mother colony, the well-known
230 Colonial Taxation
tendency of Connecticut to follow the 'Bay Horse' in other
legislation, and the f act that the union of New Haven with
Connecticut in 1665 made practically no change in the
system of taxation in the former, all tend to strengthen
the argument just adduced."
On account of the stupidity or willfulness of Governor
Vane and his Council, the feeble colony upon the Con-
necticut was brought into a life or death conflict with the
Pequots, the most powerful Indians of Connecticut. The
first day of May, 1637, the General Court, now first so
called, assembled at Hartford and declared "an offensive
warr agt the Pequott."
The first "charge" of any kind that we find mentioned
was the levy in kind to provide for this war. The towns
were to furnish a certain amount of armor for the equip-
ment for the soldiers ; also biscuit, meal, suet, butter, the
"good beare for the Captain," and the "3 or 4 gallons
of strong water," and all kinds of food necessary for the
maintenance of the soldiers. In the levy of corn, that
product being a medium of exchange, the apportionment
as between the towns was rigidly observed. Hartford
furnished 42 men and 84 bushels of corn; Windsor, 30
men and 60 Bushels of corn; and Wether sfield 18 men
and 36 bushels of corn. The same rule was observed in
the second levy, which was assessed upon the towns as
follows: £86 i6s upon Agawam (Springfield, then con-
sidered to be in the Connecticut jurisdiction), £158 2s
upon Windsor, £251 2s upon Hartford and £124 upon
Wethersfield. Payment could be made either "in monney,
in Wampum at fower a penny, or in good and marchant-
able beaver at gs pr pounde."
Colonial Taxation 231
The first principles of taxation were transferred from
the mother colony of Massachusetts and early established
in Connecticut. But as the wants of the colony became
greater, other principles were from time to time intro-
duced from the same source in order to meet these
increased demands until May, 1650, when they were all
incorporated into the Code of Laws, from which date Con-
necticut may be said to have had a system of taxation.
CODE OF 1650
Extracts from this Code are as follows:
"It is ordered by this Courte and Authority thereof, that euery
Inhabitant shall henceforth contribute to all charges both in Church
and Common wealth whereof hee doth or may receiue benefitt, and
euery such Inhabitant who doth not voluntarily contribute propor-
tionally to his ability, with the rest of the same Towne to all
common charges, both Ciuill and Ecleseasticall, shall be compelled
therevnto by assessments and distress, to be leuyed by the Constable
or other officer of the Towne as in other cases ; And that the lands
and Estates of all men, whereuer they dwell, shall bee rated for all
Towne Charges, both Ciuill and Ecleseasticall as aforesaid, where
the lands and Estates shall lye, and theire persons, where they
dwell.
"And for all such persons as by the advantage of theire Artes
and Trades are more able to helpe beare the publique charge than
Common Labourers and workemen, as Butchers, Bakers, Bruers,
Victuailers, Smiths, Carpenters, Taylors, Shoemakers, Joiners,
Barbers, Millers and Masons, with all other manuall persons and
Artists, such are to bee rated for their returnes and gaines propor-
tionably vnto other men for the produce of their estates. Provided
that in the Rate by the Poll, such persons as are dissabled by sick-
ness, lameness or other infirmities shall bee exempted; and for
232 Colonial Taxation
such servants and children as take not wages, theire parents and
masters shall pay for them, but such as take wages shall pay for
themselues.
Whereas much wrong hath beene done to the Country by the
negligence of Constables, in not gathering such Leuyes as they
haue receiued Warrants from the Treasurer, during theire office : —
It is therefore ordered, that if any Constable shall not haue gath-
ered the Leuyes committed to his charge by the Treasurer then
being, during the time of his office, that hee shall, notwithstanding
(the) expiration of his office, haue power to leuye by distress all
such Rates and Leuyes; and if hee bring them not in to the old
Treasurer, according to his warrants, the Treasurer shall distreine
such Constables goods for the same; and if the Treasurer shall
not so distreine the Constable, hee shall be answerable to the
County for the same. And if the Constable bee not able to make
payment, it shall be lawful for the Treasurer, old or new respec-
tiuely, to distreine any man or men of that Towne where the
Constables are vnable, for all Arrearages of Leuyes ; and that man
or men, vppon petition to the Generall Courte, shall haue order to
collect the same againe, equally of ye Towne with his just
dammages for the same.
It is ordered, that the prises of Corne — for the yeare ensuing, for
all Country Rates, (except where ingagments to the contrary are
expressed,) shall bee as followeth :
Wheat, foure shillings six pence pr bush :
Pease, three shillings six pence pr bush :
Rye, three shillings six pence per bush :
Indian, three shillings pr bush :
And that there shall bee libberty for all men to pay one thirde parte
of such Rates, in good Wampum."
In October, 1685, the General Court laid a tax as
follows :
"This Court grants a rate of one penny halfe penny upon the
pownd, of all the rateable estate in the Colony, to clear Country
Colonial Taxation 233
debts ; to be payd in porck, three pownds p barrell ; winter wheat,
fower shillings p bushell ; rye or pease, at three shillings . p
bushell ; Indian corn, at two shillings six pence ; all to be good
and marchantable : to be (payd) one third in wheat, one third in
pease or rye, and one third in Indian corn or porck and those that
doe not pay their proportion in wheat shall make it up in Indian
corn at two shillings p bushell. And if any will pay two thirds of
their rates in Boston money, it shall be accepted in full of their
rates. If any want pease or rye to pay their rates, they have
lieberty to pay their rates, the one halfe in wheat, the other in
Indian corn."
PROPERTY TAX, NEW HAVEN
The development of the property tax is instructive.
On account of the failure of the Delaware Company, those
individuals who were rich in 1640 became impoverished,
and possessing more land than their neighbors, who had
accumulated personal property rather than real estate, the
burdens of the land tax bore heavily upon them. It soon
became evident that this inequality of taxation ought to
be adjusted, so in the town court of March, 1648, it was
moved that the court consider some other way of rating
men by lands. Others concurring, a committee was
appointed to consider the matter.
Although taxes were laid upon properties coincident
with land, yet it is altogether probable that in Connecticut,
as in New Haven, the scope of the property tax was
gradually widened so as to ultimately include almost all
objects of value, and that for the purpose of lessening the
burden of the tax upon land, houses, mills, ships and
smaller vessels, "merchantable goods," cranes, wharves,
234 Colonial Taxation
and all other "visible estate at home or at sea," were
placed in the Grand List according- to certain estimates
of value, while cattle of all kinds were individually rated
according to a permanent legal valuation governed by age.
Cows, heifers, steers, oxen, bulls, horses, mares, sheep,
goats and swine were listed according to age.
During the colonial period, certain persons were
exempted from payment of the property tax, and certain
kinds of property were not taxable, but the exemptions
were not numerous and never threatened the equality of
the tax:
Persons exempted from the tax:
(a) Ministers of the Gospel.
(b) The President of Yale.
(c) Other persons on special occasions, as loss by fire.
POLL TAX
The theory that every able-bodied man should bear a
certain minimum portion of the government expenses was
firmly held by the early inhabitants of Connecticut. They
had been accustomed to the tax on polls in England, and
when the principles of the Massachusetts system of taxa-
tion were incorporated into the Code of 1650, the principle
of the poll tax was taken without the slightest hesitation.
By this code all male persons from sixteen years old and
upwards were set in the list at two shillings, six pence.
This was found to be too high, and, October, 1651, was
reduced to eighteen pence, but later, under Andros, raised
again to one shilling, eight pence.
Colonial Taxation 235
After 1737, polls were placed in the lists at the fixed
sum of £ 1 8 each, and each male person from sixteen years
old to seventy, with certain exceptions was listed and
required to pay as much on his head as though he were
the owner of £18 estate. The change was, however, one
more of form than principle, a change from the expression
of the thing to the thing itself, from i8d to its base £18.
The exemptions from the poll tax were numerous and
applied to persons disabled by sickness, lameness and old
age, to persons engaged in the ministry, in educational
pursuits, in the management of the government and in
favored industries. As follows:
Ministers and their families, and elders of churches.
(Exemption under Faculty Tax.)
Rector of Yale College, tutors, school-masters and
students of the college until the expiration of the time
for taking their second degree.
Magistrates, Assistants, the Governor, Deputy-Gov-
ernor, Commissioner (while in office).
Persons engaged in favored occupations, as the iron
works of New Haven, and whale and cod fisheries.
Those engaged in certain unusual military operations,
as the officers and soldiers sent against Crown Point in
the French and Indian War.
Allowed physicians, until October, 1722. After May,
1721, any person above seventy years old.
The poll tax was, like the property tax, employed by all
the colonies at one period or another. It was the only
direct tax levied in Virginia for years. Maryland had,
before the Revolution, practically no other direct tax. All
236 Colonial Taxation
free men, free women, and children over twelve years
of age were included in the levy. This tax became, to the
people of this colony, most unpopular, and that for reasons
of principle. It was felt that it was not fair, because
not in proportion to ability as measured by property, and
it was difficult to make the payments, because, while hemp,
flax, or other produce, or paper money might serve as
legal tender for other debts, the poll tax must be paid in
tobacco, a given number of pounds per poll, the value of
which was increased at times, by a designed diminution
of the supply. The tax became extremely burdensome,
and was, in 1777, declared "grevious." In other colonies
this tax seems to have always accompanied other taxes.
FACULTIES AND INCOMES
The Connecticut Code of Laws made provisions for that
class of laborers who, by the advantage of their trades,
were better able to contribute to the expenses of the gov-
ernment than common laborers. They were rated accord-
ing to their gains, just as other men were for the probable
income of their estates. The compass of the tax gradually
grew larger, and in October, 1737, attorneys-at-law were
listed for their "faculty" — the least practitioners at £50
and others in proportion to their practice. An income
tax was laid May, 1757, when the General Court enacted
that all persons who loaned or let out money should be
rated in the lists in proportion to their gains.
GRAND LISTS
In the first recorded Grand List, for the year 1651, the
lists of only seven towns were returned, the others having
Colonial Taxation 237
been exempted or the lists not having been completed. The
whole amount was £75,492, Hartford leading the list with
£22,404. By the Code of Laws the towns sometime in
August chose three or four men to act as listers. They
were obliged to take an oath of office and had all powers
of making and correcting the lists. The warning to send
in their lists not later than the 2oth of August was first
given by the listers in person or by note, but later it was
declared sufficient warning for the listers to post notifica-
tion upon the town posts in two or three public places.
In May, 1775, the law was changed and in addition the
listers were required to send a written notice to every
inhabitant. After being warned, if any of the inhabitants
refused or neglected to send in their lists they at first for-
feited all goods not returned, but later this was changed
to one-half. The listers were obliged to send the total
amount of all the lists to the October session of the General
Court and the lists themselves were filed in January with
the town clerk, taking his receipt. If any persons failed
in any way to hand in a complete list of their ratable estate,
having been warned according to law, they were assessed
by the listers at discretion — rated "will and doom." From
the first of October until the last of December the listers
sat as inspectors and increased the assessment four-fold
on all ratable property they found omitted.
The sum-total of these four-fold additions was sent to
the General Assembly in May. Persons frequently
avoided taxation by selling or spiriting away property just
before the lists were made. Live stock, too, was left out
of the list and then killed. These irregularities were all
covered by statute.
238 Colonial Taxation
The Grand List was the basis upon which the General
Court levied the tax. It was expressed as a certain per
cent, of the listed property, and could be paid in money or
"country pay." The proportion of one penny per pound
upon the assessed valuation of the persons and estates was
at first the usual annual rate. This soon became insuf-
ficient to meet the public expenses. Now, when it became
customary to double, treble and quadruple the rate, the
poll tax as well as the property tax was increased greatly.
This reduplication fell with crushing weight upon those
who had little or no property.
In October, 1676, during King Philip's War the General
Court levied a rate of i8d. a pound, and in the same year
the Massachusetts colony levied a rate of i6d. per pound.
EXEMPTIONS
"Another custom that threatened to disturb the equality
of the tax was that of exempting towns partially or wholly
from the public tax for a certain number of years. Owing
to the prudent application of this practice by the General
Court it did not result in serious inequality of taxation.
Exemptions were given for very good reasons, and in most
instances there was a clear understanding that the Colony
was not to be at any expense for that town during the
period of exemption. Examples of such an 'incourage-
ment' of a town are seen in 1649, on nrst becoming a town ;
for a new plantation just founded; to help establish a
church, to build a schoolhouse, because of having suffered
from ravages of Indians, wars, etc."
Colonial Taxation 239
COLLECTIONS
The constables often found it difficult to collect the
rates and were then compelled to exercise the power of
distress. A well-established order of distress was
observed, from the seizure of mere movables to the arrest
and imprisonment of the person.
Before the man's person could be seized, the constable
was required to satisfy the treasurer that there was no
property to be taken, after which a warrant was issued
empowering the constable to imprison the delinquent
person until the next court, unless he gave bail or paid
the tax. In case of resistance, violence was not used to the
shedding of blood except in self-defense. Distress in any
case could not be executed before the July succeeding the
levy of the rate, and rates so collected were returned to
the treasurer by August 31.
ABATEMENT-DISCOUNT, (SELECTMEN)
"Poor people and persons overcharged in the lists were
granted abatement of taxes, either in whole or in part.
In the former case, the power of granting such abatement
was vested in the majority of the selectmen with the con-
sent of an assistant or a justice of the peace, and the
amount was paid by the town."
"An important act was passed February, 1757, intro-
ducing a custom which practically amounted to a discount
upon taxes paid in advance. The French and Indian War
was being waged, and the colony was in need of immediate
funds to send out an expedition. The rate granted for
carrying on the war was not payable until the last of the
240 Colonial Taxation
year, but, as the court declared, it was apprehended that
there were many rich and wealthy persons in the colony
who, to advance the public interest, would readily pay the
tax at once upon application. Those who were inclined
to do this were allowed five per cent, for all money
advanced, from the time of payment to the last of Decem-
ber, at which time their taxes were due. The law of May,
1767, naturally followed, by which interest was charged
for all overdue taxes."
QUIT-RENTS
Quit-rents were annual charges on lands in the colonies
under proprietary government, and were to be found, to
a slight extent, in others. These, in some cases, were
sufficient to cover both dues to the proprietors and all public
expenses. Lands in colonies non-proprietary were appor-
tioned among the members of the colonizing companies,
according to the amount of stock held, or among non-
stockholders for certain services rendered. In later settle-
ments, the amount of one's ratable property was made the
basis of apportionment. Lands were seldom sold.
FEES AND FINES
Fees were a common source of revenue, and were gen-
erally applied to the support of public officials. The min-
ister received fees for marrying, for christening, church-
ing, and burying; the clerk for issuing court-papers and
making records, the sheriff for making arrests and inflict-
ing punishment, and so with other officers.
Colonial Taxation 241
Licenses and fines also yielded considerable revenue.
Liquor and marriage licenses, and those imposed on
peddlers and lawyers were most common.
Among the fines which yielded revenue may be noticed
those for the violation of the sumptuary laws. In 1677,
Mary Stebbins was fined ten shillings for wearing silks
contrary to law, and sixty-eight persons were accused of
indulgence in forbidden luxuries. A heavy fine of a
different nature was imposed on Nathaniel Ely, inn-
keeper, in 1647, because his beer was not made according
to law.
OTHER TAXES
Many singular objects of taxation appear in the lists
of some of the colonies. In Virginia, there was a window
tax; in Maryland, a tax on bachelors above twenty-five
years of age ; in New York, a tax on wigs ; not to mention
others equally odd.
LOTTERIES
Lotteries were not an uncommon device for raising
money, especially in the later days of the colonies, when
burdens became heavier. Mention of them is made in the
Rhode Island records as being employed for such public
purposes as buildings and repairing forts, court-houses,
market-houses, and even churches. A lottery was estab-
lished in Maryland in 1768 for the purpose of raising
money to support an agent to be sent to England to present
to the king the grievances of the people. Pennsylvania
raised money by this means for certain public improve-
ments; Virginia for defence in the French and Indian
16
242 Colonial Taxation
War, and also for building schools, academies, churches;
Connecticut, for creeling buildings for Yale College ; and
other colonies were doubtless no less forward in their
use. "It was with the money collected from the sale
of lottery tickets," says McMaster, "that Massachusetts
encouraged cotton spinning, and paid the salaries of many
of her officers; that the city hall was enlarged at New
York; that the court-house was built at Elizabeth; that
the library was increased at Harvard; and that many of
the most pretentious buildings were put up at the federal
city." The Continental Congress, in 1777, established
lotteries to raise funds for carrying on the war, and sent
agents into all the states to sell tickets..
Indirect taxes were introduced to lighten the burden of
taxes upon polls and estates and were the reverse of the
usage in New York, where the general property tax was
introduced to ease the burden of indirect taxation. These
consisted of excises, imposts, and tunnage duties. Of the
first there was a beaver tax of one shilling per skin, and
on the manufacture and sale of liquors. Licenses were
required to sell liquor and to keep taverns, but there are
few instances where they were not free from cost. The
following would hardly be counted an exception. October,
1664: The General Court granted Samuel Gibbs a license
to sell wine, for which privilege he was to present "the
Court with an anchor of the best of his wine which the
Court desires him to leave with the Governor." This seems
to come under the head of special legislation. Out of town
peddlers were required to take out licenses until October,
1770, when an attempt was made to favor home industries
Colonial Taxation 243
by suppressing all peddling. Duties were levied upon
imported liquors and tobacco, and in 1696, on the value of
imported goods. Tunnage duties were somewhat inter-
mittent and were usually employed in time of war to defray
the cost of building lighthouses and maintaining and con-
structing forts in certain places.
LOCAL TAXATION
During the first few years after the settlement of the
towns upon the Connecticut River charges of all kinds
were raised by a single tax rate and levied upon the
inhabitants by some estimate which they were obliged to
pay. Soon, however, the process of differentiation set in.
First the expense of unusual undertakings was met by
special taxes, next the minister's salary, and finally the tax
for educational purposes were separated from the town
rate. The first settlers made no distinction between civil
and ecclesiastical affairs. The establishment of the town,
the church, and the school always went hand in hand. In
1644, a law was passed that every man should state what
he would voluntarily give toward the support of the
minister, and if any one refused to make a reasonable con-
tribution, he was to be rated by the town authority, and
the amount collected by the civil power. The minister's
salary was voted in a town meeting in a lump and collected
either by regular or special collectors. In some towns the
salary was as much as one hundred pounds, and nowhere
less than fifty pounds. If the town failed to collect the
minister's salary, the town court usually ordered the con-
244 Colonial Taxation
stable to colled; it. By 1667, there began a gradual separa-
tion of town and ecclesiastical matters, the point of friction
being, of course, the payment of taxes. The town of Hart-
ford ceased to conduct the affairs of the church as early as
1664, while the town of Simsbury continued to legislate
until 1722. In 1818, the entire divorcement of state and
church was accomplished.
The school was closely identified with the church and
in many instances a schoolmaster was the assistant
minister. The provision for the maintenance was three-
fold, first, appropriation by the town, second, payment by
the scholars, and later, appropriation by the colony. The
other taxes were of irregular character, most important
being the poor rate and special taxes for bridges. Counties
were established in 1666, and jails and court-houses were
built by county tax, levied by the county court and collected
by the constables by warrant from the county treasurer.
STATE SYSTEM
Instead of any one prevailing system in the several
colonies (or states) from the foundation of the colonies
to 1796, great dissimilarities existed. In 1796, Secretary
of the Treasury Wolcott, in his report, called the attention
of the Federal Government to the varied forms of taxation
in the several states, nearly all of which had adopted their
colonial system without change.
The characteristics of local taxation in the United States
at the close of the eighteenth century have been given as
follows: "(i) Specific objects were usually selected for
taxation rather than all property; (2) visible property
Colonial Taxation 245
bore all, or nearly all, the burden; (3) taxes were usually
laid according to some fixed and arbitrary rule of valua-
tion, rather than according to the selling value of the
objects taxed."
PRESENT SYSTEM
While great advance has been made in one hundred
years in the methods and objects of taxation, human
nature has remained about the same. In every town,
therefore, inequalities exist; property that should be
taxed escapes, and other property bears more than a
just share of the burden. Connecticut, however, seems
to me to have a larger number of excellent features
in her system of taxation than the other states in
the Union. Connecticut seems to be the only state in
whose constitution the word tax does not appear, neither
are there any constitutional limitations or provisions
relative to the subject.
As has been well said, Connecticut is one of the most
notable examples of a government administered absolutely
and entirely by consent of the governed. All of her pro-
visions and regulations relative to the subject of taxation
are statutes, and any or all may be changed or stricken out
by the next or any future legislature.
"Thucydides said he was a dangerous citizen who gave
no attention to politics. When one considers the tremen-
dous importance of taxation one feels inclined to call him a
dangerous citizen who gives no attention to principles of
taxation," says Ely. Adam Smith, in the "Wealth of
Nations," affirms that the fundamental principle of full
246 Colonial Taxation
and just taxation is that the subjects of every state ought
to contribute towards the support of the government as
nearly as possible in proportion to their respective abilities.
It is said that only two things are certain, death and taxes.
If, however, the former were not more certain than the
latter we would all live to be as old as Methuselah, and
some would live forever.
These inequalities are due not so much to the statutory
requirements as to the inadequate enforcement and appli-
cation of such laws, and the effort on the part of many
to avoid their just proportion of the burden. Many of
the inequalities of taxation could be remedied if every
tax payer would take an active and intelligent interest in
the situation and would support the taxing officials in a
full and just enforcement of the laws. Nearly every per-
son is willing to pay a fair tax if only he can be assured
that his neighbor is paying at the same rate on the same
basis of valuation. This seems to me to be the golden
rule of taxation.
When this is an actuality — the millennium will be almost
at hand.
FOUR LOST LEGACIES OF THE EARLY NEW
ENGLAND CIVIL POLITY
REV. LEONARD W. BACON, D.D.
Printed also in the Transactions of the New London County
Historical Society.
INVITE you to follow me in some studies
in the early political history of New Eng-
land which have, as I conceive, more than
an antiquarian interest for us in this later genera-
tion and vastly expanded country. I am safe in
assuming that the spirit of this patriotic Society will not
be wholly out of sympathy with my contention that the
prodigious changes which these nearly three centuries have
brought to pass in our political methods and political
principles have not been, in all cases, in the direction of
progress and improvement. I make bold, in the present
paper, to point out four characteristics of the polity of
the Founders of New England from which we have
departed, to the serious detriment of the republic.
I. The first of these is what may properly be called The
Old Colony Referendum. There is a certain amount of
mild agitation going on in our day, on the part of some
doctrinaire publicists, in favor of embodying "the referen-
dum" in our state constitutions; by which is meant the
adoption of a somewhat clumsy contrivance of certain
Swiss political experimenters, by which, on the demand of
a prescribed number of voters, any bill passed by the Con-
gress of that republic is submitted to popular assent or
veto. It happened to me to be a resident of Switzerland
at the time when this constitutional provision went into
effect; and from what I then observed, and from what I
have since learned, I do not find it to be a particularly
valuable working provision — not that it does not work
250 Four Lost Legacies
well, but that it does not do very much work of any quality.
A far simpler and more effective provision, worthy, for the
wisdom of it, to have survived to our day and to have
been imitated in all the constitution-making" States, was
that requirement in the fundamental law of little Plym-
outh, that no bill should become a law (emergencies
excepted) unless it had lain over from one legislature to
the next. The lapse of this most salutary provision is not
the least of the losses that civilization suffered in the
merger of the little Old Colony with its overshadowing
neighbor of the Bay. As compared with the cumbrous
piece of mechanism of the Swiss publicists, by which some
bills might, if citizens enough should take the trouble to
combine, be subjected to a popular vote, it was a simple,
automatic general referendum, by which all bills were
brought under the purview of the body of citizens. No
wiser safeguard has since been devised against the mal-
feasance of representative bodies. If it could be restored
to our State constitutions in some such form as this, that
unless passed by a two-thirds vote (this exception would
provide for all real cases of urgency) no bill should become
a law unless read a second time in one legislature and
adopted by the next legislature, think what we should
gain by it. To begin with, it would tend to reduce the
enormous annual output of new legislation which is recog-
nized in all our States as one of the nuisances incident to
popular government. It would certainly mitigate in some
measure the extemporaneous crudity of it, which often
requires each new legislature to spend part of its time in
repealing the work of its predecessor. It would hold the
Four Lost Legacies 251
legislature in salutary fear, not only of the governor and
his veto, but of the people. Distinctly bad legislation — the
job bills, the grab bills, the sneak bills, the snap bills — if
not impossible, would become immensely more difficult ; and
that public enemy, the organized lobby, would find its
power suddenly curtailed. What an annual anxiety it
would lift from a considerable part of the people! Great
corporations and great public interests — the railroad com-
panies, the insurance companies, the trusts, the temperance
interest, the liquor interest, the Sunday interest, the anti-
Sunday interest, and whatever else there is that has hopes
or fears from legislation — would no longer be under the
expensive necessity of maintaining their pickets at the
State-house to give warning against surprises and ward
them off by public pressure or private persuasion. The
occupation of the heeler and striker, if not abolished, would
become a much less paying business than it is now gener-
ally understood to be. But while corruptionists would be
discouraged and disgusted, honest citizens would come to
their rights. This remanding to the people, so damaging
to bad or doubtful projects, would be simply invigorating
to such as should have merit enough to bear the sunlight
and the breeze of protracted public discussion.
The restoration of the Old Colony Referendum would
have even a more beneficent result in the regeneration of
State politics. As things now are, our State elections deal
mainly with the popularity or the paltry personal ambitions
of Jones or Brown or Smith, or, worse than that, with
matters of national party politics with which State officers
have no more to do than with Mr. Joe Chamberlain's
252 Four Lost Legacies
colonial schemes. In most States a state election is not
much more than a game to bet on, like a horse-trot or a
college football match. Under the Old Colony Referen-
dum, the pending questions of State and local policy laid
over from the last legislature would be distinct, definite
issues before the people, inviting the study of intelligent
citizens, and provoking debate in every town meeting and
every voting precinct. Every State electoral campaign
would be a "campaign of education." I do not mean that
the measures would be voted on directly by the people; —
that is the awkward Swiss way. Neither would they be
the subject of formal instruction to the representative from
his constituents, which was the French Jacobin way. But
these measures would be the points on which candidates
would be questioned, and on which elections would turn.
Can any reform be suggested which would have a more
healthful tendency to accomplish that great political
desideratum, the breaking up of the vicious connection
between town and State affairs on the one hand, and
national parties on the other hand, under which citizens
are every year clamorously solicited to subordinate their
political home duties to some supposed necessity of sup-
porting the national administration or of condemning it?
This, remember, was a characteristic feature of the
fundamental law of "the Old Colony" of little Plymouth.
I am no blind bigot in my admiration of the Pilgrims.
I am not prepared to admit that the Separatism of Plym-
outh was a higher and truer churchmanship than the
Nationalism of Salem and Boston. But I am struck with
wonder at the high wisdom of the Pilgrims in their found-
Four Lost Legacies 253
ing of the civil state. There were many bold and original
strokes of political reform delivered in those early New
England days. There was the splendid coup d'etat of the
Bay colonists in bringing their charter across the seas and
so creating an autonomous state. There was the great
law reform of the New Haven men, by which they dropped
overboard, as they sailed, the precedents of English law —
common law, statute law and canon law — and gave their
republic a fresh start from the Pentateuch, resolving, as
the historian Knickerbocker puts it, to be governed by the
laws of God until they had time to make better for them-
selves. There was the glory of the Connecticut colonists,
framing, with prophetic wisdom, the first written constitu-
tion of government in human history. And high over
these is the excelling glory of the Pilgrims, that they did
nothing of the kind, but just let their feeble republic alone
to grow into shape of itself, taking such body as it should
please God to give. Their grand deeds were well matched
by the grandeur of their not doing. Here we find one of
those contrasts that the muse of history delights in. On
the one hand are these thoughtful men in the poverty of
Plymouth, living all in the future, with every temptation
to great schemes and visionary projects, patiently waiting
year by year for the slow strokes of Divine Providence
to fashion their little State into the mould of a world-wide
empire; and on the other hand, fifty years later, beyond
the sea, the greatest philosopher and the smartest politician
in all England, John Locke and Lord Shaftesbury, sitting
in the golden sunshine of a monarch's favor, are putting
their sagacious heads together to produce a constitution
254 Four Lost Legacies
for the Carolinas that has been the laughing stock of
history from that day to this.
II. By far the most important and most original con-
tribution of early New England to the science of polity
was the principle of majority government. We have lost
it now and taken instead the principle of government by
plurality, that is, ordinarily, government by minorities.
We have traded off our hereditary birthright, and gotten
in exchange for it a mess of pottage, and an ill-smelling
and unsavory mess at that. How much we have lost, what
intolerable mischiefs we have invited upon ourselves, by
thus abandoning the wise usage of our fathers, we have had
only a limited means of proving in our own experience;
for it is only within the memory of this generation that
this invaluable muniment of freedom has been thrown
away in Massachusetts, and still more lately 'in Connecti-
cut. But we have only to look beyond the western bound-
ary line, to where the plurality system, in the State and
City of New York, has for generations had its perfect
work, to see what abuses it is capable of producing. In
New York City, in almost every vigorously contested
election for many years, until this last year, it has been
demonstrated that the majority of the citizens were
opposed to the domination of Tammany Hall ; nevertheless,
with only occasional and brief interruptions, Tammany
has held the domination from year to year and decade to
decade. Sometimes its domination has been put in serious
jeopardy. In 1886 a powerful movement to overthrow it
drove the Tammany wigwam to the desperate expedient
of nominating an honest man (Mr. Hewitt) for Mayor.
Four Lost Legacies 255
When a corrupt party nominates an honest man, it is a
sign of woe indeed. Everything portended a Waterloo
defeat for Tammany, for the opposition of good citizens
was solid. The only hope of the thieves lay in dividing
the opposition. Just then a brilliant and enthusiastic
young Republican was induced — no doubt by the best of
motives — to put himself at the head of a "straight"
Republican ticket; and Tammany was saved! The vote
against Tammany was, in round numbers 130,000, to
90,000 in its favor. But the patriotic young Republican
had succeeded in splitting the opposition vote nearly in the
middle, and Tammany, condemned by a hostile majority
of nearly 40,000, held control of the great city, saved, in
its hour of peril, by the sagacious management of Mr.
Croker, aided by the undoubtedly conscientious partisan-
ship, I regret to say, of Mr. Theodore Roosevelt.
In 1897 came an even more momentous crisis, which
was to decide the fate not only of New York, but of greater
New York, and not for a year only, but for four years.
The sole question before the people was: Shall a noto-
riously corrupt ring, managed by a coarse, odious and gen-
erally detested boss, be placed in almost absolute control
of the immense interests of the great metropolis? The
people declared, by a majority of 58,000, We will not have
this gang to rule over us. Whereupon the defeated party
mounted gaily to the box, gripped the reins and the whip,
and every brothel and gambling hell in the city was illumi-
nated in honor of the triumph of the minority. The con-
scientious politician who saved Tammany this time by
dividing the opposition in favor of a straight Republican
256 Four Lost Legacies
ticket was General Tracy, once Secretary of the Navy.
If it had not been Tracy, it would have been some one else.
Mr. Croker rarely had any difficulty in finding a man, and
a good man — no other kind will answer the purpose — to
render him this indispensable service. At this election,
there were not only two anti-Tammany candidates in the
field, but three, all good men — excellent men ; the more of
them there were, and the better they were, the more Tam-
many was pleased. Intelligent citizens were at a loss
which of the three to vote for, and many saw no use of
voting at all in so hopeless a case. It was an easy walk-
over for Tammany. Suppose the three opposition parties
to be about equal to each other, and the stayers at home
who saw no use in voting at all to be another equal share,
Tammany had only to cast one-fifth of the votes plus one,
and the remaining four-fifths were of no avail. By virtue
(if it is proper to speak of virtue in this connection) of a
good working minority, the gang of thieves came legally
and constitutionally into possession of the city government
for the next four years.
Since then we have been witnessing twice over the
agonizing periodical anxiety of good citizens of New York
over the always doubtful question, can we manage to fuse
together the various elements of opposition to the enemies
of society? On so risky a question depends the control,
for good or evil, of so many millions of people, and so
many thousand millions of property!
Now suppose the charter of Greater New York had been
framed in accordance with the old New England principle
of majority government, with this provision, that no officer
Four Lost Legacies 257
should be held to be elected unless receiving a majority of
all votes cast, supplemented by this other provision that,
failing a majority for any candidate on the first ballot, the
matter should go back to the people within eighty days,
to choose between the two highest candidates ; how would
these provisions operate?
1. They would begin operating long before election
day. Months before, there would be searchings of heart
among all bosses of all parties. The comfortable under-
standing heretofore subsisting between the two leading
party leaders, that whichever way the election goes, they
two are, between them, sure of the spoils, is thenceforth
impossible; the people have a veto on them both. The
caucus would still assemble, as it ought to; but it would
be overshadowed by the chilling but salutary conscious-
ness that its action was liable to be reversed at the polls
by the free and unembarrassed action of the bolter and
the kicker. It would have to nominate in such a way as to
prevent disaffection and propitiate confidence. An objec-
tionable candidate on any ticket might be blackballed by the
men of his own party, without thereby turning over the
election to the opposite party. A corrupt party would not
be able to hold together its own men.
2. As election day approached, there would be no dis-
tressing anxiety among good citizens as to whether this
man, or that, or the other, would be most likely to unite
all the friends of good government. Union would be
desirable, of course, but not indispensable. Any honest
vote would be effective, and no man would have this
excuse for staying at home, that there was no use in voting.
17
258 Four Lost Legacies
All parties and factions and fads would have a fair chance.
Straight Democrat or Reform Democrat, Republican or
Fusionist, Socialist or Prohibitionist or Single-taxer or
whatever else, would have the opportunity to show his
strength and make his moral demonstration, for what it
might be worth, without being scared out of his liberty
of suffrage by the party bugaboo and the cry that he was
throwing away his vote and giving the election to the
enemy. If among the candidates nominated under these
severe conditions one was found who, by his personal
qualities or the strength of numbers at his back, com-
manded a clear majority of the voters, he would be elected,
and no other man could be.
3. But suppose the other case — that there is no clear
majority, and no choice ; what then ? Why then there has
been held, under all the sanctions that legislation can pro-
vide, free to every voter without distinction of party, a
great nominating convention of the whole people, which
has put in nomination two candidates to be voted for that
day week. There will be a square fight. That little game
by which a knot of adroit intriguers, handling a good work-
ing minority of votes, has for decade after decade held
dominion over the great metropolis in spite of the demon-
strated will of the people, the little game of Tammany,
which is the game of all the little Tammanys that are to be
found the country over, in every town and city, is blocked
forever. The individual citizen is rehabilitated, and the
people have come to their rights again.
Not the least of the public benefits to be expected from
the restoration of majority government is that it would
Four Lost Legacies 259
permit the several States to clear their statute books of the
caucus laws now so generally in use. Doubtless under the
plurality system they are a necessary evil ; for it is under
this system, and this alone, that the power of the caucus
is a public peril, to be guarded against by drastic methods ;
and these are certainly drastic enough. Instead of
abating the power of the party machine, they aggravate
it to the danger point, enabling it to intrench itself in the
statute-book; giving it recognition before the law with
no corresponding responsibility to the law ; seeming to give
the citizens, so far as they are obedient partisans, power
over the machine, but really confirming the machine in its
power over the citizens ; completing the practical disf ran-
chisement of the non-partisan citizen. Doubtless these
laws bring some relief from the impudent frauds that have
been common in the nomination business. But the good
they may do is more than offset by the adopting of party
organization as part of the fixed, legal machinery of gov-
ernment. Perhaps no constitutional amendment that has
ever been adopted is of graver consequence than this device
of gearing the party machine into the mechanism of the
State. It is a thing to beware of.
I am fully prepared to show that the dynasty of Platt in
the State of New York, of Quay in Pennsylvania, and of
the den of thieves in Philadalphia are consequences of the
same system. But time fails and I must content myself
with this one instance of the Tammany despotism, as show-
ing to what abuse a free people is liable, without the
safeguard of the New England principle of majority
government.
260 Four Lost Legacies
How came this political principle to be adopted in all the
New England colonies but one, when there was no prece-
dent for it in Old England, nor, so far as I know, any-
where else in history? It is an interesting question on
which much might be said, if there were time. But how-
ever it originated, here it was, and here it stayed till within
the memory of some of us now living. And what it did
to save the cause of freedom and human rights in New
England and in America, and what it may yet do, if it
can be got back into the place which it ought never to
have lost, to save all the States from the shame into which
Pennsylvania and New York have fallen, are subjects
worth your pondering. Let me tell the story from the
Massachusetts point of view.
The importance of majority election did not show at
first. When there are no parties and only one ticket, one
mode of election is as good as another. When there are
two parties and no scattering vote, a plurality and a
majority are the same thing. But let the time come when
grave questions set honest and earnest men a-thinking, and
votes begin to scatter, it becomes a serious question
whether scattering votes are to be reckoned as of any
account, or not.
Well, that time did come. Whig leaders and Demo-
cratic leaders, bidding against each other, committed their
parties to the compromise of principles of right and justice,
in favor of great national partisan interests. Then it
began to appear whether a scattering vote was worth any-
thing. Presently, in the election returns, alongside of the
Whig column and the Democratic column, each with its
Four Lost Legacies 261
thousands of votes, appeared a little trickling rill of a third
column — "scattering" ten, or a dozen, or a score. And
the party leaders were pleasantly amused, and said: "O,
you had better give it up ; you are only wasting your vote ;
you never can get your man in; you will have to choose
between the two leading candidates." And birds of ill
omen, perched along the ridge-pole of the Liberator office,
sat simply croaking in a dismal row, "It is of no use;
better let politics alone and come and croak with us up
here." But that was before the scattering vote had been dis-
franchised in Massachusetts ; and the answer was made —
it could not be made to-day — "Perhaps we cannot get
our man in ; we can keep both your men out." And they
did it. One congressional election after another was hung
up with "no choice" — (it is said that in one district there
were no less than forty ineffectual ballotings) — until it was
forced in upon the minds of the politicians that these obsti-
nate and impracticable people must be reckoned with. So it
came to pass that, by the power of the scattering vote, the
free citizens of Massachusetts, in spite of Whig, in spite
of Democrat, and in spite of the venomous little gang of
Garrison anarchists, were able to send to the Senate
Charles Sumner and Henry Wilson, and to place in the
House of Representatives New England incarnate in the
person of Eli Thayer, the man who abolished slavery.
How came this priceless muniment of popular liberty
to be lost? The story is worth telling.
The latest of those constitutional conventions which
make so noble a feature of Massachusetts history was held
at a time (1854) when the growth of a third party caused
262 Four Lost Legacies
the inconveniences incidental to majority election to be
keenly felt by the two parties which had so long divided
between them the supremacy of the State. It was natural
enough that some should be eager to cut off the incon-
veniences at a stroke by disfranchising the scattering
vote — counting it, to be sure, and reporting it, but treating
it otherwise as of no practical importance. It was
demanded that Massachusetts should abandon the most
honorable and distinguishing feature of her immemorial
polity, and adopt the principle of plurality election, and let
minorities govern. The question was freely debated in as
able a political assembly as ever sat; and great as were
the temptations, the demand was resisted and refused.
Even case-hardened politicians, like the two Benjamins,
Hallett of Boston and Butler of Lowell, rose, for the
moment, to the dignity of a statesmanship worthy of the
august body of which they were members, and declared
that, speaking as politicians, they would welcome the
change; speaking as citizens, they must reject it. In the
spirit of that unknown Roman who planted a rose on the
grave of Nero, I tender this humble tribute to the memory
of Ben Butler.
How it happened that in that noble body no one had
the gumption to propose retaining the vital principle of
majority election, while clearing it of the liability to pro-
longed deadlocks, I do not know. But so it was. The
great convention held firmly to the principle of majority
government as a safeguard against party tyranny too pre-
cious to be lost. But the needed limitations were not pro-
vided. Election contests were tediously protracted, till at
Four Lost Legacies 263
last the people lost patience and burned the barn to get rid
of the rats. What the great convention had held fast as
an invaluable muniment of freedom, some later legislature
by a snap vote tossed into the scrap heap. It was a
revolution.
The story in Connecticut has been different. Here the
alternative to a majority election of State officers has been
to turn the choice over to a rotten-borough legislature, that
could be relied on to defeat the popular will more effectu-
ally than even the plurality system could do it. If no other
course had been open, the lapse into plurality election and
minority government would have been justified.
The hour is approaching when this elect people, whose
are the fathers, and whose boast it is that they never were
in bondage to any man, will awake to the consciousness
that they have ceased to be governed by the free majority
of their own votes, and have come to be dominated, not
even by a party, but by the fraction of a party, by the
ring of a faction, and by the boss of a ring. What sepa-
rates you from the boss tyranny that prevails in New York
and Pennsylvania is only the possible interval of a very
few years. The very expedients used for warding off this
result are bringing it nearer. Your laws for the recogni-
tion, sanction and regulation of the primary meeting give
a firmer grip to the professional politican, and give the
individual citizen to understand that he may have an
effective voice in the affairs of the State only on condition
of being broken to the harness and wearing the collar of
some organized party.
The way out of these difficulties, present and prospective,
264 Four Lost Legacies
is to back out, the way you came in. Returning to the
original principles of the Commonwealth, we do not indeed
get rid of parties and caucuses; we do not want to. We
get rid only of the arrogant and insolent supremacy of
them. Thenceforth they would understand their respon-
sibility to the people — not only to the party, but to the
kicker, the bolter and the mugwump, whom their souls
abhor, but whom then it would be no longer safe to treat
as a negligible quantity. At the polls the citizen would
no longer be shut up to the wretched alternative, either to
make choice between two evils, or to fire a blank cartridge
into the air. He would be free to defeat the candidate
without helping elect the other candidate. The disciplined
legions of the Pennsylvania Republicans could no longer
be marched to the ballot-box in solid column to vote the
machine ticket, after they found that they could defeat
the ticket without turning the State over to the Democrats.
Citizens of New York, whose one desire is so to vote as
to rout the den of thieves that has ruled and plundered
them these fifty years, would no longer be subject to dis-
traction by the rival clamors of two or three opposition
parties, each shouting that votes would be simply wasted
that were cast for the other candidate. Given the majority
principle, and ring rule in New York is dead beyond resur-
rection. Without it, a ring despotism is impending for
Boston and Worcester, for Hartford and New Haven.
I had hoped to speak fully of two other of our Lost
Legacies, illustrating the political wisdom of our fathers,
and the unwisdom of some of their successors. Let me at
least mention them.
Four Lost Legacies 265
III. That noble law reform in which originated the
admirable old License Laws of the New England Colonies
and States. It took the immemorial English abuse of
granting money-making monopolies to court favorites, and
transfigured it into a wise and salutary system of license
legislation for controlling, in the interest of the public
safety, certain necessary but dangerous sorts of business.
It was due to this reform that these colonies, and then these
States, had for so many generations, down to the time
when the temperance men and the temperance women
began monkeying with the statutes, that license law con-
trolling the sale of intoxicating liquors, under which no
liquor-saloon or bar-room or tippling-house could legally
exist within the Commonwealth — the best prohibitory law
that has yet been devised. Through the more or less
unconscious cooperation of the temperance reformers with
the liquor-selling interest, we have lost, not only the law,
but the very idea of sound license legislation. It has
suited the policy of the so-called prohibitionists to repre-
sent that license legislation is simply an expedient by which
the Commonwealth seeks to collecl; blood-money by com-
pounding with a business essentially criminal; and that
the business of a licensing board is to sell permits for doing
mischief to cash customers over the counter; and this
definition, that suited the prohibitionist, equally suited the
basest elements in the liquor-selling interest. So through
the mutual helpfulness of these two antagonistic parties
the historic conception of sound license legislation has been
lost out of the popular mind, and the ideal of the fathers
266 Four Lost Legacies
has been miserably perverted and corrupted. With the
connivance of zealous reformers the license laws have been
made low and lax ; and to the delight of the liquor-dealers
the alternative prohibition has been made rigorous and
annoying, and the result is what we see it to be to-day.
The right use of license laws is indicated on one of the
earliest pages of Winthrop's Journal; the working of it
is illustrated in a striking passage in the Travels of Presi-
dent Dwight, a hundred years ago, contrasting the orderly
New England tavern, controlled by the salutary license
law of that time, with the debased and demoralizing char-
acter of the taverns across the New York line, where our
modern corrupt idea of license as a measure "for revenue
only" was already in vogue. It was one of the foremost
students of New England history, and at the same time
one of the earliest and life-long champions of the Tem-
perance Reformation, who, at the end of sixty years of
public service, declared that, after witnessing the many
experiments in temperance legislation from 1825 onward,
he was satisfied that the best of all laws governing that
subject was a good license law.
IV. Finally the most precious of our lost legacies from
the fathers is the ideal of citizenship as a solemn trust
conferred by the State upon worthily qualified persons, to
be executed under oath, with sole reference to "the public
weal, without respect of persons or favor of any man."
The admission to the franchise, in the old time, was like
the investiture of a monarch; and the Freeman's Oath,
"by the great and dreadful name of the ever-living God"
Four Lost Legacies 267
consecrating the freeman to his high function, was like
the coronation oath of a king. The notion that to have
a share in the responsibility of government is a universal
and inalienable right of humanity, a harpagma for every
one to snatch at for his own behoof, had no place in the
New England polity. That high privilege, that solemn
duty, was to be conferred on those who would use it
worthily, and on no others. Doubtless through the suc-
cessive generations there has been many a lapse from the
realization of this ideal. But it has been reserved to our
own time to witness the open abandonment and repudia-
tion of it. We owe the debasement of the moral standard
of public life in part, perhaps we ought to say in large
part, to that woman suffrage movement which gave such
lavish promises of the angelic purification of politics. Its
major premise was that everybody had a natural right
to vote; and its argument was that if this right should
be conceded to women, they would use it to promote their
own interests as a class. It was exactly in the line of this
reasoning when the nation, in a disastrous hour, con-
ferred the suffrage, at a single stroke, on many myriads
of persons notoriously incapable of using it aright, and
did this with the openly avowred purpose that they should
use it, not "for the public weal," but as a defensive
weapon, and for the advancement of their race interests;
whereupon they were not slow to better the instruction.
From this point it is not so very long a descent, by natural
gravitation, to that lower deep of the Delaware idea —
an idea which is alleged to be not a total stranger in more
268 Four Lost Legacies
northern latitudes — the idea that a freeman's right of
suffrage is a snug piece of personal property, having an
appreciable market value in cash, that is to be disposed of
to the highest bidder. Is this, or is it not, the level to which
our political life is settling down? The question is worth
our pondering.
THE OLD-TIME GAME OF WICKET
AND
SOME OLD-TIME WICKET PLAYERS.
GEORGE DUDLEY SEYMOUR, ESQ.
WELL remember lying on the grass that fringed
the village green near the Meeting House on
the top of the hill one drowsy summer afternoon
watching a game of wicket. A village green and a Meet-
ing House on the top of a hill are characteristic features of
many Connecticut towns ; I must therefore be more explicit
and say that I am referring to Bristol, an offshoot of the old
town of Farmington, in Hartford County. When I lived in
Bristol the Meeting House with its great Doric columns
and square tower faced the "Academy," which has long
since disappeared, as well as the curious little gambrel-
roofed house which Abel Lewis built near the site of the
old Episcopal Church to be used as a store and as an
excuse, as I have sometimes imagined, for utilizing in a
secular way the round-headed windows of the church
which, wrecked and defiled, he had bought and converted
into a barn after that "pesky nest of tories" had been
broken up in Revolutionary days. The Lewises were
Congregationalists and had a severe and telling apprehen-
sion of the truth of the Calvinistic scheme of salvation.
To-day St. Joseph's Church, the parochial residence, and
a parochial school face the Green. But no matter about
the changes. With this introduction I may be allowed
to go on, or rather go back to where I was lying on the
grass. I was a small boy, but young as I was, I felt a
vague sense of strangeness about it all because even then
wicket was virtually obsolete and played only occasionally,
not exactly as a revival, but rather as a matter of local
272 The Game of Wicket
pride and to keep the traditions of the game alive, as
well as to give the old wicketers a chance to stretch their
muscles. Already the more strenuous game of baseball
had pushed wicket into the background and claimed the
younger men. A born antiquary, I had an inquiring mind
about the past and tried to find out the origin of the game
and how long it had been played. My father had been
an expert wicketer in his day, and my brother, although
first of all a baseball player, was impressed into service
whenever a game of wicket was played, and as a wicketer
upheld the traditions of his father's game. But I never
succeeded in gathering much information about the game
from my father more than that it was the great game of
his boyhood in New Hartford, where he was born and
spent his boyhood, and where, as it seemed to him, it had
always been played. Turn where I would, I could learn
no more than that the game had come down from early
colonial times and that formerly it had been extensively
played throughout the State, notably in Hartford and
Litchfield Counties. The towns of Wethersfield, Newing-
ton and New Britain had within recent years had wicket
teams and still boasted of some players, but in my boyhood
the game as an organized institution had survived only
in Bristol, where records of the game had been kept
for many years.* Indeed, the old clock-town felt a peculiar
distinction in being the last stronghold, as it were, of
the game which had its origin in Old England, and which
*A chronological list of the games with the names of the players and the
runs made by each player has been kept in a large account book. This book
has long been in the custody of Mr. Henry B. Cook, to whom the writer is
indebted for the loan of it.
The Game of Wicket 273
from a date long prior to the Revolution, had been a
favorite pastime. That is was better suited to the Age
of Homespun than to our own, is perhaps not altogether
to our credit.
When Bristol had its "Old Home Week" celebration
in the fall of 1903, the game was very properly revived.
A challenge was sent to some scattering players in
Wethersfield, Newington and New Britain, and a great
match was arranged to be umpired by Governor Chamber-
lain, who, in his time, had been a star player in New
Britain, and had played in the ever memorable champion-
ship game of 1859. My brother-in-law, Mr. Miles Lewis
Peck, the Captain of the Bristol Club, rallied the old
players and filled in the gaps in his team. Here local pride
came in and almost made a quarrel. Certain interlopers,
fascinated by the sport as they saw the practice games,
tried to have themselves enrolled on the Bristol team to
the exclusion of the native-born aspirants, who indig-
nantly claimed their right and had it allowed. The game
was called at ten o'clock in the forenoon and played, with-
out interruption, until half-past three. It would be difficult
to say which excited the most interest — the game or the
spectators. The match had been widely heralded; and to
see it came not only the curious, but also many old players,
retired long ago to their rocking-chairs, in which, as a
matter of fad, some of them were brought to the field.
I saw the game, or as much of it as I had time for, and I
was stimulated anew to find out something more of its
history; but, as before, my inquiries were fruitless.
No historian has devoted his attention to the sports and
18
274 The Game of Wicket
pastimes of our colonial period, and for information I have
had to turn to the pages of the diarist and traveller, and
to the files of old newspapers.
I may say, in the first place, that the American game
of wicket, or, as it was sometimes called, cricket, is
essentially the noble old English game of cricket, the
national pastime of Englishmen. The main difference
between the two games is that in wicket the wicket is
placed on two blocks which lift it only about four inches
above the ground, while in cricket, three supports lift two
bails to a height of twenty inches or more above the
ground. In wicket the ball is bowled or rolled along the
ground; in cricket the ball is bowled, as it is said, but in
reality thrown, and hence the English term "throwing
bowling." I need not say that the literature of the English
game is extensive. Different authorities give different
sources for the origin of the game. Some writers advance
the theory that it is derived either from stoole-ball or
club-ball — both very ancient games of ball. Daly in
"Polo, Past and Present," derives all games played with
ball and stick, including cricket, golf, hockey, and the
national Irish game of hurling, from polo, of which he
says they are but dismounted forms. Polo originated in
the far East, probably in Persia, where games on horse-
back are still the great national sport and are played with
magnificent dash and enthusiasm. If Daly is correct in
his view that cricket as played in Old England is but a
form of dismounted polo, the same must be true of our
New England wicket, which as shown is but a modified,
and perhaps an earlier, form of cricket than that now
The Game of Wicket 275
played in England. Always being modified in form, the
persistence of games like the persistence of customs and
superstitions is admitted, and those who enjoy speculation
may like to connect the wicket-players on our village
greens with half savage horsemen, dashing on their wiry
barbs over the open plains of Persia. It may at least
be said that our game of wicket with its low wickets and
ball, rolled on the ground rather than thrown, allies itself
more readily to polo than cricket, in which the wickets are
carried on high supports and the ball is thrown. But
whatever its origin, the present English game of cricket
did not come into vogue until the beginning of the i8th
century, and was soon brought to this country. Just
when wicket, the American game, acquired its distinctive
form, I cannot discover — whether before or after it was
first brought here. It is not unlikely that in the England
of two hundred years ago cricket was sometimes called
wicket. I am led to think so because the very first refer-
ence to the game in America is to wicket. As both cricket
and wicket may have been derived from stoole-ball, though
Strutt says club-ball, I cannot refrain from noticing what
I believe to be the first reference to ball-playing on this
continent.
"On Christmas day, 1621," says Mr. Kittredge in his
"The Old Farmer and His Almanac," "Governor Brad-
ford had an amusing encounter with some of his raw
recruits, who had arrived on the ship 'Fortune' the
month before. There were thirty-five of these newcomers,
and, to use the Governor's own words, 'most of them were
lusty yonge men, and many of them wild enough.' ' The
276 The Game of Wicket
Governor, who seems to have had the saving grace of
humor, which he had need of, himself admits that the cir-
circumstance is one "rather of mirth than of waight" Let
me read the entry as he wrote it in his now famous
history :
"One ye day called Christmas-day, ye Govr caled them out to
worke, (as was used), but ye most of this new-company excused
them selves and said it wente against their consciences to work on
y1 day. So ye Govr tould them that if they made it mater of con-
science, he would spare them till they were better informed. So
he led-away ye rest and left them; but when they came home at
noone from their worke, he found them in ye streete at play,
openly ; some pitching ye barr, & some at stoole-ball, and shuch like
sports. So he went to them, and took away their implements, and
tould them that was against his conscience, that they should play &
others worke. If they made ye keeping of it mater of devotion, let
them kepe their houses, but ther should be no gameing or revelling
in ye streets. Since which time nothing hath been atempted that
way, at least openly."
The good old Governor's use of the word "implements"
to describe the "barr" and the "stoole-ball" which, in the
exercise of his paternal authority, he took away from
those "yonge men," shows how careful he was to keep
his own skirts clear from contamination with "shuch like
sports." One cannot help hoping that the boys got the
"barr" and "stoole-ball" back again and managed to
rebuke the Governor for his meddling.
The game of wicket, so far as I have been able to dis-
cover, was not played until one hundred odd years later,
and my first record of it shows that it then involved the
infraction of high authority with disastrous conse-
The Game of Wicket 277
quences — not Governor Bradford this time, but the Mirror
of Old Boston, the amiable and fussy Judge Sewall,
Mentor and Diarist. Under date of March I5th, 1725-26,
he writes:
"Sam. Hirst got up betimes in the morning, and took Ben Swett
with him and went into the (Boston) Corribn to play at Wicket.
Went before any body was up, left the door open ; Sam came not
to prayer ; at which I was much displeased."
Was the learned Judge more displeased with Sam for leav-
ing the door open, or for coming "not to prayer" ? Two
days later this careless and incorrigible Sam Hirst repeated
the offense. Under date of March i/th the Judge writes :
"Did the like again, but took not Ben with him. I told him he
could not lodge here practising thus. So he lodged elsewhere."
Sam Hirst, the first old-time wicket player on my list,
grandson of the diarist, was born in 1705, and graduated
from Harvard College in 1723. He was therefore between
20 and 21 years of age when his grandfather turned him
out of his house for twice indulging before breakfast in
the game of wicket on Boston Common.
I am in doubt about giving little Ben Swett a place
on my list. Did he actually play or not? Perhaps not; on
March I7th Sam "took not Ben with him." But I could
wish a green, if belated, bay for our boy enthusiast who
had the courage to go at all. Born in 1713, the son of
Samuel Sewall, a cousin of the Judge, Ben was only about
thirteen at the time he stole away with his cousin Sam to
play, or to watch a game of wicket on Boston Common. I
may be mistaken, but I think it more than likely that at
278 The Game of Wicket
this time the game had just been introduced into New
England, and that this accounts for Sam Hirst's passion
for it. It must be remembered that the game of cricket
in anything like its present form did not begin to be played
in Old England until a few years prior to this.
So far as I can learn, the game never became popular
in the Massachusetts Colony, and I have not found a single
reference to it later than this entry in Judge Sewall's
Diary. Undoubtedly the game was played to some extent,
and a more exhaustive examination of all sources of
information would probably disclose references to it. I
must believe, however, that the game never obtained much
of a foothold in Massachusetts. Until recently cricket
has been played by the boys at St. Paul's School, Concord,
but their game was not, I think, a successor of wicket but
a recent importation of cricket.
In an unsigned note, entitled "Cricket in America,"
to be found in Vol. 48 of "The Saturday Review," page
170, this statement occurs:
"Cricket has been played in America for over a century. It was
exported thither from its home on British soil before 1747. Eng-
lishmen who had gone out to build themselves new homes in a
young and growing country, carried with them their love of the
noble sport. The earliest known games in America were played in
the lower part of New York City where Fulton Market now stands.
The Gazette and Weekly Post Boy gave an account of a game
played there on May ist, 1751. The contestants were eleven Lon-
don men and eleven New Yorkers; and strange to say, the New
Yorkers won, making 80 and 86 to their opponents' 43 and 37."
Here the game is called "cricket," and the circumstances
The Game of Wicket 279
would warrant the inference that the game was the English
game as played in England at that time. It may well be that
our game of wicket follows the old English game more
closely than the game now played in England under the rules
laid down by the great English cricket clubs. At all events,
the present English game is a much more highly developed
game than ours. The comparative newness of the English
game of cricket is well illustrated by the fact that the
first match game in England of which there is any record
was played between "Kent" and "All England" in
1746 — only five years before the game played between the
"Londoners" and "New Yorkers" in 1751. I daresay the
New Yorkers had neither the patience nor the time for
cricket, and foresaw that it could not be acclimated. At
any rate, the game apparently gained no foothold there.
A century later the game was played to a very limited
extent in the City of Brooklyn, where it was transplanted,
as I am bound to believe, from Connecticut — probably by
Bristol clock makers, who went to Brooklyn to engage in
work there at the time the factories of the Ansonia Clock
Company were established in that city. By 1751 the game
had become widely popular in England, and was played
by all classes, though the participation of men of rank in
the game gave rise to many protests. In the same year
as the match game in New York between "New Yorkers"
and "Londoners," Frederick, Prince of Wales, died
from internal injuries caused by a blow from a cricket
ball while playing at Cliefden House.*
*This on the authority of Sir Nathaniel William Wraxall. Horace Wai-
pole attributed the death of the Prince to a blow from a tennis ball — a more
aristocratic attribution and one far more likely to appeal to Walpole.
280 The Game of Wicket
How or when the game was introduced into Connecticut
I cannot tell; but it was unquestionably being played in
Hartford County with great enthusiasm as early as 1767.
I am not prepared to say that the game was fostered by
the established church of Connecticut, or has any connec-
tion with Congregationalism. But at any rate, the earliest
reference to it I have been able to find for Connecticut
occurs in Dr. Parker's "History of the Second Church of
Christ in Hartford," in which he prints on page 136 the
following challenge — breezy with local spirit :
Hartford, May 3Oth, 1767
"whereas a challenge was given by fifteen men south of the
great bridge in Hartford to an equal number north of said bridge,
to play a game of cricket the day after the last election ; the Public
are hereby informed that the challenged beat the challengers by a
great majority. Now said North do hereby acquaint the South
side, that they are not afraid to meet them with any number they
shall choose, and give them the liberty of picking their men among
themselves, and also the best players both in the West Division and
Wethersfield. Witness our hands (in the name of the whole
company).
William Pratt,
Niell McLean Jr."
In this challenge the game is called "cricket," though
subsequently it seems to have been generally called
"wicket" — the term used by Judge Sewall. The Hartford
Tennis was the royal game of England and of France ; that was enough
for him. The curious may see The History and Posthumous Memoirs of
Sir Nathaniel William Wraxall, ed. by Wheatley, Vol. I., p. 308, and Wai-
pole's Memoirs of the Reign of George II, 2nd ed. (1846), Vol. I., p. 72.
The Game of Wicket 281
game was played as an aftermath of election, and with
fifteen men on a side, but apparently the number of players
was optional then as now, because this challenge reads,
"that they are not afraid to meet them with any number
they shall choose." The reference to men of Wethersfield
leads me to remark that the game was always very popular
there. There are still a few scattering players in Wethers-
field, though no organization. Perhaps the broad open
fields of Wethersfield fostered the game just as the broad
open downs of the southern counties of England did, for
there was the true birthplace of the English game in its
developed state. I was curious to learn how this challenge
found its way into Dr. Parker's book, and wrote him about
it. He could only say in reply that the challenge was
written on a loose sheet of paper, and just how it found
its way into his collection, or what has become of it, he does
not know. It is more than likely that the early files of the
"Hartford Courant" contain some notices of games,
though in those earlier and ruder days sporting editors
and sporting reporters were unknown. I feel certain that
at least from 1767, the game was played with practically
unabated interest, particularly in Hartford and Litchfield
Counties, up to the middle of the iQth century, when base-
ball appeared as its rival. Baseball, a development of the
old English game of rounders, first appeared about 1845,
but made slow headway until 1865, when it seems to have
been taken up all over the country. Then the good old
game of wicket was doomed. It lingered on in Hartford
and Litchfield Counties for a few years, and a few players
remain, but the game is now practically obsolete. It was
282 The Game of Wicket
inevitable that the game should be superseded by one more
in consonance with the American spirit. "Americans,"
says one writer, "do not possess the patience of English-
men and do not care to witness a cricket match which may
extend to three days and then remain undecided." We
require an intense, snappy game, in which all of the excite-
ment is compressed into an hour or two. Such a game is
baseball, which, however, has the very serious def eel; 'of
placing too much power in the hands of the umpire.
In a "History of America" published in Edinburgh in
1800, Edward Oliphant, the writer, says in describing New
England (page 113): "The athletic and healthy diver-
sions of cricket, foot ball, quoits, wrestling, jumping, hop-
ping, foot races and prison base are universally practiced
in this country, and some of them in the most populous
places, and by people of almost all ranks."
This note is somewhat unsatisfactory because it does
not appear of what section of New England he is writ-
ing, nor what opportunities he had for verifying his
statements.
From Hartford, where the game was played, as we have
seen, with enthusiasm as early as 1767, it was undoubtedly
taken to Litchfield County, where it became widely popular.
From thence it spread, as I surmise, into the Berkshire
region of Western Massachusetts. I have the authority of
Professor Louis V. Pirsson of Yale for saying that it
was played in the region of Pittsfield some thirty-five years
ago, but only to a limited extent. The towns of Litchfield
and New Hartford were great centers for the game.
Torrington and Waterbury boasted of good players. Our
The Game of Wicket 283
former Governor, Hon. Frederick John Kingsbury of
Waterbury, writes that he well remembers the game as
played in Waterbury, where he thinks the game was at
its height between 1830 and 1840. The game described
by Mr. Kingsbury is the American game, but like the
English game, called for three supports and two wickets.
This feature I have not met with elsewhere.* If the
degree of excitement is in direct proportion to the number
of heroes engaged, a game of wicket should arouse a com-
munity to a higher pitch of enthusiasm than baseball.
Thirty players on a side was the usual number, sixty play-
ers in all. It must be observed, too, that in this country
the best men in the community played the game. I do
not mean to say that the teams were wholly or even largely
composed of picked men, but every team was pretty sure
to include a few of the best men in the community, and
these kept the game free from bickerings and rowdy-
ism. The taint of professionalism always attached to
baseball was conspicuously absent. I am convinced that
wicket was the more wholesome sport, and certainly had
the merit of engaging actively a larger number of men
than baseball. On the other hand, it is a less interesting
game to watch. The most patriotic Englishmen admit
that, as a spectacle, cricket is fatiguing.
Here and there I find mention made of the game being
played on "training" and "election" days; but wicket
* Since the foregoing was written I have learned from Mr. George M.
Curtis of Meriden that as he recalls the game the wickets were carried on
three supports, in this respect following cricket. Why Waterbury and
Meriden should stand together in this variant of the game I do not pretend
to know.
284 The Game of Wicket
required too much time to be given a second place on such
crowded days. I am disposed to think that its devotees
were willing to give the best of a day to it, though it is
true that "training" and "election" days were great
occasions for indulgence in all forms of athletic sports by
the colonists and their immediate descendants. Madam
Knight, in her inimitable journal of her ride from Boston
to New York in 1704, speaks of ball-playing in Connecti-
cut. She does not refer to wicket, but the English game
of cricket had not taken on anything like its present form
until 1702, and was not, so far as I can learn, played here
much before Judge Sewall made the entry in his diary
in 1725-6 already quoted from. Our colonists had the
passion of the English for sports in the open, and they
missed the English holidays, for which they found a substi-
tute in "election" and "training" days. Hence Madam
Knight's reference to "Saint Election." It may be
thought too great a tax upon credulity to connect the
game of wicket as played on our village greens with the
games of Persian horsemen, but it must be admitted that
in playing games of all sorts on "training" and "election"
days our colonists were transferring to those days
the games which their English forebears had long
played on Saints days — days originally devoted by
the priests to miracle plays, which in the course
of time gave way to purely secular entertainments. It
is hard to believe that the merry-go-round and the shoot-
ing gallery of the holidays of modern England are in the
line of succession from the miracle plays with which our
The Game of Wicket 285
ancestors were entertained before the Reformation, but
our masters will have it so. Nor is it easy to connect our
New England games on "training," "election" and "fast"
days with miracle plays, but the evidence supports the
conclusion.*
Whether wicket was ever played in New Haven by
"town-born" and "interloper" I am unable to say; but
it was unquestionably played by the college boys from
early times, though I have been unable to find any record
evidence of the game antedating 1818. In a poem entitled
"New Haven" written by William Croswell, a son of Dr.
Harry Croswell of Trinity Church, New Haven, and him-
self a Rector of the Church of the Advent in Boston,
cricket is mentioned. This poem refers to the years of
* Even the cloth forgot its dignity and engaged in sports. The Rev.
Henry Smith, the first settled minister of the old river-town of Wethersfield,
wrestled, as it would appear, not alone with the Lord. In a letter written
from Hadley in 1689 by his son, his son says, "I do well remember ye Face
and Figure of my Honored Father. He was 5 foote, 10 inches tall &
spare of build tho not leane. He was as active as ye Red Skin Men and
Sinewy. His delight was in sports of Strengthe & withe his own Handes
he did helpe to reare bothe our owne House & ye First Meeting House of
Weathersfield, wherein he preacht yeares too fewe. He was well Featured
& Fresh favoured with faire skin & longe curling Haire (as neare all of
us have had) with a merrie eye & sweet smilinge mouthe, tho he could
frowne sternlie eno when need was."
"Ye firste Meeting House was solid, mayde to withstande ye wicked
onslaughts of ye Red Skins. Its foundations was laide in ye feare of ye
Lord, but its walls was truly laide in ye feare of ye Indians for many
& greate was ye Terrors of em. I do mind me yt alle ye able-bodyed
Men did work thereat & ye old and feeble did watch in turns to espie
if any savages was in hiding neare & every man kepte his Musket nighe
to his hande." For the remainder of this captivating letter, see the History
of Ancient Wethersfield, Connecticut, Vol. I., p. 154.
286 The Game of Wicket
his undergraduateship, 1818-22, when young Croswell
was a student at Yale. The fifth stanza reads :
"And on the green and easy slope where those proud columns stand,
In Dorian mood, with academe and temple on each hand,
The football and the cricket-match upon my vision rise,
With all the clouds of classic dust kicked in each other's eyes."
Football and cricket went hand in hand in those days,
as appears from Belden's "Sketches of Yale College,"
published in 1843. He says : "Were it spring or autumn
you should see a brave set-to at football on the green, or
a brisk game at wicket."
As a New Haven school boy, Mr. Henry T. Blake saw
the college students play wicket on the Green prior to
1844, as well as during his own college days. He tells me
that he never heard the game called anything but wicket;
and the game, as he describes it, follows what I call the
American game. It was during Mr. Blake's college days
that baseball made its appearance and, if I may say so,
a decided hit. For a few years thereafter wicket was not
played on New Haven Green at all as far as I can learn;
but when the Rev. Dr. Storrs O. Seymour of Litchfield
came to college in 1853 it was revived by him and some
Litchfield County students at Yale. About that revival
he writes as follows:
"In the class of '57 there were three men from Litchfield County
well acquainted with the game of 'wicket.' And after the excite-
ment of the football games between '57 and '58 had subsided, it
was proposed that a wicket club be formed. This was done, the
ball and bats and wicket sticks after the regular pattern were pro-
cured and the club began its practice. The place where we played
was on the public green south of the old State House, which was
The Game of Wicket 287
then standing, and parallel with College Street about where the row
of trees now stands. These trees were not then growing there. I
can not recall all the names of those who were accustomed to play
with us. But I remember very well that Sam. Scoville, George M.
Woodruff, George Pratt, Holbrook our Valedictorian, John C. Day,
D. Stuart Dodge and Charles Blackman were prominent as good
players. The time when we played was at noon, after the eleven
o'clock recitation and before dinner. Sometimes also Saturday
afternoon was given up to it. There were a good many of our
class who would from time to time join in the game but irregularly.
There were not more than a dozen perhaps who were enthusiastic
enough to be on hand every day. I think that we never chose sides,
but when a man was bowled or caught out someone else took the
bat, a sort of order being observed, so that all had a chance to bat.
The game excited considerable interest, tho. I think no other
class formed a club. There were other men in the other classes
who knew the game, who had come from towns where it was
played, these would occasionally take part in it. So far as I know
the game was not continued by any club after the class of '57 was
graduated, and so far as I remember I have not played a game since
that year. But I enjoyed playing very much, having begun when
I was a small boy. The game was played here in Litchfield on our
public square every pleasant evening from early summer to late
autumn."
After one of those games in which young Seymour
played, an old gentleman came forward from among the
spectators and said to him, that he was very glad to
watch him and his friends play at the game of wicket;
that he had played the game in the old town of Litchfield
with his father, Judge Origen S. Seymour; with his
grandfather, Sheriff Ozias Seymour; and with his great-
grandfather, Major Moses Seymour. "They were all
good players," added the old man, "and you play as well as
288 The Game of Wicket
the best of them." This was Mr. Asa Bacon, then eighty-
six years old, a Litchfield man and a contemporary of
Sheriff Seymour. It was the custom in Litchfield, as else-
where, for elderly men to play a match game with the
younger men, and so Mr. Bacon as a young man had played
with Major Moses Seymour, and as an elderly man in a
game against Judge Seymour. This little story calls up a
pleasing picture of Major Moses Seymour, the patriot, as an
old man playing a match wicket game on Litchfield Green.
Dr. Seymour thinks that the game which his grandfather
played against Mr. Bacon must have been played prior
to 1800. Litchfield, as I have already stated, was one of
the strongholds of the game, which must have been played
there until the middle of the last century, and I should
judge that it must have been something of a cult in the
Seymour family because I am assured by our member,
Hon. Morris W. Seymour, that he played the game as well
as his brothers, the Rev. Dr. Storrs O. Seymour and the
late Judge Edward Seymour.
The game was also a great favorite in Litchfield with
the students of Judge Reeve's justly celebrated law
school. I think the game was never played in New Haven
after the graduation of Dr. Seymour and his Litchfield
County friends in 1857.*
Professor Henry A. Beers, who played the game as a boy
in Hartford during the years 1859-63, says that it was not
* For a further account of the game as played in Litchfield, see Mr. Clar-
ence Deming's article entitled "An Old Yankee Ball Game-Wicket," in the
New York Evening Post of May, 1903. Mr. Deming should also be enrolled
as an enthusiastic wicket player on the Litchfield team, as well as the late
Senator Orville H. Platt, who studied law in Litchfield.
The Game of Wicket 289
played during his time in college from 1865 to 1869. By
that time baseball had entirely crowded it out. The game
described by Professor Beers as having been played by him
during his school-boy days in Hartford, corresponds in
all particulars to what I call the American game. He also
writes, "A few years ago in the little town of Southfield
in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, the natives organized
a wicket game on July 4th, between the married men and
bachelors." I have already alluded to finding the game
in the Berkshire region, whence I think it was derived
from Litchfield.
How far the Connecticut game of wicket has travelled
I cannot say, but it is certain that when the Western
Reserve region of Ohio was settled from Connecticut about
1830, the game was taken along. Our member, Professor
Thomas Day Seymour of Yale, tells me that wicket was a
favorite game of the students at Western Reserve College
then located at Hudson, Ohio. He played the game at
that time, as did also his brother, Mr. Charles Seymour of
Knoxville. That was a community of pure Connecticut
stock, and a greater part of the students came from the
Western Reserve region and were of the same stock, and
they came to college well acquainted with the game. "Up
to 1861," he says, "the standard games at our college
were wicket and baseball, with wicket well in the lead.
This game was in no sense a revival. A proof of this is
the fact that young men coming to college all over the
Reserve were accustomed to this game at home." The
game described by Professor Seymour is the Connecticut
game. Mark Hanna was a star player there about 1860,
19
290 The Game of Wicket
and the rule had to be called on him that the ball must
touch the ground three times before it struck the wicket.*
It thus appears that wicket was played in Connecticut,
and particularly in Hartford and Litchfield Counties, from
the middle of the i8th century down to the outbreak
of the Civil War. During the War, athletic games were
largely suspended in favor of drilling and other manoeu-
vres. After the war, baseball seems to have had a clear
* Professor Seymour's letter so well visualizes the game as it was played
half a century ago in the Western Reserve that I am constrained to reprint
it in full:
NEW HAVEN, April 25, 1905.
My dear Kinsman: — As to "wicket" in Northern Ohio: My father was
for fifty years professor in the Western Reserve College, and my youth
was spent in a community of unusually pure New England stock. In 1861,
the war set all men to "drilling," and the "cadets" found in skirmishing
and the like (Zouave drill) the vent for their longing for exercise and
sport. But up to 1861 the standard games at our college were wicket and
football, with wicket well in the lead. This was in no sense a revival. A
proof of this is the fad that young men coming to college from all over
the Reserve were accustomed to this game at home. My impression is
that my father recognized the game as familiar to him from his boyhood, —
but of this I am not absolutely certain. The ball was about 5^2 inches
in diameter; the wickets were about 4 inches above the ground, and
about 5 feet long. The bats were very heavy, — of oak, about 50 inches
long, with an almost circular lower end of (say) 8 inches in diameter.
The ball was so heavy that most bowlers merely rolled it with such a
twist as they could impart; but some bowlers almost threw it. Mark Hanna
was the star player about 1860, and the rule had to be called on him that
the ball must touch the ground three times before it struck the wicket.
The bats were so heavy that only the strong (and quick) batter dared to
wait until the ball was opposite him and then strike. I was always satisfied
to steer the ball off to one side. The rules favored the batter and many
runs were made. (My brother has stimulated, helped, and confirmed my
recollections in this matter.) I am,
Yours, &c.,
T. D. SEYMOUR.
The Game of Wicket 291
field. In an address made on May 24, 1906, A. G.
Spalding, the "famous pitcher" and authority on the
"national game," said:
"Baseball is of American origin, was born in New York City,
and the first baseball ground was located about where Madison
Square now stands. Back in 1842 a few of the young business
men of New York began to assemble every Saturday afternoon on
these grounds to play what they called baseball. In 1845 these
same young men organized the original Knickerbocker Baseball
Club of New York, the first baseball club ever organized. This
club printed the first playing rules in 1845, and it may interest you
to know that the present game of baseball could to-day be played
under these same rules with a few minor changes, showing that the
main underlying principles of the game have not changed from that
day to this. Five years later, in 1850, the Gotham and Empire
Clubs of New York were organized, and then began rival match
games between clubs. In 1857 a convention of baseball players
was held in New York, which resulted in the formation of the first
National Association of Amateur Baseball Players in 1858, with a
total membership of about twenty-five clubs, all from New York
city or the immediate vicinity. This national organization gave a
great impetus to the game and clubs began forming in other cities.
The game had become well launched when the Civil War began
in 1 86 1. The New York baseball players of that period were
among the first to respond to President Lincoln's call for troops,
and they took their baseball accoutrements with them, and thus
was the game introduced into the army, where it soon became a
favorite camp pastime. Every regiment had its baseball team, and
the monotony of camp life was very much relieved by match games
of baseball. In some unaccountable manner the new game found
its way over into the Confederate lines, and while those two
magnificent armies could not agree upon national policies, they could
agree upon baseball. At the close of the Civil War, in 1865, the
soldiers of both armies in returning to their homes disseminated
292 The Game of Wicket
baseball throughout the nation, so you can see that baseball has its
patriotic side, and became the national game of America through
the efforts of those battle-scarred veterans of the Civil War."
The "national game" itself was until the sixties merely
the local pastime of New York City and a few neighbor-
ing places. When the Civil War began, the New York
regiments introduced the game into the army, and as Mr.
Spalding tells the story, the return of the soldiers to their
homes after the conclusion of peace spread the game with
the greatest possible rapidity to the uttermost parts of the
country. Wicket was thus displaced by baseball — a game
far better suited to the American spirit, but less democratic
than wicket, though the contrary opinion is often expressed.
This I cannot but feel is a loss, as it should always be the
aim to keep recreation democratic.
For my last chapter in the history of the game, I must
turn again to Bristol. The history of wicketing in Bristol
is entrenched behind an unbroken series of victories over
neighboring teams, the more remarkable, perhaps, because
the Bristol team has always been made up of local players,
while the opposing teams have often been composed of
picked players from different towns. A memorable game
was that played on Federal Hill in Bristol September 9,
1858, between Bristol and Waterbury. A special train
brought the Waterbury players to Bristol. The game lasted
nearly all day and was played to the accompaniment of a
band of music. Waterbury was defeated. After the con-
test was over the home and the visiting teams marched, the
band leading the way, to the center of the town, where
they were loudly cheered. A banquet at the Kilbourne
The Game of Wicket 293
House followed. But the most memorable day in the
annals of the game was a match played between Bristol and
New Britain on Monday, July 18, 1859, the Bristol team
having advertised that they were willing to meet a team
from any town or city in the State, or any combination,
for the championship of the State. After some delay New
Britain accepted the challenge and the affair was arranged
with as much elaboration of detail as any sort of public
celebration would be to-day. Monday morning dawned
clear and hot, and the whole country-side was early astir.
In Hartford the interest was so great that a special train
was made up and left for Bristol early in the morning.
More cars were added and filled at New Britain. Every
car was trimmed with flags and bunting; the visitors
brought a band with them, and a great crowd welcomed
them at the Bristol station. When the game began it was
estimated that fully 4,000 people — a number exceeding the
entire population of the township — had gathered to witness
the contest. Every window in the Congregational Church
was filled with people who stood there all day, as well as
every available window in the neighboring houses that
commanded a view of the old green. The remainder of
the company stood in the hot sun. For hours the battle
waged, and although New Britain played a losing game,
their heroic efforts to recover themselves maintained the
excitement until all was over. In speaking of the game,
the "Hartford Press" said, "the most remarkable order
prevailed during the game, and the contestants treated
each other with faultless courtesy, the good-natured cheers
at each other's mishaps being given and received in the
294 The Game of Wicket
best of spirits. The judges required the umpire but few
times during the game and the decisions were yielded to
promptly." New Britain was defeated by a score of 190
to 152.
Though their team had been beaten, the New Britain con-
tingent were not broken in spirit. Stripping the flags and
bunting from their gaily decorated cars, they now draped
them heavily in black; the shades of evening heightened
the majesty of grief. And so, as the day closed, this
funeral train wound slowly through the cut, crossed the
great "Cow Plain," and drew on to New Britain and Hart-
ford. The team remained behind for the customary ban-
quet. In this great match of 1859 f°r tne championship
of the State the game seems to have culminated. In that
game thirty men played on each side. In the lists I notice
the names of the late Frederick W. Stanley and Valentine
Chamberlain of New Britain, and Henry A. and the late
Josiah Tracy Peck of Bristol, both brothers of Professor
Tracy Peck of Yale.*
Fortunately the rules decided upon for the New
Britain game, as drafted by the late Deacon "Harry"
Bartholomew of Bristol, have recently been brought to
* One of the spectators of that great contest on Federal Hill lived to
play a game of wicket in the same town nearly fifty years later, as the follow-
ing item from the New Haven Journal-Courier of September 5th, 1905, shows :
"Wilfred H. Nettleton of Bristol, aged eighty years, who has been an
admirer of wicket for half a century and saw the game on Federal Hill,
Bristol, fifty years ago, when Bristol defeated New Britain, played in the
game on Friday afternoon on the Center street grounds, in that town.
He has played more or less all his life and on Friday made eight runs in
the game between the married and unmarried men. His health is preserved
in a remarkable degree and there is rarely a baseball game hereabouts that
he does not see."
The Game of Wicket 295
light and are here reprinted. They are valuable as show-
ing the game at the very height of its development and
just before it was displaced by baseball.
RULES OF THE GAME OF WICKET.
ist. The ball shall be from 3^4 to 4 inches in diameter and weigh
from 9 to 10 ounces.
2d. The wickets shall be 75 feet apart.
3d. The wickets shall be six feet long.
4th. The tick marks shall be six feet from the wickets.
5th. The ball shall strike the ground on or before it reaches the
center, to be a bowl.
6th. The bowler must start from behind the wicket and pass over
it in bowling.
7th. The bowler shall be within ten feet of the wicket when the
ball leaves his hand.
8th. A throw or jerk is in no case a bowl, but the arm in bowl-
ing must be kept perfectly straight.
9th. In ticking, the bowler must stand astride or back of the
wicket, striking it off from the inside, retaining the ball in his hand.
loth. When the bowler has received the ball, it shall be bowled
by him before it is passed to the other bowler.
nth. The striker shall in no case molest the ball when it is being
thrown in, so as to hinder the bowler from ticking him out.
I2th. There shall be no crossing the alley when the ball is being
bowled.
1 3th. There shall be no unnecessary shinning.*
* That the game as played in Litchfield County was substantially the
same as played in Hartford County is shown by the following extradl from
a letter dated at Litchfield, October u, 1909, from the Rev. Dr. Storrs O.
Seymour, a wicketer himself and the inheritor of the traditions of the
Litchfield County game.
"I thank you most heartily for sending me your article on 'Wicket.' I
do not see how it can be improved. Nor have I any suggestion to make unless
it might be well to explain what was meant by 'shinning' in rule I3th. My
296 The Game of Wicket
I4th. In catching, flying balls only are out. A ball caught
before striking any other obje&l but the catcher is out.
1 5th. In crossing, the striker shall tick his bat down on or over
the tick mark to have a cross count except when caught or ticked
out.
1 6th. No striker shall strike a ball more than once except in
defense of his wicket, neither shall he stop the ball with his bat and
then kick it.
1 7th. No one shall get in the way of a striker to prevent his
crossing freely.
i8th. Lost ball may have four crosses run on it.
ipth. No one but the judge may cry "no bowl."
The number of players on each side is not fixed by these
rules. On this point there seems to have been consider-
impression is that three 'shinnings' put a man out, although probably these
three must have been consecutive, and I believe that when a batter had
stopped a ball in that way the ball was thrown back to the same bowler.
You also speak of the fact that the ball being bowled to one batter, the
other might move forward to make his run. Was not this called 'leading
up' and considered as a mark of a courageous and alert batter? I think
too that a batter who had thus 'led up' might stop the ball anywhere in
the alley if the bowler opposite to him tried to bowl him out before he
could get within the 'tick line.'
"There used to be many match games played between the 'Bantam Club'
of Litchfield and the Wolcottville Club. The last match game in which I
played was one between these two clubs when I was in college, my division
officer, who, if I remember rightly, was Dr. Dwight, the late President, having
excused me from attending on prayers and recitations that I might come
to Litchfield for the purpose of playing. My brother Edward was one of
the players and, alas ! our club was beaten."
Dr. Seymour's letter was submitted to Mr. Miles Lewis Peck of Bristol,
who replied in part, as follows :
"With regard to 'shinning' it meant the stopping of a ball with your shins
without having made any effort to hit it with the bat. Sometimes players
who had very tough shins would try to tire out a bowler on the opposite
team by shinning ball after ball and a rule was made to prevent this. When,
however, the batter struck at and tried to hit the ball, but failed, and the
ball hit his shins, it was not called 'shinning.' "
The Game of Wicket 297
able elasticity. While the game was frequently played
with only about fifteen men on a side, the existing records
show that in all match games of any importance there
were about thirty players on each side ; but, as stated, there
seems to have been no hard and fast rule fixing the num-
ber of players. Thirty players on a side may have been
considered the "perfect number," but important match
games were played with 28 men on a side, and with even
more than 30. One would think that with sixty men more
or less engaged in one game, there would be great con-
fusion; but it is to be remembered that only about half
the whole number were playing at one time. While
one team was fielding, the other team was batting.
The fielding team was, of course, in play, but the
batting team was waiting its turn, two by two, at the
bat. The fielding team moved from one end of the alley
to the other according to the end of the alley used for bat-
ting. Either end of the alley was used, but only one end
at a time. Although only a little over half of the aggre-
gate number of men engaged were in play at any one time,
the number actually taking part in the game was large
compared with our modern game of baseball. The very
number of players engaged in these bygone contests gives
a quaint and old-time air to any rehearsal of them, and
shows how simple, compared with our own, the times were
when sixty men of the better class, and even of the first
class, were able to devote an entire day to a game. Indeed
the number of players gives some color to the theory that
the game is after all but dismounted polo derived from
true polo in which a great number of horsemen took part.
298 The Game of Wicket
From 1859 the game seems to have languished up to
1873, when Bristol played Wolcottville and Ansonia, and,
in 1874, Forestville. Several games were played in 1876 —
the Centennial year.
In 1880 the Bristol wicket team went to Brooklyn, New
York, and on August 27th decisively defeated the Brooklyn
Club. The game drew a great crowd and the reporters
of the New York dailies took advantage of the oppor-
tunity to write up the strange Yankee game of wicket.
The Brooklyn Eagle said, "There were many grey-beards
on both sides, but what was the most striking in the contest,
to the spectators present, accustomed to witness games and
matches of all kinds in the Metropolis, was the entire
absence of the spirit of partizan malice, of continuous dis-
puting and quarreling which is frequent at local contests
on the ball field." If the game of baseball was free from
rowdyism at first, it soon degenerated into it, so that to-day
and for many years past, at least, rowdyism has been
characteristic of baseball games. A rough class of men
have played the games and a rough and rowdy class have
been attracted to them. I do not mean to say that base-
ball is a rowdy game as played by young men, nor that
many of the best men in any community are not enthusi-
astic supporters of baseball. What I mean to say is, that
baseball has almost from its beginnings been character-
ized by a great deal of rowdyism.
Beginning with 1880, local games occupied the Bristol
wicketers until 1892, when they played two games with
Newington. In 1893 they played Newington and Torr ing-
ton. Newington was again beaten in 1895. The next
The Game of Wicket 299
great game was that of 1903 — the "Old Home Week"
game already spoken of. The last game was that played
as a feature of the annual fair at Berlin last year, attract-
ing a great crowd. For over sixty years the Bristol team
has been victorious in every game. Is it strange, then,
that up there on the hills they cherish the traditions of
the ancient Yankee game of wicket, of which they consider
themselves the appointed custodians?
I should not bring this paper to a close without attempt-
ing a description of the game as played. To begin with,
an alley 75 feet long is prepared. No rule prescribes any
width for the alley but it varies from 8 to 10 feet. Two
pairs of wooden blocks are placed at the respective ends
of the alley in parallel lines at a right angle to its length ;
on these blocks light sticks six feet long, called wickets, are
mounted. The blocks, which are usually pyramidal in form,
are of a height to lift the wickets about 4 inches above the
floor of the alley. The center of the alley is crossed by an
imaginary transverse line used to determine the fairness
of the ball, it being one of the requirements that the ball
must be bowled so as to strike the floor of the alley before
reaching the center of the alley. The judge generally
takes a position in line with this transverse line, which
is marked by bits of red flannel held in place by pins driven
into the edge of the alley on each side so as to be flush with
its floor. The bowlers stand back of the wickets and for
them the ground is cleared and smoothed so as to merge
into the alley, though the alley proper is confined between
the wickets; no rules limit the size of the place occupied
by the bowler. Imaginary "tick-lines" are drawn at a
300 The Game of Wicket
right angle to the axis of the alley, six feet inside of the
wickets. Similarly, imaginary transverse "bowling lines"
five feet inside of the "tick-lines," and therefore ten feet
inside of the wickets, are drawn to prevent the bowlers
from advancing toward the center of the alley more than
ten feet from the wickets, before delivering the ball.
These "tick-lines" and "bowling lines" are usually indi-
cated by bits of red flannel attached to pins driven into
the side of the alley as described above. The batsmen are
placed facing each other between the "tick lines" and the
wickets, each batsman being furnished with a one-piece
wooden bat not unlike a tennis bat in form, though having
a longer handle, and being solid at the outer end instead
of strung with gut. Two bowlers chosen from the fielding
team stand back of the wickets. The batsmen from the
team at the bat stand just inside of the wickets. That is
their position for batting, but when the ball is being
bowled to one of them, the other, of course, has to get out
of the way of the bowler and always moves forward on
the right side of the alley to be out of the way and to
be nearer the opposite wicket if the ball is batted and he
has to run. The wicketers forming the team from which
the bowlers are chosen are arranged around the end of
the alley from which the ball is being batted. In case
the batting is shifted to the other end of the alley, the
fielders swiftly group themselves around the bowler
there. To deliver a ball the bowler retreats back
of the wicket for some distance. Then running forward
he leaps over the wicket and delivers the ball with a
straight arm as close to the ground as possible, and always
The Game of Wicket 301
within the "bowling line" before described. He may
deliver a straight ball, or a curved ball — a swift ball or
a slow ball ; but under all circumstances, the ball, in order
to be a fair ball, must touch the alley before reaching the
line crossing the middle of the alley and determining the
fairness of the ball. If the ball is not intercepted by the
batsman, it will, of course, knock off the wicket, which it
is the aim of the batsman to guard. The batsman may
strike an unlimited number of balls, and may or may not
run as he may judge best; but in some way or other he
must intercept the balls and prevent them from knocking
off the wicket. When he strikes the ball into the field he
ordinarily runs to the opposite end of the alley and strikes
the ground back of the "tick line" with his bat. In this
way a run is scored, but of course the batsman does not
score if the ball is caught by one of the fielders, or if the
ball is thrown to the bowler and the wicket knocked
off with the ball in the hands of the bowler before
the runner "ticks" down. If he makes a strong hit he
may after "ticking" once run back to the opposite end
of the alley and then back and "tick" again, and so on,
but in any event he cannot make more than four runs
on any one ball. But up to the number of four, he may
run back and forth until the ball has been recovered, and
thrown to the bowler. With so many men in the field to
intercept the ball, it is surprising that any runs to speak
of are made; but, on the contrary, wicket scores are high
as compared with baseball scores.
With so many taking part, the game is necessarily pro-
longed, even lasting all day, and rarely played within a space
302 The Game of Wicket
of five hours ; but I have never heard of the game of wicket
being continued over to the next day, which I believe is not
unusual with the game of cricket as played in Old England.
The difference between the game of wicket which was
played with scarcely diminished enthusiasm as late as 1860,
and our national game of baseball, is fairly characteristic
of the great changes in American life. The old game was
leisurely, gentlemanly, and democratic in so far as it
brought together on terms of friendly equality the high
and the low of our old social order, just as in England the
farmer's son, the squire's son, and the nobleman's son
engaged in village games, without any consciousness of
distinctions of rank. In the game of wicket the game itself
was enough for the players though it generally drew a
good many local people. On the other hand, we have in
baseball a game played with terrific intensity and power
for an hour and a half or two hours, by eighteen men too
frequently of a rough class, and almost invariably before
an immense throng of highly wrought spectators. In
baseball, at least as now played, the players are generally
recruited from the same class. It would be invidious to
say that the "best people," so called, do not to-day attend
baseball games. But they are in the minority in the great
crowd of men who occupy the "bleachers" — they are, as I
think, men who as boys played the game when it was
in its infancy, and when it too brought together in friendly
rivalry the better and the best men in the community.
The game of wicket compared with baseball as now played
seems rural enough, and shows more plainly than the old
The Game of Wicket 303
players could have ever realized, how close they were, after
all, in their sports to the mother country, which many of
them affected so much to despise. The English cricket-
ers and the American wicketers were in truth of one
brotherhood.
HISTORIES AND NECROLOGIES
PROF. WILLISTON WALKER, D.D.
Historian of the Society
20
REPORT OF THE HISTORIAN FOR THE YEAR 1903-4
|T is one of the duties of this Society at its annual
meeting, and its only mournful one on this
occasion of reunion, to give a glance back over
the year that has just closed and to call to recollection
those whom death has taken from us since last we met
in the General Court. No annual meeting of this Society,
since that of 1895, has been without the necessity of such
sad commemoration. Sometimes the list of our loss has
been long, three times it has contained but a single name,
but it has always been a record of those whose going was
a serious loss to our companionship, and whose absence
from us has meant the sundering of valued associations.
The first break in our ranks, during the past year, was
caused by the death of Mr. Charles Edwin Brown of
Bridgeport, which occurred on September 16, 1903. Mr.
Brown was born on September 4, 1849, m Providence,
R. I., the son of Mr. Allen Brown, a merchant of that
city. After training in the public schools of Providence
and in a preparatory school of that city, he went to New
York and entered the service of Mr. John Davol of the
Brooklyn Brass & Copper Company. With Mr. Davol
and that company, of which Mr. Davol was a leader, Mr.
Brown remained some twenty-four years, winning and
retaining the confidence and goodwill of his employers,
until the sales department of the company was committed
to his charge.
This work in Brooklyn he laid down about fifteen years
ago to take charge of the selling department of the Bridge-
308 History and Necrology
port Copper Company, a business in which he successfully
engaged until the time that company was purchased by
the Amalgamated Copper Company. Mr. Brown's health
had begun to fail, and from the time that his business
relations with the Bridgeport Company were sundered until
his death he was not actively engaged in commercial pur-
suits. His death was caused by a shock of apoplexy and
took place at Litchfield, Conn., where he was spending the
summer with his children. He married, April 3, 1870,
Miss Ella Taylor Brooker, of Torrington, Conn., who
died July 6, 1899. Eight children survive him.
Mr. Brown traced his ancestry to John Brown of
Swansea, Mass., an assistant to the Plymouth Colony, a
member of its Council of War, and a commissioner
representing Plymouth in the meetings of the United
Colonies. Our late associate was never an occupant of
office or otherwise conspicuously before the public eye. He
was known to comparatively few of the Society, but he
sympathized heartily in its aim of perpetuating and honor-
ing the names of the founders of New England, and he
is remembered with affection by a large circle of friends,
as a man of lovable character and fineness of feeling.
The death of Professor Francis Wayland, long iden-
tified with the Law Department of Yale University, and
its Dean, occurred on January 9, 1904, and took from us
one of the most distinguished members of our Society.
Francis Wayland was born in Boston, on August 23, 1826,
the son of Rev. Francis Wayland, who entered, a year
later, upon a distinguished presidency of Brown Uni-
versity. Brought up, thus, in a collegiate atmosphere,
History and Necrology 309
Mr. Wayland's intellectual powers were early developed.
He graduated from Brown University in the class of 1846,
then studied law at the Harvard Law School and in the
offices of W. H. Potter, Esquire, in Providence, and of
Ashmun & Chapman in Springfield, Mass., where he was
admitted to the bar and began practice. In 1850, he
entered on the practice of law in Worcester, Mass., and
remained there till 1858, engaged in his profession, when
he removed to New Haven, with the interests of which
city he was ever afterwards identified. Six years after
his settlement in New Haven, he was chosen judge of
probate, an office which he held for two years; and, in
1869, he was elected Lieutenant-Governor of Connecticut
on the Republican ticket. Prominent by reason of these
and many other services in the New Haven community, it
was natural that the Law Department of Yale should look
to him as one who could be of service in the reorganization
of its work. Significant as his services had thus far been,
it was on his election as an instructor in the Yale Law
School, in 1871, and his appointment as its Dean, in 1873,
that the great work of his life began. The school, at that
time, was in a disheartening situation; its students were
few, its instruction irregular and ill paid ; it had no build-
ings and was without funds; its standard of scholarship
was low, and its condition was one which seemed to
threaten speedy collapse. To the work of its invigoration
Dean Wayland brought energy, courage, tact and persist-
ence, and he was ably seconded in this task by younger'
members of the New Haven Bar, conspicuous among
whom were Judge Robinson and Judge Baldwin. By their
3io History and Necrology
combined efforts, under Dean Wayland's leadership, the
condition of the school was speedily and radically changed ;
its standards of scholarship were brought fully abreast
of modern requirements, its faculty was enlarged till it
included, at the time of Mr. Wayland's death, fifteen
instructors and eighteen lecturers, and its student body
numbered three hundred and forty-eight. Through
his zeal invested funds were obtained to the amount of
one hundred and fifty thousand dollars besides the stately
building which bears the name of Mr. Wayland's friend,
John W. Hendrie, which was secured by Mr. Wayland's
persistent efforts. The Yale Law School is his most
conspicuous monument and one which must keep his name
in abiding honor.
Besides his interest in the affairs of this department
of Yale University, Dean Wayland was a man of broad
and varied concerns. For fourteen years he was one of
the directors of the Connecticut State's Prison and was
long president of that board. His interest in the aid of dis-
charged prisoners began even earlier, and, in 1872, he
became president of the Connecticut Prison Aid Associa-
tion. This concern for the welfare of the criminal classes
was but one manifestation of Dean Wayland's broad and
philanthropic sympathy with the defective and delinquent
elements of our civic life, and his earnest desire to do what
he could for their moral and social betterment. This feel-
ing led him to devote much attention to the organization
of the charities of the city of his residence, and, from
1878 till the time of his death, he was not merely president
of the Organized Charities of New Haven, but under his
History and Necrology 3 1 1
leadership the system of pauper and vagrant relief in that
city became one of the best in the country, and is deserv-
edly regarded as a model of administration. Dean Way-
land's study of sociological questions took in a wider view
than that of his own city or own state, and naturally led
him into cooperation with the American Social Science
Association, of which he was elected president in 1880, an
office which he held for three years. Of course his own
university desired his services upon its governing board,
and he was a trustee of Brown University for many years.
In 1874 he was appointed president of the Board of
Visitors of the United States Military Academy at West
Point, and he served as vice president of a similar board
in the inspection of the Naval Academy at Annapolis.
In the affairs of the Baptist denomination, of which he
was a loyal member, he was conspicuous, being president
of the great Baptist Missionary Society, the American
Baptist Union, and engaged on many committees having
the welfare of various aspects of that religious body in
their charge. One of the last works in which he partici-
pated, even when partially disabled by illness, was his
service as chairman of the Building, Committee, by which
the new edifice of the "First Baptist Church" of New
Haven, which is now just nearing completion, was erected.
Dean Wayland was, in personal appearance, a man of
stately and commanding presence. He enjoyed the society
of his fellowmen, he was gifted with abundant humor, he
knew how to meet his associates of whatever position in
life with abundant and hearty cordiality and good fellow-
ship, yet with no abatement of the impression of dignity,
312 History and Necrology
which was one of the fundamental traits of his character.
He made an ideal presiding- officer, he won and retained
the friendship of his associates and the admiration, no
less than the affection, of his students. Till the summer
of 1901, when he was partially disabled by an embolism,
which deprived him of the use of one of his legs, he was
a man marked by physical alertness and of noticeably
vigorous appearance. From the time of that attack till his
death he was an invalid compelled to live a physically
crippled life, but at no period did his mental activity shine
out more conspicuously than in these trying days of con-
finement, which he bore with cheerfulness and courage;
and the interests of the Law School and the concerns of
the philanthropic, religious and charitable associations, in
which he had borne so large a share, were ever present
with him to the very close of his useful career.
He is survived by his wife, who was a daughter of
the late Ezra C. Read, Esquire, of New Haven.
The death of Mr. William Elijah Downes of New
Haven, on February i, 1904, took from us the third mem-
ber of this Society whose demise during the year we have
to record. Mr. Downes traced his ancestry back to Gov.
Robert Treat, famous for his services to the colonists in
battles with the Indians at the Great Swamp Fight and
at Bloody Brook. He was born in Milford, on August 22,
1824, the son of Horatio and Nancy Smith Downes.
After preparation for college in the schools of Milford
he graduated from Yale University in the class of 1845,
and after a further course of study in the Yale Law School,
he began the practice of the legal profession in Derby.
History and Necrology 313
The rising manufactures of that enterprising community,
however, soon attracted his attention, and he became
greatly interested in the Howe Pin Company of that place,
of which he was successively secretary and treasurer, and
then president. The business interests of Derby owed
much to his leadership. He was one of the founders of
the Derby Gas Company, of which he was long a director,
president of the Derby Savings Bank, and a leading and
influential citizen in all that made for the welfare of the
Derby community. The respect in which he was held by
his fellow citizens is shown by his election, three times,
as Representative to the Connecticut Legislature. In 1887,
Mr. Downes became a resident of New Haven and built
the house on Whitney Avenue, in which he has since lived
during a considerable part of the year. Reasons of health
had induced him, for a number of years before his death,
to spend his winters in the south, and it was on a winter
sojourn at Deland in Florida that death overtook him.
Mr. Downes married Miss Jane Maria Howe, on June
24, 1850, and is survived by his wife and four children.
Mr. Downes was a man of genial, kindly spirit, a good
friend, and one heartily and benevolently interested in
causes that made for the welfare of his fellowmen. His
health and age have prevented him from meeting often
with us; but he was a man whom we were glad to have
numbered of our fellowship.
The fourth of our members whose death we have to
record was that eminent Connecticut lawyer, Judge Lyman
Denison Brewster of Danbury, whose careful and dis-
criminating paper upon Elder William Brewster, read
History and Necrology
before the Society at the general court of 1901, many of
us must recall.
Judge Brewster was born in the town of Salisbury in
this State, on July 31, 1832, the son of Daniel and Harriet
(Averill) Brewster. Though the family of which he was
to be so distinguished a member had long been resident
in Connecticut, he stood eighth in descent from Elder
William Brewster, the spiritual leader of the Mayflower
company. After a period of preparation for college at the
Williams Academy in Stockbridge, he entered Yale Uni-
versity, graduating from Yale in the class of 1855. The
completion of his college course was followed by the study
of law in the office of Honorable Roger Averill of Dan-
bury, and on January 21, 1858, he was admitted to the bar.
From the first he was regarded as a man of promise in
the legal profession, and his talents speedily led to asso-
ciation in partnership with his instructor, Lieutenant-Gov-
ernor Averill, a partnership that continued as long as Mr.
Averill lived. On Mr. Averill's demise Mr. Brewster
became senior partner in a law firm with Elias Frye, Esq.,
under the title of Brewster & Frye. In 1871 he entered
into partnership with Samuel Tweedy, Esq., and in 1878
with Howard B. Scott, Esq., the firm being known as
Brewster, Tweedy & Scott. This partnership lasted until
1892, and in the following year Judge Brewster formed
a similar connection with Samuel A. Davis, Esq., to which
J. Moss Ives, Esq., was added in 1899, the partnership
being known at the time of Judge Brewster's death as
Brewster, Davis & Ives. His fellow townsmen speedily
recognized the sterling qualities of the rising young
History and Necrology 315
lawyer, and honored him with political preferment.
He represented Danbury in the Lower House of the Legis-
lature in 1870, 1878 and 1879. He held office as judge
of probate and served as school visitor. In 1879 he was
chosen to the State Senate from the district in which Dan-
bury is situated, and in the Legislature, both while a mem-
ber of the House and again in the Senate, he gained dis-
tinction as one of the most useful, clear-sighted and hard-
working servants of the State, especially in all that had
to do with the simplification and systematizing of law.
In 1878 and 1879 he was a member of the Judiciary Com-
mittee, and in 1880 chairman of that committee. Gov-
ernor Hubbard designated him, in 1878, as one of the
committee to revise the Civil Procedure Code, and it was
owing to his labors that the "Practice Act" and the "Book
of Forms" were adopted — steps which strongly tended to
render uniform the legal procedure of this commonwealth.
Conspicuous in his profession, he was appointed, in 1870,
a judge of the Court of Common Pleas of Fairfield County
and continued to occupy a position on the bench for four
years. Though thus identified with the judicial office in
a way that always attached to him the title of judge, it
was as a practising lawyer and a reformer of legal
method that he gained chief distinction. As a lawyer he
rose to national reputation in connection with the Tilden
will case, in which he represented the interests of the heirs-
at-law in their successful attack upon the validity of Mr.
Tilden's will — a result which was justly believed to be
due, largely, to his legal acumen and professional
skill. But Judge Brewster's interests were wrapped
316 History and Necrology
up even more in the simplification of legal procedure
in general than in the success of his own practice.
Entering into the American Bar Association at its
foundation, he was at once recognized as one of the
most useful and hard-working members of that society.
In 1890 he was appointed chairman of its Committee
on Uniform State Laws; in 1896 he was chosen
president of a National Conference on Uniform Laws,
made up of commissioners from the several States of our
Union ; and he held that office thenceforth until ill health
compelled him to lay it down. In particular, he believed
that the conduct of mercantile business would be greatly,
facilitated by the enactment of uniform commercial laws,
and to this matter he gave constant and persistent atten-
tion. The "Negotiable Instruments Act," by which the
statutes regarding Bills of Exchange and Notes were made
uniform, was directly his work, and has been adopted by
some twenty of the States of the American Union. To
this matter he gave freely of his time and strength, and
his last conspicuous public service was in January, 1903,
when he made an effective argument in behalf of a uni-
form commercial code before the New York State Bar
Association in Albany — a paper which gains a sad sig-
nificance, since it was at the occasion of its presentation
that Judge Brewster suffered the paralytic shock which
rendered him an invalid for the rest of his days, and was
the first onset of the disease which was to cost him his
life on February 14, 1904.
Personally Judge Brewster was a noble representative
of the honored New England founder from whom he
History and Necrology 317
traced his lineage. One may justly see in him the hered-
itary perpetuation of many of the qualities which distin-
guished Elder William Brewster, whose descendant he
was ; like him, deeply religious by nature, public spirited,
of decided gifts of leadership and of devotion to the
larger interests of the community in which he was a
citizen, he represented the simplicity and the strength of
the old New England character. In appearance and in
manner alike he was a man of the old New England type
and he did for his own community and generation a work of
the highest usefulness and character, being thus a worthy
representative of his honored ancestry.
Judge Brewster's interests went out in other directions
than those with which his memory is chiefly associated;
a keen appreciation of literature was one of his distin-
guishing qualities. He was the poet of his class at his
graduation in 1855, and an appreciation of poetic expres-
sion marked him always. He desired to foster also the
preservation of the memories of New England, and beside
his membership in the Society of Colonial Wars, he
occupied the post of Governor of the Connecticut Society
of the Mayflower Descendants until ill health compelled its
relinquishment.
He married Miss Amelia Ives of Danbury in 1868. A
friendly and companionable man, he enjoyed the associa-
tion with his fellowmen, not simply in those societies of
which mention has been made, but in his class reunions,
at which he was one of the most regular of attendants,
and where, as well as in the meetings of our own Society,
he will be greatly missed.
318 History and Necrology
The last of our Society to be taken from us was Mr.
Edwin Dwight Trowbridge of Noroton, whose death took
place on February 25, 1904. Mr. Trowbridge was born at
New Haven on June 29, 1849, tne son °f Amos H. and Julia
( Atwater) Trowbridge, and he traced the descent by which
he held membership in our Society to Lieutenant Thomas
Trowbridge of the New Haven Troop, who served in King
Philip's War. Entering business upon arriving at young
manhood, he became connected with the banking house of
Vermilye & Company of New York, in which he was a
partner and with which he was associated during his entire
business career. About two years ago he retired from
active business. Besides his interest in matters of New
England history, which made him a member of the Society
of Colonial Wars and of the Mayflower Descendants,
he was much attracted by yachting, a form of recrea-
tion which led to membership in the New York Yacht
Club, and Seawanaka Yacht Club, and was illustrated
in his ownership of the steam yacht "Altair"; the
Wee Burn Golf Club numbered him of its member-
ship, and he was also a member of the Union League
and Down Town Clubs. Mr. Trowbridge was married
to Miss Harriet Carrington of New Haven who out-
lived her husband but a few weeks, dying on April 19,
last. He is survived by two daughters. A member of
the Society who knew Mr. Trowbridge long and well, said
of him, "I can speak very highly of his character, which
was that of a quiet, reserved gentleman, whose acquaint-
ance was pleasing to anyone that might be so favored.
He was liberal and generous, and always ready to respond
History and Necrology 319
to any appeal for assistance, either in connection with town
affairs or private charity, and his loss will be felt very
keenly at Noroton, where he resided during the summer."
Only once before in its history has our Society had so
many deaths to record as it has this year, and it is with
a sense of unusual sorrow and loss that we recall their
names as we meet together this afternoon.
REPORT OF THE HISTORIAN FOR THE YEAR 1904-5
The most conspicuous feature of the story of the Con-
necticut Society of Colonial Wars since our last annual
meeting has been the activity of its membership in politics
and the part taken by them in the administration of our
National and State concerns. The record is a remark-
able one. In our own state, one of our members, Hon-
orable Henry Roberts of Hartford, was chosen Governor.
Eli Whitney, Esq., of New Haven, is serving in the State
Senate. Our Society contributed to their unsuccessful
opponents the candidates on the Democratic ticket for
Governor and Lieutenant-Governor, Honorable A. Heaton
Robertson of New Haven and General Henry A. Bishop
of Bridgeport. The duties of Presidential Elector, under
our modern system of party nomination by General Con-
vention, have become less significant than they were at the
time of the adoption of the American Constitution, but
the honor of selection for this post is still very consider-
able; and here, as in the candidacy for the offices in the
service of the State of Connecticut which have just been
mentioned, the sympathies of our Society have been
divided — in this matter — equally between the two main
320 History and Necrology
parties. Our associates, Isaac W. Birdseye, Esq., of
Bridgeport and Francis T. Maxwell, Esq., of Rockville,
cast two of the seven ballots given by Connecticut for
President Roosevelt; while our fellow members, Melbert
B. Gary, Esq., of Rid'gefield and Charles E. Gross, Esq.,
of Hartford would have voted for Judge Alton B. Parker,
had the result of the State election been otherwise than it
was. It is evident that unlike thinking on political questions
of the day is no source of division in the fellowship of our
Society.
In affairs of National concern, one of our members, the
Honorable Charles F. Brooker of Ansonia, took a vigor-
ous part in the furtherance of the successful presidential
campaign, as a member of the Republican National Com-
mittee. Our young associate, Herbert Knox Smith, Esq.,
of Hartford, is filling a place of responsibility and honor
in the Department of Commerce and Labor at Washington,
and our colleague, Honorable Morgan G. Bulkeley, has
added to the political honors which have come to him in
time past, the United States Senatorship, having been
chosen by the present Legislature as successor to the late
General Hawley.
Certainly the record of activity and distinction in the
field of public life, exhibited by the members of this
Society, is one deserving of commemoration, and the
Society is to be congratulated that so many of its members
have been called upon or have been deemed worthy to serve
public interests in so varied capacities.
It is our painful duty now, as in the past, to commemorate
at this annual meeting the loss from our Society by death of
History and Necrology 321
valued associates. There have been five such inroads upon
our number since our last annual meeting. The first to be
called from us was the Honorable Robert Coit, one of the
foremost citizens of New London, whose death occurred
upon June 19, 1904. Mr. Coit was of eminent New Eng-
land ancestry. He traced his descent not merely from
Lieutenant Lion Gardiner, by right of whom he held
membership with us, but to William Brewster of the
Plymouth Colony and to John Coit, one of the settlers of
New London in 1650. His grandfather, Joshua Coit, was
a graduate of Harvard in the class of 1776, and a lawyer
in New London who was honored by his fellow citizens
by election to the General Assembly, of which he became
Speaker; and also to the Congress of the United States.
Joshua Coit's son, the father of our fellow member, Robert
Coit, bore the name of Robert Coit, and was eminent as
a merchant and banker of the New London community.
His son Robert, the second of the name and the subject
of this sketch, was born on the twenty-sixth of April, 1830,
in New London, where the greater part of his boyhood was
spent. After preparation in the schools of his native town
and at Farmington, he entered Yale College in 1846, grad-
uating with the class of 1850. On the completion of his
college course, he took up the study of law in the Yale
Law School, and, three years later began the practice of his
profession in New London. On August first of the next
year, 1854, he married Miss Lucretia Brainard, daughter
of William F. Brainard, Esq., of New London.
In his profession, Mr. Coit speedily won recognition,
becoming clerk of the superior court. From 1860 to 1864
322 History and Necrology
he held the office of judge of probate for the New London
District, and he also filled the post of registrar under the
Bankruptcy Act. But it was not in the practice of law
that he was to be best known to the community in which he
was so useful a citizen. In 1867 he was chosen treasurer of
the New London Northern Railroad, beginning a connec-
tion with that corporation which absorbed much of his
time and energy and continued as long as he lived. In
the service of this company he became successively its
treasurer, vice president and president ; and he was in the
latter office at the time of his death.
Mr. Coit's broad association with the business welfare
of New London is evidenced by the fact that at the time
of his decease he was president of the Union Bank and
vice president of the Savings Bank of that city,
president of the New London Gas and Electric Com-
pany, vice president of the New London Steamboat
Company, trustee of the estate of his friend and asso-
ciate, the Honorable J. N. Harris, and treasurer of
the Smith Memorial Home. It was natural that a
man so variedly useful in the life of the city in
which he lived should be sought for political service
also. In 1879, Mr. Coit was elected mayor of New
London and served for three terms. The same year, also,
he was chosen to the Lower House of the Connecticut
Legislature, and in 1880, to the State Senate, representing
the Ninth District. Here he served two terms, being
honored by the chairmanship of important committees.
In 1897 he again represented his native city in the
Legislature.
History and Necrology 323
Mr. Coit was actively in sympathy with all that had to
do with the perpetuation of the memories of New London
and lent efficient aid to the celebration of significant events
in its history. During his service as mayor, in 1881, the
centennial anniversary of the burning of the town by the
British occurred, and very much of the success of the
commemoration of that event was due to his energy and
enthusiasm. At the time of his death he was chairman
of the State Commission on the John Winthrop Monu-
ment, which was dedicated at New London on May sixth
of this year and is justly considered one of the significant
memorials of this commonwealth.
Mr. Coit's religious affiliations were with the Congre-
gational denomination, he having been a member for many
years of the Second Congregational Church of New
London. He was survived by his widow and a son, Judge
William B. Coit of the New London City Court. Our
late fellow member was a man of simple tastes, of much
reserve of manner, and of directness and reticence of
speech, yet of thorough kindliness, of keen humor, of quick
and ready observation, and of much appreciation of the
beauties of natural scenery and love of all that makes
for the well-being of life and the development of character.
His sympathies and his usefulness were wide-reaching,
and he left behind him the memory of a strong, faithful
and much respected man, whom we do well to honor to-day.
On August 1 8, 1904, our associate, Edwin Porter
Smith, Jr., died in New York City. Mr. Smith was born
on July 24, 1853, m tne same city, the son of Edwin Porter
Smith and Mary A. (Hepburn) Smith. The family has
324 History and Necrology
long been associated with Milford, where Mr. Smith often
resided in summer, and it was from Milford, at the invita-
tion of our first secretary, the late Nathan Gillett Pond,
that he entered our Society by right of his ancestor, Gov-
ernor Robert Treat. Mr. Smith's occupation was largely
the charge of the property left by his father, though he
was engaged also in dealing in real estate in New York
City, which was always his place of business. Mr. Smith
was unable to attend our meetings often and was com-
paratively unknown to most of the members of the Society.
He was a man of quiet tastes, fond of driving and enjoy-
ing fishing as a recreation, genial and companionable with
his associates. Mr. Smith was married and is survived
by his wife.
The third member of our Society whose death we have
to record at this time was Mr. Nathaniel Shaw Perkins of
New London, who died on February eighth of the present
year (1905). Mr. Perkins held membership with us by
right of descent from Governor William Leete. Your his-
torian counts himself fortunate to be able to present a brief
sketch of Mr. Perkins prepared by his friend and fellow
townsman, our associate, Walter Learned, Esq., of New
London.
"Mr. Perkins was born in New London in 1822. He
was the second child of Dr. Nathaniel S. and Ellen
(Richards) Perkins, one of a family of fourteen children,
of which but one survives.
"He graduated from Yale in 1842, and entered the whal-
ing firm of Perkins & Smith. The firm dissolved in 1857,
and .Mr. Perkins went to Chili, where he engaged in bus-
History and Necrology 325
iness for several years. Returning to New London with
a competency, he retired from business life.
"From both sides of his lineage he was a descendant
of the families who were the makers of New England, and
this inheritance was most manifest in a quiet courtesy, an
unfailing consideration, a charm of manner which unfor-
tunately we are beginning to think of as old-fashioned.
He was true to the traditions of his family, and carried into
the noise and clatter of the modern world something of
the quiet dignity which the world can ill afford to lose.
"He was the chairman of the building committee of the
First Church of Christ, which erected its present structure
in 1851. He was president of the board of trustees of
the Bulkeley School and also chairman of its building com-
mittee, and both of these buildings are testimonials of
his refined taste and excellent judgment. The Shaw
mansion, in which he died, has always been occupied by
the family. On the second visit of General George Wash-
ington to New London, in 1775, he spent one night as a
guest in the old mansion, and in 1824 the Marquis de
Lafayette was entertained there by Judge Elias Shaw,
grandfather of Mr. Perkins.
"Trim of figure, alert of step, still wearing the stock
and the close-buttoned coat of his day and generation, there
was that in his quiet dignity which compelled the busy and
hurrying toiler of our latter day to lift his hat to a gentle-
man of the old school."
Our membership from New London has been peculiarly
afflicted during the past year, three of the five members
whom the Society has lost by death being from that city.
326 History and Necrology
The next to be taken from us, after Mr. Perkins, was Mr.
James Lawrence Chew, who traced his ancestry to Gov-
ernor Roger Wolcott, Governor Jonathan Law and
Captain John Prentiss. Through the kindness of Mr.
Learned, to whom the notice of Mr. Perkins which has just
been read is due, we owe the following account of our late
associate, Mr. Chew.
"James Lawrence Chew died in New London on March
9, 1905, in his sixty-sixth year. He was a native of New
London, where he resided all his life, winning the esteem
of all who knew him, and respected for his integrity,
ability and high character. Mr. Chew was the son of
Coleby and Mary Cecilia (Law) Chew, and was born on
the third of October, 1840.
"He graduated from the Bartlett High School and
became a clerk in the office of the United States Engineers
in New London. Retiring from that position, he became
a clerk for Frink & Prentis, where he remained until
1865, when he took a place in the National Union Bank,
being elected later to the position of cashier. He had
served as city treasurer, as school visitor, and was a trustee
of the Bulkeley School and Smith Memorial Home in his
native city.
"The responsibilities of his positions had made his life
a busy one. Faithful to every duty imposed upon him, he
was the trusted adviser of many who little knew the cost
of time which his care occasioned. Only those who knew
him best knew his unostentatious charity and his constant
helpfulness. It was to him that the ne'er-do-wells, the
ravelled ends and the pitiful failures in life came with
History and Necrology 327
their stories, sure of a contribution. They did not deceive
him, and his gentle humor saved him from annoyance. He
called them his pensioners, establishing a responsibility
which he kindly accepted with something of a smile at its
absurdity.
"But apart from the busy life of the banker or the philan-
thropy which denied to the left hand what the right hand
was doing, he had a life of his own, an atmosphere untrou-
bled by figures and untrammelled by indiscriminate charity.
He was an antiquarian by nature and by choice. In his
home that he loved so much he indulged this gentle fancy.
He knew the story of each street and lane in his native
town and was an undisputed authority. The papers that
he gathered will serve some future historian. A kindly
and courteous gentleman, a remembrancer of the days that
are no more, he has left a fragrant memory, a place that
cannot be filled."
It is with a sense of personal sorrow, felt by us all I
am sure, that I mention the name of the latest member
of our Society to have passed from us, Colonel Jacob
Lyman Greene. All of us who were present at the dinner
of this Society on May 6, 1902, must remember the elo-
quence and force as well as the kindling warmth of per-
sonal affection with which he spoke of our recently
deceased associate, General William Buel Franklin. It is
an address which must live in the memory of those then
present as vividly illustrative of the character of the one
who uttered it as well as of the honored soldier whom he
commemorated.
Jacob Lyman Greene was born on August 9, 1837, the
328 History and Necrology
son of Jacob Holt Greene and of Sarah Walker (Frye)
Greene, on a farm in an outlying portion of the country
town of Waterford, Maine, of distinguished New England
ancestry. He traced his descent on the paternal side to
Lieutenant Thomas Greene, one of the first settlers of the
town of Waterford, and an officer of the old French War
as well as in the American Revolution. On his mother's
side he was a grandson of General Joseph Frye, the pioneer
settler of Fryeburg, for whom that town was named — a
soldier eminent in three wars, that resulting in the
capture of Louisburg, the old French War where he saw
service at Fort William Henry, and in the American
Revolution. The martial qualities which our late associate
conspicuously possessed were thus his by right of inherit-
ance from the lines of both his parents.
The father of the subject of this sketch, Captain Jacob
Holt Greene, was a man of great positiveness of tempera-
ment, of decided views regarding the questions which
agitated national life in the three decades preceding the
Civil War, of strict religious character and of high moral
earnestness. From him the son inherited not a little of
the temper of mind which led him instinctively to seek and
defend the right in any question submitted to him for
decision.
Though brought up on a farm, Mr. Greene, like many
another son of rural New England, was anxious to obtain
an education, and after fitting himself as well as he could
by the relatively scanty means within his reach, he entered
the University of Michigan, attracted thither by the inex-
pensiveness with which an education could there be
History and Necrology 329
obtained as well as by the rising reputation of the com-
paratively new institution of learning". His course of
study ended, he began the practice of law at Lapeer,
Michigan, about sixty miles to the westward of Detroit;
but he had merely entered upon his profession when his
patriotism drew him into the military service of his country
at the outbreak of the Civil War. In June, 1861, he
enlisted as a private in the Seventh Michigan Infantry,
beginning a military experience as varied and picturesque
and as illustrative of courage, patience and suffering as
fell to the lot of any during that national struggle. Enter-
ing as a private, his talents and his character led to his
rapid advance in the service, until in less than a year he
had attained the rank of first lieutenant. The spring of
1862 saw him disabled by an illness lasting for more than
a year. On his recovery, in the summer of 1863, he joined
the staff of General Custer, serving first as an aide and
then as assistant adjutant-general, a duty which continued
until his capture by the Confederates under the late Gen-
eral Fitzhugh Lee, in the battle of Trevillion Station, on
June n, 1864. Then followed a period of suffering in
Confederate prisons, first in Libby prison at Richmond,
then at Macon and at Charleston. From Columbia, which
was his last place of confinement, he was paroled and
enabled to return to the North. It was not until April
8, 1865, however, that he could effect a release from this
parole by exchange and reenter the army almost at the
close of the war, becoming once more a member of General
Custer's staff.
With General Custer, after the war was over, he went
33O History and Necrology
to Texas in the capacity of chief of staff, and, as such, had
an important share in the organization of the cavalry
division of Texas. Meanwhile he had risen to the rank
of major and had received the title of lieutenant-colonel
by brevet.
His war service was in the highest degree honorable.
He had shown himself an efficient, courageous and capable
leader of men, possessing all the alertness and energy
characteristic of a good cavalry officer and endearing him
to so efficient a cavalryman as General Custer.
Colonel Greene left the army in April, 1866, and was
attracted to Pittsfield, Massachusetts, by the residence
there of a brother, Dr. William Greene, a physician of that
city. Casting about, like so many other young men who
had served their country in the Civil War, for some occu-
pation, he became agent for the Berkshire Life Insurance
Company of Pittsfield, a position which he soon exchanged
for the more responsible office of assistant secretary of
the company. His talents in the management of life insur-
ance interests soon drew attention to him, and led to the
offer, in 1870, of a similar position in the Connecticut
Mutual Life Insurance Company of Hartford, an office
which he entered on July i, 1870, thus beginning a con-
nection with the company which was to last until his death.
In its service he steadily advanced, becoming its secretary
in April, 1871, and its president in 1878.
Colonel Greene's association with the business interests
of Hartford was wide and efficient. Besides the distin-
guished presidency of the Connecticut Mutual Life Insur-
ance Company, he was director of the Hartford Fire Insur-
History and Necrology 331
ance Company, of the Phoenix National Bank, and of the
New York Dock Company ; the vice president of the Con-
necticut Trust and Safe Deposit Company and of the
Society for Savings. As a man of business he had a high
reputation for integrity, courage and soundness of
financial judgment.
His experiences in the war led him to take much interest
in organizations commemorative of military service in the
Rebellion. He was president of the Army and Navy Club
of Connecticut, a member of the Military Order of the
Loyal Legion, of the Society of the Army of the Potomac,
and of the Robert O. Tyler Post of the Grand Army of
the Republic, in Hartford. Besides his membership in
this Society, which we commemorate, he was of the Con-
necticut Society of the Sons of the American Revolution.
As a Mason he was a member of the Berkshire Chapter,
Royal Arch Masons, and of the Berkshire Commandery,
Knights Templars, of Pittsfield.
The breadth of his interests is indicated by his member-
ship in the American Historical Association, the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, his trustee-
ship of Trinity College at Hartford, of the Berkeley
Divinity School at Middletown, of the Wadsworth
Athenaeum and Watkinson Library of Hartford, and his
presidency of the Charity Organization Society of the city
of his residence.
His social qualities were evidenced by his membership
in the Monday Evening Club of Hartford, in which he was
always active, the Hartford Club, the Hartford Golf Club,
and the Century Association of New York.
332 History and Necrology
No estimate of Colonel Greene's career would be ade-
quate which did not mention his deep interest in all that
made for the welfare of the religious communion of
which he was an honored member. At the time of his death
he had been for many years a warden of Trinity Church,
Hartford. He was prominent in the Church Temperance
Society and treasurer of the Bishop's Fund of Connecticut.
Of his interest in Berkeley Divinity School, mention has
already been made.
His military experience, his pleasing and effective quali-
ties as a speaker and his martial bearing led to many
demands upon him to represent his fellow citizens on public
or ceremonial occasions. Thus, he was the orator at the
meeting in Hartford commemorative of General Grant;
he served as grand marshal at the dedication of the
Memorial Arch, which is Hartford's worthy commemora-
tion of its sons who shared in the Civil War ; he was chair-
man of the committee which received President Roosevelt
on his visit to Hartford in August, 1902, and marshal of
the Grand Army parade when that organization held its
national reunion at Hartford in May of last year ; he was
one of the speakers at the inauguration of President
Luther of Trinity College in October last, and his services
and attainments were honored by the degrees of M.A.
bestowed upon him by Yale University in 1898 and of
LL.D. by Trinity College in 1904.
Colonel Greene was widely known and widely beloved.
Tributes to his memory have been many, but none more
aptly expresses the feelings of his associates and friends
towards him than the words of his fellow townsman, Rev.
History and Necrology 333
Dr. Edwin Pond Parker, written at the time of his
decease :
"To recall, recite and give thanks for those things in
his mind, spirit and character which made his friendship
precious and his habitual presence among us a great bless-
ing to our community, is a chief source of our consola-
tion for his departure. He certainly was a true and a good
man. He was upright, honorable, brave, pure, kindly and
friendly. He was gentle and genial and cordial, and
radiant of an inner light of life. He was a lovable man,
and more and more so as one knew him better and better.
He had long ago won and enjoyed, I hope, a warm place
in the respect, honor, confidence and affection of a great
number of the best people of our city — of our whole com-
munity, I may say.
"He had become one of the foremost of our citizens, not
by seeking to be so, but by virtue of his personal merits,
of his modest readiness for public service, his eager interest
in every good work, and the wisdom of his judgments.
There was something admirable in his painstaking, per-
sistent, and even plodding pursuit of truth, as in the case
of his generous and fine vindication of General Franklin.
He was on the Lord's side, in great breadth of opinions
and sympathies, and with a vigorous but quiet mind."
Two incidents of no small interest to our Society during
the past year have had to do with the erection of historic
monuments. The granite block in Norwich, commemora-
tive of the Narragansett chief Miantonomo, first set up
in 1841, was repaired under the charge of Major Bela
Peck Learned and Mr. Jonathan Trumbull of that city,
334 Plistory and Necrology
a committee of our Society for the purpose, and reerected
in June, 1904, on a more desirable site than that chosen
more than sixty years ago. Under the efficient charge of
another committee from our membership, consisting of
Hon. John Hoyt Perry and Mr. Robert Peel Wakeman of
Southport, and of Mr. Lewis Beers Curtis and Hon.
Morris B. Beardsley of Bridgeport, a granite monument
was completed last autumn at Southport to preserve the
memory of the Great Swamp Fight of July 13, 1637, by
which the power of the Pequot foes of the founders of
Connecticut was broken. They form worthy memorials
of an important personage and a significant episode in
our early colonial history, and are but the Beginning, we
trust, of similar endeavors on the part of the Society
to mark significant sites and to honor the memories of
those who bore large share in colonial struggles.
REPORT OF THE HISTORIAN FOR THE YEAR 1905-6
During the year which has elapsed since our last annual
meeting, the Society has lost six members by death. The
first to be called from our fellowship was Dr. Henry
Putnam Stearns of Hartford, whose demise occurred on
May 26, 1905, and whose going removed a very familiar
figure, as well as a strong and influential citizen, from the
place of his residence. Dr. Stearns was born in Sutton,
Mass., on April 18, 1828, the son of Asa and Polly
(Putnam) Stearns. On both sides of his lineage he was
a descendant of colonial ancestry of distinction, being in
the sixth generation from Charles Stearns, a nephew of
Isaac Stearns, one of the emigrants to Massachusetts in
History and Necrology 335
1630, with Governor Winthrop. He traced one of several
claims by which he held membership in this Society to Capt.
John Stearns who fought in the Indian wars in the middle
of the seventeenth century. . On his mother's side he was
descended from Lieutenant Thomas Putnam of King
Philip's War, and Edward Putnam, a delegate to the Con-
gress of 1774 and a member of the same stock of which
General Israel Putnam of Revolutionary fame sprang.
Mr. Stearns' boyhood was spent amid the surroundings
of a small country town, and his early education was in its
public schools. From Sutton he went, however, to Monson
Academy in the town of that name, in Massachusetts, and
in 1849 entered Yale College, from which he graduated
in 1853, as one of the famous class of that year. His
interest had already been aroused in medicine and he now
fitted himself for its practice, at Harvard and at Yale,
graduating as a Doctor of Medicine at the institution last
named, in 1855. On the completion of his medical studies
in this country, Dr. Stearns went abroad for further pro-
fessional training, spending a year in Edinburgh under
the instruction of Sir James Simpson. Here he was
appointed house surgeon of the Royal Infirmary, and
at Edinburgh, in Scotland, in 1857, he married Miss Annie
Elizabeth Storrier of Dumfries, who died April 19, 1903.
On his return to this country, in 1857, Dr. Stearns began
practice in Marlboro, Mass., and in 1859 took up his resi-
dence in Hartford. Always interested in public questions,
the outbreak of the Civil War, in 1861, led to his imme-
diate appointment as surgeon of the First Connecticut, a
three months regiment. In this capacity he was present
336 History and Necrology
at the first battle of Bull Run, and then assigned to the
command of General Fremont. On the expiration of his
term of service he enlisted again; and, after the battle
of Belmont, he served under General Grant, being present
at the battles of Fort Henry, Fort Donaldson and Shiloh.
His services as a military surgeon next took him to St.
Louis, and were followed by appointment as Medical
Director at Paducah, Ky., JefTersonville, Ind., and Nash-
ville, Tenn. At Nashville the hospitals under his super-
vision had accommodations for not less than eleven thou-
sand patients, and the situation was one which called for
and was met with great executive ability as well as pro-
fessional skill. At the close of the war he was mustered
out of service, on August 25, 1865, with the rank of
lieutenant-colonel. The conspicuous abilities with which
his work had been performed were recognized by the offer
of a permanent position in the medical service of the
United States, but he preferred to return to Hartford,
where he engaged in the general practice of medicine and
surgery. Meanwhile, Dr. Stearns had been interesting
himself in the phenomena of insanity and the care of the
insane, and as a consequence of his reputation as an
alienist, as well as his conspicuous executive abilities, he
was offered, and accepted, the office of physician and
superintendent of the Retreat for the Insane in Hartford,
on January 20, 1874. Here he showed himself, as he had
in all previous positions, a man of great efficiency as well
as of high professional skill. The institution prospered in
all its material concerns under his management, while his
professional skill is evidenced by the abolition of forms
History and Necrology 337
of mechanical restraint, a reform in which he was a
pioneer. Under his able directorship the Hartford Retreat
continued and increased the high reputation which it
already enjoyed at the time he assumed its control, as in
the first rank of hospitals for the care of the insane in
the country.
Dr. Stearns was deeply interested in the specialty to
which he had devoted himself. From 1876 to 1897, he
was lecturer on insanity in Yale University. He published
papers in medical journals and contributed discussions to
learned societies, and testified as an expert in the trial of
Guiteau, the assassin of President Garfield. He was a
member of the American Medical Association, of the
American Medico-Psychological Association, an honor-
ary member of the British Medico-Psychological Associa-
tion, of the Boston Medico-Psychological Association, and
the Vermont Medical Society. He served, also, as presi-
dent of the Yale Medical Alumni Association, and as
Medical Director of the Travelers Insurance Company of
Hartford. His continued interest in his comrades of the
Civil War led to his membership in the Loyal Legion. His
professional eminence led to the enlistment of his services
in philanthropic enterprises, such as the Connecticut Insti-
tute for the Blind and the Hartford Hospital.
He was a business man of decided ability and as such
served as director of the Connecticut Fire Insurance
Company, the Travelers Insurance Company, The Billings
& Spencer Company, and as trustee of the Hartford Trust
Company.
Dr. Stearns was a man of strong religious character
22
338 History and Necrology
and was associated with the First Church of Christ in
Hartford from April, 1861, to the time of his death. For
many years he was deacon of that church, a position
which he held at the close of his life. He was also for
many years a director of the Connecticut Bible Society.
The wide extent of Dr. Stearns' interests was indicated
by his membership in the Connecticut Historical Society, the
Sons of the American Revolution and the National Geo-
graphical Society, as well as in our own Association. He
continued in the active duties of his superintendency until
enfeeblement consequent upon advancing years compelled
his resignation, March 31, 1905, less than two months
before his death. Dr. Stearns was a man of striking per-
sonal appearance, of distinguished bearing, of great
courtesy in his relations with his associates, and of con-
spicuous force of character. He was a strong and useful
man whom it was an honor to have numbered of our asso-
ciates, and whose going from us in the fullness of a long
life of honor and conspicuous service must be a source of
sincere regret.
Dr. Stearns was called from our fellowship in the full-
ness of years. The next of our members to be summoned
from us, Harvey Ladew Williams, had but just entered
on a life of promise. Mr. Williams was born on March
31, 1875, in New York City, the son of John Townsend
and Louise (Ladew) Williams. For many years the
residence of his parents was in Stamford in this state, as
well as in New York City, and it was from Stamford that
Mr. Williams held his membership in our Society.
In 1893, Mr. Williams entered Harvard University and
History and Necrology 339
graduated, with honors, in 1897. At the university he
manifested a decided taste for athletics, and engaged
successfully in such contests, but he was also a man of
strong scholarly tastes, much interested in sociology,
political economy and natural sciences. He collected a
large and valuable library which was a source of constant
satisfaction to him, even amid the disabilities of the last
few months of his brief life. After graduation in 1897
he was associated with his father in the care and manage-
ment of the family real estate in New York City, and in
1899 he married Miss Hannah Willis, by whom, as well
as by two children, he was survived.
In 1901 his health failed, through the development of
tuberculosis, and after a vain attempt to recover it, by a
year spent at Saranac Lake, and a further stay in Arizona,
he made his home at Bristol, Tenn., where he engaged, so
far as his strength permitted, in business interests. He
died at Bristol on August 4, 1905, thus ending all too soon
a career that seemed to have in it much promise of
usefulness.
The third member of our Society to be taken from us
was Hon. William Elmer Seeley. Mr. Seeley was born in
Fairfield, Conn., on September 19, 1840, son of Seth and
Charity (Wilson) Seeley. He traced his descent from
Robert Seeley, one of the early settlers of Fairfield, and
held membership in this Society by reason of the military
service of Captain Nathaniel Seeley, who was killed in the
Great Swamp fight in King Philip's War. Mr. Seeley was
educated in the public schools of Bridgeport and early
entered upon the business of banking, beginning as an
34-O History and Necrology
office boy in the Farmers Bank, which later became the
First National Bank of that city. Here he rose through
all the positions from the foot to the top of the business
ladder, being elected president of the bank in 1892. Mr.
Seeley was one of the men to whom the remarkable
business development of the city of Bridgeport is due. In
addition to his service to the First National Bank of which
mention has already been made, he was president of the
Peoples Savings Bank of Bridgeport and of the Connecti-
cut Bankers Association, besides being a member of the
board of directors of several important manufacturing
enterprises in Bridgeport.
He was a companionable man, fond of association with
his fellows and much esteemed for his social qualities as
well as for his business abilities. He served the city of
his residence as treasurer and as an alderman, as a fire
commissioner for eight years, and police commissioner for
three years, and as one of the officers in charge of its sink-
ing fund. In politics he was a Republican and served as
a member of the State Senate in the Legislature of 1901.
In that session he was chairman of the Committee on
Finance. In 1902, Mr. Seeley was elected State Comp-
troller, an office which he filled with conspicuous ability.
In 1896 he was a member of the Republican National Con-
vention by which Mr. McKinley was selected, and again,
in 1904, of the convention by which Mr. Roosevelt was
placed in nomination for the presidency. Mr. Seeley was a
man of many interests, a member of the Brooklawn, Sea-
side, Algonquin and Bridgeport Yacht Clubs, as well as
of the Union League Club of New York, and the Sons
History and Necrology 341
of the American Revolution. He was a Past Grand Com-
mander of Knights Templar of the Commandery of
Bridgeport, and had risen to the thirty-third degree in
Masonry. His death occurred very suddenly from apo-
plexy after previous uniform good health, on August 25,
1905, at his summer home in Lakeville, and his going
removes from us a man who will be very greatly and widely
missed in the state which had honored him politically, and
which he in turn had served in so many ways.
The fourth member of the Society to be called from us
was Stephen Whitney, Esq. Mr. Whitney was born
in New Haven on October 20, 1841, a son of Henry and
Eugenia (Lawrence) Whitney. He traced the lineage by
which he was a member with us to Major Thomas Law-
rence of the Queens County (Long Island) Forces in the
latter part of the seventeenth century, and to Captain John
Lawrence of the Newtown Troop. Mr. Whitney's boy-
hood was spent in New Haven, and his education was con-
ducted in its schools. He entered Yale, and was for a time
a member of the classes of 1862 and 1863. But the out-
break of the civil war enlisted his patriotism and inter-
rupted his studies. On August 5, 1861, he was appointed a
Second Lieutenant in the Fourth United States Regiment
of Artillery, serving with Battery "E." His first military
experience was in what was soon to become West Virginia.
By the close of 1861 he was raised to the rank of First
Lieutenant, and assigned to Battery "D," seeing continuous
service at Fortress Monroe and elsewhere in the Military
Department of Virginia, till he was honorably released
from duty on his own request on November 12, 1863. Mr.
342 History and Necrology
Whitney's interest in army affairs and in his old com-
rades always remained keen, and on December 7, 1892, he
was chosen a member of the Military Order of the Loyal
Legion, a relation which he continued till his death.
After the close of the war Mr. Whitney took up a sugar
plantation in Louisiana, entering on its cultivation in 1867
and continuing it until 1884. During these years his
winters were spent in his southern home, while the summers
found him in New Haven. From 1884 till his death,
New Haven was his principal place of residence. There
he made his beautiful home on Whitney avenue a center of
cordial hospitality. He was a man of much personal
charm, cordial manners and companionableness, interested
in hunting and out-door life, a good citizen and a genial,
helpful friend. His attractive qualities of mind and heart
led to his association with the Quinnipiack Club of New
Haven and the Union League Club of New York, and his
interest in matters historical was evidenced by member-
ship in the Order of the Runnymedes, as well as in this
Society, which now mourns his loss. On August 3, 1905,
he suffered a paralytic seizure, from the effects of which
he died at his home in New Haven on the third of
September following.
The next member of our Society to be taken from us
was Major Andrew Goodrich Hammond. Major Ham-
mond was born in Hartford, May 20, 1857, son of Andrew
Goodrich and Mary (Ripley) Hammond. He traced his
descent from Captain Nicholas Olmstead of King Philip's
War, and Captain Roger Pitkin of the Hartford Militia
at the close of the seventeenth century. Major Hammond
History and Necrology 343
entered the United States Military Academy at West
Point ; and, on the completion of the full course there, was
appointed Second Lieutenant in 1881, and assigned to the
Eighth United States Cavalry. On April n, 1889, he was
appointed a First Lieutenant and received his captaincy
on May 31, 1896. Always interested in his native State
and its affairs, it was a great satisfaction to his friends,
and doubtless to himself, that he was appointed lieutenant-
colonel of the First Regiment of Connecticut Volunteers
during the Spanish- American War, and did most efficient
service in improving the discipline and in increasing the
military efficiency of his regiment. When it was mustered
out, at the conclusion of his service, Captain Hammond
resumed his work in the United States Army, being
stationed at Fort Leavenworth, and on August 5, 1903,
was appointed major of the Third Cavalry.
He died, after several months illness, in the Military
Hospital of the Presidio at San Francisco, on February 21,
1906. Major Hammond was a military officer of high
efficiency. He understood thoroughly the technique of his
profession and was soldierly in all his bearings. He was
a man of attractive social qualities, thoroughly companion-
able, and one whose friendship was much prized by his
associates. His death when he had not yet reached his
fiftieth birthday, ends a career which had in it not a little
of promise as to the future, as well as achievement in the
past and honor in the present.
The last member of our Society to be taken from us
was Mr. Archibald Henderson Smith of Stamford and
New York. Mr. Smith traced his ancestry to Lieutenant
344 History and Necrology
Samuel Smith of Wethersfield, Conn., lieutenant of the
Hadley Troop in King Philip's War, and to Hon. Richard
Treat, deputy for Wethersfield, 1637-44, and a member
of the Council of Connecticut from 1663 to 1665, and one
of the "Assistants" of Connecticut. He was born in New
York City on November 6, 1860, the son of James Dickin-
son and Elizabeth (Henderson) Smith. Mr. Smith was
a broker by profession, having early entered his father's
firm, then the banking house of Jameson, Smith &
Cotting, but later known as James D. Smith & Company.
For many years previous to his death he was the man-
aging partner. He made Stamford his home and was
greatly interested in all that made for the welfare of the
community. He served as a director of the Stamford
Yacht Club, as one of the governors of the Wee Burn Golf
Club, and of the Suburban Club. He was a director of
the Stamford Hospital, a trustee of the First Presbyterian
Church of Stamford, and a director of the Stamford
Savings Bank.
Mr. Smith's business life was, of course, spent in New
York City, where he was a member of the Produce
Exchange. He died suddenly, on April 24, 1906, at the
Stamford Hospital, after an operation for the relief of
appendicitis, and his burial took place in Woodlawn Ceme-
tery, of which he was a director, and the secretary of the
Woodlawn Corporation.
A friend who knew him well says of Mr. Smith :
"He was plain and simple in his tastes, devoted to his family, a
good friend, and the adviser of many persons in Stamford who
needed his assistance and counsel. In facl, I hardly know of any
History and Necrology 345
man who had so many warm and personal friends and whose loss
will be so severely felt."
Certainly our list of losses by death, this year, is a long
one, and they are such as to refled honor upon the Society
which has been privileged to have such varied usefulness
among its membership as well as to cause us all sincere
sorrow that they are no longer to be counted of us.
REPORT OF THE HISTORIAN FOR THE YEAR 1906-7
The duties of the Historian of the Society of Colonial
Wars are chiefly those of a Necrologist, and as such he
would call to our recollection this afternoon those of our
membership who have been taken from us by death during
the year that has elapsed since our last General Court.
The first of our associates to be called from us was
Charles Hotchkiss Trowbridge, Esquire, of Milford, whose
death occurred at his home in that town on June 24, 1906.
Mr. Trowbridge was born in New Haven on November
n, 1844, the son of John and Betsey (Tomlinson) Trow-
bridge. He traced the lineage by which he bore member-
ship among us to Governor William Leete, from whom he
stood in the eighth generation, and from Lieutenant
Thomas Trowbridge of King Philip's War, from whom he
was seventh in descent. After graduating from the High
School in New Haven, Mr. Trowbridge immediately
entered the service of the Mechanics Bank of that city,
with which he was to be identified for the long period of
forty-one years; for thirty-three years he was its treas-
urer. In 1886 Mr. Trowbridge was chiefly instrumental in
organizing and securing a charter for the Mercantile Safe
346 History and Necrology
Deposit Company of New Haven, of which he continued
secretary and treasurer till 1901. Mr. Trowbridge's
interest in banking and his appreciation of the value of
cooperation led him to urge strongly the organization of
the Connecticut Bankers' Association, and on its formation
he became its first president. Naturally a man of great
companionableness of spirit, his genial qualities made him
conspicuous, not merely in business relationships but in
many associations of life. Thus he was a member of the
New Haven Yacht Club, of the Union League Club of that
city, of the New Haven Chamber of Commerce, and the
founder of the Higgins Club of Milford, which he
organized and of which he was president for ten years.
Mr. Trowbridge was greatly interested in all that had to
do with the commemoration of our Colonial and Revolu-
tionary history. In 1889 he was a member of the Com-
mittee which erected the Milford Memorial Bridge, one
of the most successful monuments in this region. He was
influential in the erection of the Soldiers' monument, and
his interest in the betterment of the present as well as the
commemoration of the past led him to be one of the incor-
porators of the Taylor Library of Milford. Our recent
associate became early interested in the Society of Colonial
Wars, joining the New York Chapter, of which he was a
life-member. In the organization of the Connecticut
Society he was one of the leaders, and was elected at once
our first Treasurer, an office he continued to hold as long
as his health permitted. We remember with gratitude the
interest that he took in the welfare of the Society and the
fidelity with which he was present at its meetings. In
History and Necrology 347
1901 Mr. Trowbridge suffered from a paralytic stroke
which rendered him thenceforward an invalid, so that he
was unable to be present with us during- the later years of
his life. Mr. Trowbridge married Maria Louise, daugh-
ter of John Welch Merwin, on September 16, 1869, who
survived him with three sons. He was a communicant of
St. Paul's Episcopal Church of New Haven, and a member
of the Ansantawae Lodge of Masons of Milford.
On June 26, 1906, the Hon. Nathaniel Shipman passed
from our companionship. Judge Shipman was born in
Southbury, Conn., on August 22, 1828, the son of Rev.
Thomas L. Shipman, then pastor of the Congregational
church in that place, and of Mary T. (Deming) Shipman.
He held membership in our Society as eighth in descent
from Lieutenant Thomas Leffingwell, who won fame in
King Philip's War. He entered Yale College in 1844 and
graduated with the class of 1848. On the completion of
his college course Mr. Shipman began the study of Law;
and, in 1850, was admitted to the Hartford County Bar and
began legal practice in the city of Hartford. There he
served with great distinction as a lawyer for twenty-three
years, winning the respect and confidence of his associates
for his own sterling qualities of character and his pro-
found knowledge of the Law. On beginning his practice
he entered into partnership with the late H. K. W. Welch,
Esquire, the firm being known as Welch & Shipman, until
Mr. Welch died in 1870. His standing in his profession,
and the confidence of the community in him, were so marked
that it was with universal approval that he received from
President Grant an appointment as District Judge of the
348 History and Necrology
United States Court on May I, 1873, a service that
attached to him the title of Judge, by which he was known
henceforward to the community. The duties of this office
were discharged with the ability and fidelity which
characterized all Judge Shipman's work, till on March 19,
1892, he was promoted to the Bench of the United States
Circuit Court of Appeals by President Harrison, a posi-
tion which he held until ill health compelled his resigna-
tion on March 23, 1902. Judge Shipman was early and
actively engaged in the larger political interests of the
community of which he was a citizen. In 1856 he was
one of seven who met in the office of the late Senator
Joseph R. Hawley to found the Republican party of Con-
necticut and was the last survivor of this little group. The
next year, 1857, saw him a member of the Lower House of
the Connecticut Legislature, and from 1858 to 1862 he was
private secretary of Hon. William A. Buckingham, the
War Governor of Connecticut. In this capacity he was
able very materially to be of service to the Union cause,
the success of which he had at heart. After beginning his
judgeship he was no longer a candidate for public office,
but with eminent fidelity he continued throughout his life
to exercise the full duties of a citizen anxious to advance,
so far as possible, the welfare of the community of which
he was a resident. He was of conspicuous service in the
legal affairs of Hartford and took part in the caucuses and
other political consultations of the representatives of the
Republican party, with the beginnings of which he had a
part and with which he was always affiliated.
No man ever had more fully the respect of the com-
History and Necrology 349
munity in which he lived than Judge Shipman. His own
sterling honesty of character, his hatred of shams and of
everything savoring of pretense, and his unfailing kindli-
ness of heart, commanded universal esteem. No better
man has adorned our Connecticut public life than he. In
his professional services, especially on the Bench, he was
profoundly respected for his thorough knowledge of the
Law and for his evident determination to secure what he
deemed the ends of justice. He was impatient of all legal
contention, however intellectually skillful, that did not
seem to him calculated to promote that which he believed
to be right. In personal character he was deeply and sin-
cerely religious. He served for many years as a Deacon
of the Farmington Avenue Congregational Church and
as a director of the Connecticut Missionary Society. He
was a faithful attendant upon the conferences and other
consultative bodies of the religious denomination with
which he was associated, and his interest in the religious
welfare of the community where he lived was a marked
feature of his character. A man so trusted and respected
as was Judge Shipman was naturally in great demand as a
counselor and adviser in legal and in business affairs.
Thus he served as a director of the Retreat for the Insane,
as president of the Watkinson Library, as vice president
of the Wadsworth Athenaeum, in the city of his residence ;
he was also vice president of the American School for the
Deaf, of Hartford, and trustee of the Watkinson Juvenile
Asylum and Farm School. His interest in the business
concerns of Hartford were no less conspicuous. He was
a director of the ^Etna Insurance Company, of the
35° History and Necrology
Travelers Insurance Company, of the Phoenix Mutual Life
Insurance Company, of the Hartford Steam Boiler
Inspection and Insurance Company, of the Security Com-
pany, and the Collins Company, and one of the trustees
of the Society for Savings.
Judge Shipman's home life was singularly attractive.
In 1859 ne married Miss Mary C. Robinson, a sister of the
Hon. Henry C. Robinson, and the home thus established
was marked for its friendly hospitality until death sepa-
rated the husband and wife only a few months before his
own decease. Four children, three sons and a daughter,
survived him. His memory will long be cherished with
affection and reverence by the community and the state in
which he lived.
On November 28, 1906, our associate, General George
William Baird, died at Asheville, N. C. General Baird
held membership in our Society as seventh in descent from
Captain John Beard, who commanded the New Haven
company in the Great Swamp fight. He was born in
Milford, Conn., on December 13, 1839, the son of Jonah
Newton and Minerva (Gunn) Baird. Mr. Baird's early
education was obtained in the Hopkins Grammar School
in New Haven ; and, on the completion of the course there,
he entered Yale in 1859. The outbreak of the Civil War
occurred during his college course. He entered the
service of his country as a private, on August 25, 1862.
His fidelity to duty and his evident skill in the profession
of arms led to his rapid advancement in the service; and,
on March 18, 1864, he was promoted to the rank of colonel
in the 32d U. S. colored troops, being engaged with that
History and Necrology 351
regiment in the battles of St. John's Bluff, Honey Hill,
Deveaux Neck, James Island and Morris Island, as well as
in the siege of Charleston. Meanwhile, Yale College had
enrolled him among its graduates, in view of his largely
completed course, counting him as one of the class of 1863.
On the conclusion of the War, Colonel Baird entered the
regular army, on May n, 1866, with the rank of second
lieutenant of the loth Infantry. On September 21,
following, he was transferred to the 27th Infantry; and,
on April 27, 1867, received his promotion to the first
lieutenancy. After two and a half years of service with
the 27th Infantry, he was transferred, on May 19, 1869,
to the 5th Infantry, and for eleven years, in connection
with the two regiments last mentioned, March 1867 to
July 1878, took part in severe fighting and much arduous
campaigning against the Indians of our whole western
frontier. During a considerable portion of this period,
from 1871 to 1879, ne served as adjutant of his regiment
and as adjutant-general to General Miles's command. He
was twice severely wounded, and was twice recommended
for brevet for gallant service in battle. He received the
Medal of Honor "For Most Distinguished Gallantry in
Action against hostile Nez Perce Indians at Bear Paw
Mountain, Montana, September 30, 1877." Possessed
thus of an enviable record for faithful and distinguished
service, our associate received deserved recognition in his
appointment as major and paymaster, on June 23, 1879,
and it was while filling this post of duty and stationed in
Chicago, that he was admitted a member of our Society.
A conspicuous trait of our associate was his deep and
352 History and Necrology
unaffected religious character, and his eager desire to
advance the moral welfare of the members of his command
and the communities where he served. His advancement
in the army continued. On July 12, 1899, he was raised
to the rank of lieutenant-colonel and deputy paymaster-
general, and on February 19, 1903, was promoted to the
rank of brigadier-general of the United States Army.
While seldom able to be present with us on account of
the demands of his arduous profession, he was proud to
trace his ancestry to Connecticut and to claim Milford
as his residence; and we, in turn, are grateful that we
have had as one of our number so gallant and honorable
a servant of his country as the late General Baird.
On December 6, 1906, John Cropper, Esquire, died at
his home in Washington, D. C. Our former associate
was born on the twenty-second of May, 1850, the son of
Thomas Bayly and Rosina (Mix) Cropper. He traced his
descent by which he held membership with us from General
John Webster, Captain Nathaniel Turner of the Pequot
War, Hon. Richard Treat and Lieutenant Robert Webster
of King Philip's War. His father, Thomas Bayly Cropper,
was the son of John Cropper, Esquire, of Accomac County,
Va., a colonel in the Continental Army, and a member at
one time of the staff of General George Washington. The
Croppers and Baylys from whom he traced his descent had
long been residents of Accomac County, and at the time
of his death our late associate held a plantation there which
had been in the possession of his family, uninterruptedly,
from a time anterior to 1650. Naturally so identified with
the traditions and history of Virginia, as well as of Con-
History and Necrology 353
necticut by ancestry, Mr. Cropper was eager to do any-
thing in his power to promote the preservation of the
memories of the efforts and struggles of colonial days.
This taste was a matter of inheritance. His grandfather,
Colonel John Cropper, had been an eminent member of
the Society of the Cincinnati, serving as the last president
of that society during its earlier period of activity in Vir-
ginia. Besides his membership in the Society of Colonial
Wars, which we to-day commemorate, our late associate
was a member of the New York Society of Cincinnati,
and was instrumental in reviving that society in Virginia,
being, like his grandfather, its president, and serving in
that office nearly to the time of his death. He was also a
member of the Society of the War of 1812.
Mr. Cropper's early education was in New York City,
where he was born. He graduated from Columbia College
with honors in the class of 1870, and two years later
received the degree of Bachelor of Law, from the same insti-
tution on the termination of his legal studies. Mr. Cropper
married Miss Anne McLane of Washington on the twenty-
second of November, 1881, and was survived by his widow.
Greatly interested in the history of his country, and in the
preservation of its memorials, and much respected in the
community in which he lived, though he was seldom able to
be present at our meetings, we were glad to have had him
of our membership and mourn his departure from us.
On Christmas day, 1906, Dr. Timothy Huggins Bishop
died. Dr. Bishop was born in New Haven on March 8,
1837, the son of Ebenezer Huggins and Hannah Maria
(Lewis) Bishop. He stood in the ninth generation from
23
354 History and Necrology
Governor Theophilus Eaton, one of the founders of the
Colony of New Haven, and the family of which he was
a member is one long and honorably identified with the
interests of the New Haven community. Dr. Bishop was
educated in New Haven and graduated from the medical
department of Yale University in the class of 1860. On
the completion of his medical course he entered on the
practice of his profession in New Haven, which remained
henceforth his home. He was interested in the New Haven
Hospital, of which he was the secretary for more than
twenty-five years, a relation which only terminated on his
death.
Dr. Bishop was greatly interested in the work of the
Society of Colonial Wars and kindred organizations. He
was a most faithful attendant at our meetings and an active
participant in all our concerns. Besides his membership
in the Society of Colonial Wars he was of the Cincinnati
of Connecticut. He was interested in the New Haven
Colony Historical Society and was a member of the Quin-
nipiack, the Country and the Lawn Clubs of the city of
his residence. We shall miss his presence with us at our
meetings and shall remember with gratitude his interest
in this Society and his desire to cooperate in all that made
for its welfare.
The last member of our Society to be called from us was
Stewart Woodruff Smith, Esquire, who died at his home
in Noroton on May 10, 1907. Mr. Smith was the son of
Charles Stewart and Eliza (Bradish) Smith, and traced his
descent from Lieutenant Samuel Smith of Wethersfield and
Hon. Richard Treat of Governor Winthrop's Council. He
History and Necrology 355
was born on April 12, 1861, in New York City, and came
of a family eminent in its commercial interests, his father,
who is still living, having been president of the Chamber
of Commerce, and having been conspicuous in efforts for
political reform and for a better government of the city
of New York. Mr. Smith early entered business in his
native city, becoming a clerk in the firm of Richardson,
Smith & Company, in 1880. The title of the firm was later
altered to Smith, Hogg & Company, and our associate
became one of the partners in 1887, and so remained until
the time of his death, the business being that of dry goods
commission merchants. He was a member of the Chamber
of Commerce of New York and of the Merchants Club
of that city, and director in the Woodlawn Cemetery
Association. Besides his membership in the Society of
Colonial Wars he was one of the Sons of the American
Revolution, and his social interests are attested by partici-
pation in the Union League Club of New York, the Stam-
ford Yacht Club, the Suburban Club, and the Wee Burn
Golf Club. Mr. Smith made his home on Noroton Hill in
Stamford, and was greatly beloved by his associates and
by the community where he lived, for his generous qualities
of heart and his genial companionableness.
REPORT OF THE HISTORIAN FOR THE YEAR 1907-8
During the year which has elapsed since our last meeting
the names of four members of the Society of Colonial
Wars have been removed from our roll by death. This
is a smaller number of losses than we have sometimes been
called to mourn, but we are reminded that mortality takes
35 6 History and Necrology
its continuous toll of us, and that no annual meeting passes
without occasion for very sincere and serious regret as we
remember those who have passed from our membership.
On November 21, 1907, two of our associates were thus
removed from us. The older in age, and neither of them
were what could be called "old men/' was George Herbert
Day of Hartford, Conn., who held his membership in this
Society as fourth in descent from General Israel Putnam
of famous memory. He was born in Brooklyn, Conn., on
April 3, 1851, the son of Willard Day and Catharine
(Brown) Day. The family of which he was a member
had long been prominent in the northeastern section of
the state, and had been identified, alike, with the religious
and commercial development of the region. After such
preparation as the common schools of his native town
could afford, Mr. Day became a student in Hobart College
in Geneva, N. Y., but was compelled to interrupt his course
of study there by reason of a breaking down of his eye-
sight. He now determined to engage in business, and, in
1870, became a clerk in the office of the Charter Oak Life
Insurance Company of Hartford. After seven years of
this employment he became associated, in 1877, with the
Weed Sewing Machine Company. A year later the manu-
facture of bicycles by that company began, an order having
been placed with it by that pioneer of the bicycle industry
in America, Colonel Albert A. Pope. Mr. Day was quick
to see the advantages of the new method of locomotion,
and was enthusiastic in its support, not merely urging the
manufacture as a desirable enterprise for the company
with which he was associated, but becoming one of the
History and Necrology 357
founders of the Connecticut Bicycle Club. The enterprise,
as all know, prospered greatly, and with its prosperity Mr.
Day rapidly rose in recognition as a man of great business
abilities. In 1879 he was made secretary of the Weed
Sewing Machine Company. In 1888 he became, also, its
assistant treasurer, and the next year took the office both
of secretary and full treasurer, till, in 1889, ne was made
president of the company, retaining the office of treasurer
also. When, in 1890, the property of the Weed Sewing
Machine Company became that of the Pope Manufactur-
ing Company, Mr. Day became vice president and general
manager of the new enterprise, an office which he con-
tinued to hold until 1899.
Mr. Day's experiences with the bicycle, and his active
concern in its development, led, naturally, to a similar
interest in other means of locomotion, and it was but fitting
that when the automobile began to come into use on this
side of the Atlantic it should find an advocate in him. On
successive journeys to France, in 1897, 1898, 1899, he
learned what he could of this vehicle, as then developed,
and under the impulse of his enthusiasm its manufacture
was undertaken by the Pope Manufacturing Company.
The rapid development of the industry led to the formation
of the Columbia Electric Vehicle Company, of which Mr.
Day was president and general manager. And it was the
development of this new enterprise and its associated con-
cerns that induced him to resign, in 1899, the connection
with the Pope Manufacturing Company, that he had so
long and successfully maintained. To the end of his life he
continued his intense interest in the development and
358 History and Necrology
improvement of the automobile, and was engaged in enter-
prises for its manufacture.
Mr. Day was a man of broad and varied interests,
actively sympathetic in all that made for the welfare, and
especially for the business welfare, of the city of his resi-
dence. He was one of the founders of the Hartford Board
of Trade, in 1888. He served as director of the American
National Bank, of the Phoenix Mutual Life Insurance
Company, of the yEtna Insurance Company, and as a
trustee of the Society for Savings and of the Dime Sav-
ings Bank, in the city in which he made his home. He was
actively interested in the development of the residence
district adjacent to the newly established factory section
of Hartford, and to further this enterprise was prominent
in the organization of the Hartford Real Estate Improve-
ment Company, which he served as treasurer. He served
the city as a member of the park commission, and, in 1893,
was on the board which provided for the adequate repre-
sentation of Connecticut in the Chicago Exposition.
A further aspect of Mr. Day's varied activity was
exhibited in his devotion to the interests of the Church of
the Good Shepherd, of which he was vestryman for many
years.
Our late associate was a man, not merely^of marked
business skill, but of many attractive and lovable qualities,
so that he is greatly missed in the city, the prosperity of
which he did so much to develop. At the time of his death
he was thus fittingly characterized by one of his associates
in this Society, from whose tribute I quote :
History and Necrology 359
"In business he was an expert in system and method, and to
these, supplemented by his executive ability and the respeft, good-
will and loyalty of all who came in touch with him, are due his busi-
ness success. He was conspicuously honest with all men; patient
in conference, fair and just in recognition of the rights of others,
and judicial and temperate in his a&ion. I have never known a
man who had the ability to win over an opponent or a dissatisfied
agent or employee so quickly and so happily as George Herbert
Day. Many a man came into his office in Hartford to oppose who
went away to praise and therefore to cooperate with him. This
was in my opinion one of the principal foundations of his business
success. And this same characteristic, when carried into his
friendships, made him beloved by all. He was also loyal to his
friends but never subservient for mere friendship's sake. If he
could not follow them, he told them so frankly, with his reasons.
This loyalty also never yielded to personal advantage, and better
than all, he was never even conscious of the temptation. He was
always true to himself as well as to his friends. What better
thing can we say of any man than this? What better epitaph can
we write for our friend, George Herbert Day ?"
Mr. Day's death occurred in Daytona, Fla., whither he
had gone for rest and in search of the restoration of his
health.
On the same date on which Mr. Day passed from us,
Orange Merwin died suddenly of apoplexy while present
at a meeting of the Men's League of the Park Street Con-
gregational Church in Bridgeport. Mr. Merwin traced the
ancestry by which he held membership in this Society to
Lieutenant William Fowler, a soldier in King Philip's War,
from whom he was seventh in the line of descent. Mr.
Merwin was born in New Milford, Conn., August 21, 1854,
the son of Horace and Sarah F. (Peet) Merwin. He early
360 History and Necrology
removed to Bridgeport, and entered the employ of A. L.
Winton, Esq., in the Berkshire Mills, as bookkeeper, a
position which he relinquished for that of clerk in the
People's Savings Bank. In 1881, he was advanced to the
post of teller in that institution, and, in 1886, established
the firm of Marsh, Merwin & Lemmon, to conduct a gen-
eral banking and insurance business, which proved exceed-
ingly successful. In 1901, this undertaking developed into
the Bridgeport Trust Company, of which Mr. Merwin
was one of the organizers and vice president. He also
interested himself largely in Bridgeport real estate, and
was president of the Bridgeport Land and Title Company.
All that made for the business welfare of the city of his
residence was his concern, and he won for himself a high
and influential position among those who have so largely
developed its enterprises. In politics Mr. Merwin was a
Republican and was for many years a member of the
Republican town committee. He was not a seeker for
office, though desired by his party as mayor; but served
the city for a number of years as fire commissioner, occupy-
ing the post of president of the fire board. Mr. Merwin
was a man of earnest Christian character, much interested
in the religious work of Bridgeport. He served as clerk
of the Park Street Congregational Church, and was the
organizer of its Men's League and the first president of
that organization. He was an active teacher in its Sunday
school. He was greatly interested in the prosperity of the
Young Men's Christian Association, to which he largely
contributed, and to the development of the Boys' Club in
connection with its work. The tributes to his Christian
History and Necrology 361
character paid at the time of his decease were but the fitting
expression of this aspect of his life.
Mr. Merwin was eminently a companionable man, and
this quality found expression not merely in membership in
our own Society, but in many other associations. He
belonged to the Seaside Club and the Roof Tree Club of
Bridgeport, the Brooklawn Country Club, and the Meta-
betchouan Club of Canada. He was greatly interested in
Freemasonry, in which he had risen to the thirty-second
degree.
Altogether our late associate was a man of many
attractive qualities of head and heart, of genial companion-
ableness, of marked business ability, and of earnest
Christian character.
The next of our associates to be taken from us was that
eminent scholar, Professor Thomas Day Seymour of Yale,
whose death occurred in New Haven on December 31,
1907. Professor Seymour traced the descent by which he
held membership in our Society to Governor John Haynes,
one of the founders of Connecticut, from whom he stood
in the tenth generation. He came of scholarly ancestry,
having been born in Hudson, O., on April I, 1848, the son
of Nathan Perkins and Elizabeth (Day) Seymour. At
the time of his birth, and for many years after, his father,
a graduate of Yale of the class of 1834, was professor of
Greek and Latin in Western Reserve College, then located
in Hudson, but since that time removed to Cleveland, and
now known as Western Reserve University. Brought up,
thus, in the home of a scholar, Mr. Seymour followed the
parental bent and was early inspired with that love of
362 History and Necrology
the classics, especially of Greek, which he was ever after-
ward to manifest. He graduated at the college in which
his father was an instructor in 1870, and followed the
completion of his course there by further studies in Berlin
and Leipsic, which laid the foundation of friendships which
he then and afterwards greatly valued. On his return to
this country, in 1872, he became professor of Greek in
his alma mater, a position which he occupied for eight
years, until he was called to the professorship in Yale
University, in 1880, in which he was to render such dis-
tinguished service till the time of his death.
Professor Seymour at once interested himself in the
development of classical studies in America and in the
prosecution of scholarly research in Greece, Asia Minor
and the islands of the ^Egean. In any enterprise that had
for its end the advancement of American scholarship in
these branches he was an active and eager participant. He
was president of the Archseological Institute of America,
chairman of the managing committee of classical studies
of the American School in Athens, and a member of the
Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies of London
and of the Archaeological Society of Athens.
Unremitting in the work of his study, a long series of
valuable contributions to our knowledge of Greek literature
and archaeology were the fruits of his labors. Thus, in
1882, he published the Selected Odes of Pindar; in 1885,
an introduction to the Language and Verse of Homer;
in 1887, an edition of the First Six Books of the Iliad; in
1889, an Homeric Vocabulary; and, in 1897, Introduction
History and Necrology 363
and Vocabulary to School Odyssey. Besides these larger
works, he was constantly producing papers and discussions
of philological and archaeological questions, and few meet-
ings of the Archaeological Institute of America were with-
out some contribution of value from him. But, in a
measure rarely granted to productive scholars, he was able
to finish out his life work. The autumn before he died
saw the completion and publication of his "Life in the
Homeric Age," a monument of immense labor, illustrative
alike of great erudition and of well-poised and careful
judgment, which must remain the volume on which his
fame as a scholar will principally rest. It is a great satis-
faction, if he must be taken from us, to feel that he was
enabled thus to complete the task upon which all the later
years of his life had been engaged.
Professor Seymour was greatly beloved as a teacher
and as a man. Scholarly in all his tastes, he was char-
acterized by much simplicity and kindliness in his relations
with his students and associates. To know him was to
trust him. He was a lover of music and highly apprecia-
tive of the best in musical development. He was earnestly
interested in all that made for the religious welfare of the
University in which he was an instructor, and, at the time
of his death, was one of the committee of the College
Church. The quality of his scholarship was everywhere
recognized, and it was as testimony to it that the degree
of Doctor of Laws was given him by Western Reserve
University in 1894, the University of Glasgow in 1901,
and Harvard University in 1906. In his death the Uni-
364 History and Necrology
versity where he labored has lost one of its most eminent
and beloved instructors, and all American classical scholar-
ship mourns his decease.
The last member of our Society to be taken from us was
Joseph Gurley Woodward, Esq., of Hartford, whose death
occurred on March 5, 1908. Mr. Woodward stood eighth
in descent from Lieutenant Thomas Leffingwell of King
Philip's War. He was born in Willimantic on July 26,
1836, the son of Joseph and Almira (Gurley) Woodward.
After receiving the instruction of the schools of his native
place, he became for a brief period a teacher in Willi-
mantic, but the life of business was more attractive to
him than the teacher's profession, and as a young man
he removed to Hartford, where he became teller of the
Bank of Hartford County, and was, later, in the employ
of the Exchange Bank, becoming assistant cashier in the
last-named institution. In 1876, he established business
as a broker, an occupation which he pursued until the
time of his death, attaining the distinction of becoming the
oldest broker in active service in the city of his residence.
Mr. Woodward was greatly interested in all that had
to do with the memories of our colonial and revolutionary
past. Besides his membership in this Society he was
associated with the Sons of the American Revolution, and
served as chairman of its Publication Society, and was an
occasional contributor to its papers. A man of social
qualities, of much culture and of many interests, he was
vice president of the German club known as Der Verein.
He was one of the original members of the Hartford City
Guard and was much interested in the Young Men's
History and Necrology 365
Institute, of which he was president, which ultimately
became the Hartford Public Library. A loyal and active
member of this Society, he will be greatly missed from our
gatherings, in which his genial qualities and attractive
personality made his presence always welcome.
REPORT OF THE HISTORIAN FOR THE YEAR I 908-9
During the year which has just closed the Connecticut
Society of Colonial Wars has lost three from its roll of
membership by death. The number of those who have thus
left us is less, we are glad to note, than in some previous
years, but all three are men whom we could ill afford to
spare from our membership, and whose departure from us
we sincerely mourn.
The first to be summoned by death was Colonel George
Bliss Sanford, whose decease occurred on July 13, 1908.
Colonel Sanford traced the descent by which he held mem-
bership in this Society from Lieutenant John Lyman who
commanded the Northampton soldiers in the Falls fight
in King Philip's War, from Captain John Miles who
served in the Great Swamp fight in the same struggle,
from Deputy-Governor Benjamin Fenn of Milford, and
from Captain Samuel Newton who also served in the con-
test with King Philip. It was therefore but fitting that
our late associate should feel in his own veins the impulse
to the soldier's life. After his retirement from active
military service, Colonel Sanford made Litchfield his home,
and the following admirable sketch, evidently written by
one familiar with the details of his career as well as
inspired by personal regard, appeared in the Litchfield
366 History and Necrology
correspondence of the Hartford Courant, and well sets
forth his life and services :
"He was born in New Haven, June 28, 1842, the son of William
Earle and Margaret (Craney) Sanford, of an old New Haven
family. He fitted for college at the Russell Military School, New
Haven, and entered Yale with the Class of 1863. He left college
during his sophomore year to enter the regular army, having been
appointed second lieutenant of the First Dragoons, April 26, 1861.
After the war he was given his degree of B.A. with his class. After
being appointed second lieutenant he was sent to Missouri, where he
fought through the Wilson Creek campaign under General Nathan-
iel Lyon, who was killed during one of the first engagements.
"In 1862, with his regiment, he was with the Army of the Poto-
mac and engaged in the Peninsular and Antietam campaigns.
Later, he was attached to the staff of General Merritt, U. S. Cavalry,
and was in that service during 1863 and the early part of 1864. In
the spring of 1864, he rejoined his regiment and was engaged in
the battle of the Wilderness and the James River campaign. Later,
he was appointed on the staff of General Torbert, who commanded
Grant's cavalry corps, and, with Sheridan, was in the Valley
campaign and continued with Torbert until the end of the war.
"At the close of the war he again rejoined his regiment, which was
a5ling as escort to General Sheridan at New Orleans. He then
went to California and later to Fort McDowell, and during the next
five years he was engaged in almost daily conflicts with the passing
Indians and in exploring unknown parts of this country north of
the Gila River.
"When Arizona was organized into a territory Colonel Sanford
was strongly urged to become its first governor but declined, pre-
ferring to remain in the army. In 1871 he was granted a long leave
of absence, which he spent in touring Europe. On his return he
rejoined his regiment in Idaho and fought the Indians and explored
unknown parts of Idaho, Oregon, Washington and Alaska. He
was transferred to San Francisco and Nevada and engaged in the
History and Necrology 367
campaigns with the Nez Perces, Bannocks and Apache Indians, and,
in 1876, he was engaged in the Sioux campaign when General Custer
was killed. In 1884, he was ordered to the Military School of
Applied Science at Fort Leavenworth, and, later, to Washington as
a member of a board to devise a new system of taSlics for the
United States Army, and that system is still in use. He was
appointed a captain of the United States Army in 1862, brevet major
in 1864, for gallant and meritorious conduct at the battle of Cedar
Creek, and brevet lieutenant colonel in 1865, for gallant and meri-
torious conduct during the war. He was made a full lieutenant
colonel of the Ninth Cavalry in 1889, and a full colonel of the Sixth
Cavalry in July 1892, in which year he retired.
"He was president of the Society of Cincinnati for the state of
Connecticut, a member of the Loyal Legion, a member of the Sons
of the Revolution, a member of the Society of Colonial Wars, and
of the Society of the War of 1812. He was also a member of the
following clubs : the University of New York, the Metropolitan of
Washington, D. C., the Graduates of New Haven, and of several
others in this country and Europe. He was a vestryman of St.
Michael's Episcopal Church of Litchfield.
"He was married to Miss Gertrude Minturn, daughter of Jonas
Minturn of Bristol, R. I. She survives him with two daughters."
The next of our membership to be taken from us had
also shared in the military service of his country, though
younger in years than Colonel Sanford. Colonel Augustus
Cleveland Tyler of New London died on November 27,
1908. He held membership in our Society by descent from
Captain Thomas Willet of Plymouth, the first English
mayor of New York, and from Rev. Timothy Edwards,
chaplain of the Colonial forces in the expedition against
Canada in 1711. Colonel Tyler was born in Norwich on
May 2, 1851, the son of General Daniel and Emily (Lee)
Tyler. His father, General Daniel Tyler, had had a dis-
368 History and Necrology
tinguished career as an officer in the United States army,
as an engineer, and as a railroad president. After his
son's birth he was to add fresh laurels to his reputation
by eminent services in the Civil War. The sub j eel; of our
sketch received his early education in New York City until
his admission to the United States Military Academy at
West Point. After his graduation from our military
school in the class of 1873, ne was commissioned a lieu-
tenant in the United States Cavalry, and continued in
army service until his resignation in 1878. Colonel Tyler
interested himself greatly in the military affairs of his
native state, and at the beginning of the Spanish War was
in command of the Third Regiment of the Connecticut
National Guard, being commissioned on July 6, 1898.
With his regiment he saw active service in the brief
campaign. He had a delightful summer home in New
London and spent his winters usually in Washington,
where he also had a residence, and where he made his
friends cordially welcome. Colonel Tyler's business
interests were many, but one of them which commanded
not a little of his attention was of unusual character. He
devoted himself to the raising of tea in this country, and
he served as president of the American Tea Growing
Company, on whose property in North Carolina he was
able to demonstrate that tea of high quality could be
successfully grown. Our late associate was a member of
the University Club and the Manhattan Club of New
York as well as of the New York Yacht Club, of the
Thames Club of New London, and of the Metropolitan
and Chevy Chase Clubs of Washington. In this Society,
History and Necrology 369
Colonel Tyler held a life membership, and was always a
loyal supporter of its interests. He married, in January
1878, Miss Cornelia Osgood, who survived him with three
children. Colonel Tyler was a man of marked and cordial
hospitality.
The last of the members of our Society to be removed
by death was Mr. George Edwin Taintor of Hartford,
whose decease occurred on April 17, 1909, after an illness
of long duration. He traced the descent by which he held
membership in this Society from Governor Roger Wolcott
who commanded the Connecticut forces against Louis-
bourg in 1745, and from Captain David Ellsworth who
served in the same memorable expedition. Mr. Taintor
was born in Hampton, Connecticut, on December 20, 1846,
the son of Henry G. and Delia (Ellsworth) Taintor. His
father held the office of School Fund Commissioner for
Connecticut for many years. In 1863, when seventeen
years of age, Mr. Taintor entered the service of Collins
& Fenn of Hartford, working his way up gradually to
membership in the firm, which was, at the time, one of the
large dry goods commission houses in the country. Mr.
Taintor next became associated with the banking business
of G. P. Bissell & Co. of Hartford, and for the last twenty
years of his life was in the service of Messrs. James and
Francis Goodwin. Mr. Taintor, at the time of his decease,
was a director of the State Bank of Hartford, a vice presi-
dent of the Society for Savings of that city, a trustee of
Keney Park, of the Watkinson Farm School, and of the
Hartford Handicraft Schools. Mr. Taintor was an active
Republican in politics, and was a member of the First
24
370 History and Necrology
Church of Hartford, in the affairs of which he was greatly
interested and strongly influential. He married, on Octo-
ber 25, 1870, Miss Emily Strong Davis, daughter of
Gustavus F. Davis of Hartford, who survives him with
one child. Our late associate was a man who not merely
commanded the cordial respect, but the warm affection of
those who were brought into contact with him. His own
estimate of himself was modest, and he refused official
position in our Society which it would gladly have given
him could he have been persuaded to accept it. He served
us well as secretary and chairman of the committee on
membership, and much of the success of this Society is
due to his patient and faithful efforts in its behalf. The
following appreciation appeared in the Hartford Courant
at the time of his decease and well describes his character :
"The death of George E. Taintor on Saturday morning was not
unexpe&ed; his friends, and he himself, have known for some
time that it was likely soon to come. This may lessen the shock
somewhat, but it does not lessen the sense of loss to the community
in which he was so much esteemed and in which his upright and
unassuming life was a constant illustration of useful citizenship and
Christian manliness. He came and went about his daily business
quietly and was altogether unaware for himself of the force of the
example that he set every day with his fidelity and industry and
trustworthiness. It has been the regret of some of his friends that
public life had so little attraction for him, for there were times when
he had only to say the word to receive high office. But, if he seemed
in this respeft to neglect his duties as a citizen, others were always
to be found who stood ready to serve, and he was yielding to the
impulse of a modesty that shrank from prominence; indeed, it is
conceivable that even such a thing as a newspaper paragraph about
him might have been against his wishes, but it is only his due and to
History and Necrology 371
omit it would not be right. Mr. Taintor did his appointed work so
well that his unconscious influence made the community where he
lived the better for his presence. Such characters are all too few.
In discussions of affairs in offices it was not uncommon to hear
expressions like 'somebody you can fully trust — such a man as
George Taintor.' It is a life well spent that makes a name like
that."
INDEX.
Alden, John, 156.
Alexander, Sir William, 170.
Andros, Gov. Edmund, 122, 123.
Arnold, Matthew, 203.
Augustus, the Strong, of Saxony,
209.
Averill, Hon. Roger, 314.
Bacon, Asa, 288.
Bacon, Rev. Dr. Leonard W., "Four
lost Legacies of the early New
England Polity," 247-268.
Bagehot, Walter, 61.
Baird, Gen. George William, bio-
graphical sketch of, 350-352.
Baird, Jonah Newton, 350.
Baird, Minerva Gunn, 350.
Baldwin, Hon. Simeon E., 309.
Bartholomew, Harry, 294.
Baseball, growth of, 281, 282, 290-292.
Beard, Capt. John, 350.
Beardsley, Hon. Morris B., 112, 334.
Beers, Prof. Henry A., 288, 289.
Birdseye, Isaac W., 320.
Bishop, Ebenezer Huggins, 353.
Bishop, Hannah Maria Lewis, 353.
Bishop, Gen. Henry A., 319.
Bishop, Dr. Timothy Huggins, bio-
graphical sketch of, 353, 354.
Bissell, George P., 369.
Blackman, Charles Seymour, 287.
Blake, Henry T., 286.
Bradford, Gov. William, 77, 152, 156,
275-277-
Brainard, Lucretia, 321.
Brainard, William F., 321.
Brewster, Daniel, 314.
Brewster, Harriet Averill, 314.
Brewster, Judge Lyman Denison, bio-
graphical sketch of, 313-317.
Brewster, Elder William, 152, 313,
317, 321.
Brooker, Hon. Charles F., 320.
Brooker, Ella Taylor, 308.
Brown, Allen, 307.
Brown, Charles Edwin, biographical
sketch of, 307, 308.
Brown, John, 308.
Brown, Sir Thomas, 155.
Buckingham, Gov. William A., 348.
Bulkeley, Hon. Morgan G., 320.
Bull, Lieut. Thomas, 82.
Burns, Robert, 202.
Butler, Gen. Benjamin F., 262.
By-Laws of the Society, 20.
Cade, Jack, 224.
Calvin, John, 188.
Canonicus, Indian chief, 117.
Carlyle, Thomas, 202.
Carrington, Harriet, 318.
Gary, Hon. Melbert B., 320.
Chamberlain, Gov. Abiram, 273.
Chamberlain, Hon. Joseph, 251.
Chamberlain, Valentine, 294.
Chaplain, of the Society, 17, 22; list
of Chaplains, 38.
Charles V., Emperor, 209.
Charles L, of England, 100, 171, 225.
Charles II., of England, 184.
Charter, of Connecticut. 121-124.
Charter, of the Society, 9.
374
Index.
Chew, Coleby, 326.
Chew, James Lawrence, biographical
sketch of, 326, 327.
Chew, Mary Cecilia Law, 326.
Chilton, Mary, 151.
Church, Col. Benjamin, 55.
Coffin, Charles Carleton, 52.
Coit, John, 321.
Coit, Hon. Joshua, 321.
Coit, Robert, 321.
Coit, Hon. Robert, Jr., biographical
sketch of, 321-323.
Coit, Judge William B., 323.
Committees, of the Society, 17, 25;
list of their members, 40-42.
Constitution, of the Society, 15.
Cook, Henry B., 272.
Corbin, William H., "Colonial Taxa-
tion," 221-246.
Cotton, Rev. John, 188.
Council, of the Society, 17, 24; list
of its members, 39, 40.
Courts, of the Society, 12, 25.
Cricket, game of, see Wicket.
Croker, Richard, 255, 256.
Cromwell, Oliver, Lord Protector,
164, 167, 169-172, 176, 178, 180, 183.
Cropper, Col. John, 352, 353.
Cropper, John, biographical sketch
of, 352, 353-
Cropper, Rosina Mix, 352.
Cropper, Thomas Bayly, 352.
Croswell, Rev. Dr. Harry, 285.
Croswell, Rev. William, 285, 286.
Crowden, Captain, 176.
Curtis, George M., 283.
Curtis, George W., 197.
Curtis, Lewis Beers, 334.
Custer, Gen. George A., 329, 330.
Cutler, Ralph William, 120, 127.
D'Aulnay, Charles de Menou, Sieur,
170.
Davenport, Lieut. Richard, 55, 80.
Davis, Sergeant, 54, 55, 81.
Davis, Samuel A., 314.
Davis, Emily Strong, 370.
Davis, Gustavus F., 370.
Davis, Pres. Jefferson, 201.
Davol, John, 307.
Day, Catherine Brown, 356.
Day, George Herbert, biographical
sketch of, 356-359.
Day, John Calvin, 287.
Day, Willard, 356.
Deming, Clarence, 288.
Denison, Gen. Daniel, 56.
Dier, John, 82.
Dodge, Rev. Dr. D. Stuart, 287.
Downes, Horatio, 312.
Downes, Nancy Smith, 312.
Downes, William Elijah, biographical
sketch of, 312, 313.
Doyle, J. A., 61, 65.
Drake, Samuel G., 55.
Dwight, Pres. Timothy, 266.
Dwight, Pres. Timothy (the younger),
296.
Eaton, Gov. Theophilus, 354.
Edward III., of England, 96-98.
Edwards, Pres. Jonathan, 156, 187,
188, 193-197, 199, 200, 203, 204.
Edwards, Rev. Timothy, 367.
Elections, in the Society, 17, 18.
Elizabeth, of England, 94, 99, too,
104, 171.
Ellsworth, Capt. David, 369.
Ely, Nathaniel, 241.
Ely, Prof. Richard T., 225, 227, 245.
Endicott, Gov. John, 48, 55, 64.
Fees, in the Society, 20.
Fenn, Deputy-Gov. Benjamin, 366.
Fiske, John, 144, 164, 165, 223.
Flag, of the Society, 19.
Index.
375
Fortescue, Gov. Richard, 175, 176, 179,
180.
Fowler, Lieut. William, 359.
Francis I., of France, 209.
Franklin, Benjamin, 193, 197-204.
Franklin, Gen. William B., 327, 333.
Frederick, Prince of Wales, 279.
Frye, Elias, 314.
Frye, Gen. Joseph, 328.
Gallup, John, 48.
Gardiner, Lieut. Lion, 47, 50, 55, 65,
321.
Garfield, Pres. James A., 337.
Gibbs, Samuel, 242.
Gladstone, Hon. William E., 210.
Glover, Mrs. William, 89.
Goddard, Rev. John Calvin, "The
Pilgrim," 149-159-
Godfrey, Capt William, 174, 181.
Goodson, Vice-Admiral William, 179,
181.
Goodwin, Rev. Francis, 120, 127, 369.
Goodwin, James J., 120, 127-129, 369.
Goodwin, Rev. James, "Captain John
Mason and the memorable Expe-
dition against the Pequots," 59-70.
Gookin, Daniel, 180.
Gordon, Gen. Charles George, 49.
Governor, of the Society, 16, 22; list
of Governors, 37.
Governor, Deputy, of the Society, 16,
22; list of Deputy Governors, 37.
Governor, Lieutenant, of the Society,
16, 22; list of Lieutenant Gover-
nors, 38.
Government, by majority, 254-264.
Grant, Pres. Ulysses S., 332, 336, 347.
Greene, Capt. Jacob Holt, 328.
Greene, Col. Jacob Lyman, biograph-
ical sketch of, 327-333.
Greene, Sarah Walker Frye, 328.
Greene, Lieut. Thomas, 328.
Greene, Dr. William, 330.
Gross, Charles E., 127, 128, 320.
Guiteau, Charles J., 337.
Hale, Sir Matthew, 155.
Hallett, Hon. Benjamin, 262.
Hammond, Major Andrew Goodrich,
biographical sketch of, 342, 343.
Hammond, Mary Ripley, 342.
Hanna, Hon. Mark, 289, 290.
Harold, King of England, 94.
Harris, Hon. J. N., 322.
Hart, Rev. John, 183.
Hart, Prof. Samuel, "General Robert
Sedgwick," 161-184.
Hawkins, Mrs. John, 79.
Hawley, Hon. Joseph R., 320, 348.
Hayden, Rev. Horace Edwin, 54.
Hayden, William, 54.
Haynes, Gov. John, 88, 361.
Haywood, Sir John, 98, 104.
Hendrie, John W., 310.
Henry VI., of England, 224.
Hewitt, Hon. Abram S., 254.
Hill, James J., 210.
Hirst, Samuel, 277, 278.
Historian, of the Society, 17, 24; list
of its Historians, 38.
Holbrook, Levi, 287.
Holland Society, the, 133.
Hooker, Rev. Thomas, 45, 63, 67, 133.
Howe, Jane Maria, 313.
Hubbard, John, 183.
Hubbard, Rebecca, 183.
Hubbard, Gov. Richard D., 315.
Hubbard, Rev. William, 183.
Humphrey, Colonel, 176.
Ives, Amelia, 317.
Ives, J. Moss, 314.
Jackson, Colonel, 171.
Jacobus, Prof. M. W., "The Dutch-
man in Connecticut, 131-139; "The
Dutchman Again," 141-148.
376
Index.
James I., of England, 95, 170.
James II., of England, 121, 123.
Jeffery, Sergeant, 80.
Johnson, Capt. Edward, 163.
Johnson, Rev. Francis, 155.
Johnson, George, 156.
Jones, Frederick Robertson, 228.
Keats, John, 202.
Kieft, Gov. Wilhelmus, 136, 137.
Kingsbury, Hon. Frederick J., "The
Pequot Fight," 43-47; mentioned,
283.
Kittredge, Prof. George Lyman, 275.
Knight, Madam Sarah, 284.
Lafayette, the Marquis, 325.
La Tour, Claude Etienne de, 169.
Law, Gov. Jonathan, 326.
Lawrence, Capt. John, 341.
Lawrence, Major Thomas, 341.
Learned, Major Bela Peck, 333.
Learned, Walter, 324, 326.
Lee, Gen. Fitzhugh, 329.
Leete, Gov. William, 324, 345.
Leffingwell, Lieut. Thomas, 347, 364.
Leverett, Ann, 183.
Leverett, John, 164, 166, 167, 169, 171,
183.
Lewis, Abel, 271.
License Laws, Colonial, 265, 266.
Lincoln, Pres. Abraham, 203.
Locke, John, 253.
Long, Edward, 172, 178, 181, 182.
Lotteries, Colonial, 241.
Louis XIV., of France, 170.
Lovewell, Capt. John, 107.
Lowell, James Russell, 156.
Ludlow, Deputy-Gov. Roger, 74, 76,
79, 87-89.
Luther, Pres. Flavel S., 332.
Luther, Martin, 224.
Lyman, Lieut. John, 365.
Macaulay, Thomas Babington, 153.
Majority Government, 254-264.
Mason, Capt. John, expedition against
the Pequots, 49-56, 62-70, 75, 76;
in the Great Swamp Fight, 77-86;
military rank, 56 ; mentioned, 12, 47.
Mather, Rev. Cotton, 187, 188.
Maxwell, Francis T., 320.
McKinley, Pres. William, 340.
McLane, Anne, 353.
McLean, Neill, Jr., 280.
McMaster, Prof. John B., 242.
Members of the Society, list of, 29-37.
Membership, in the Society, condi-
tions, 15, 25.
Memorial, the Charter Oak, 120-129.
Memorial, the Great Swamp Fight,
84, 1 11-116, 120, 334.
Memorial, the Miantonomo, 116-120,
333-
Merritt, Gen. Wesley, 366.
Merwin, Horace, 359.
Merwin, John Welch, 347.
Merwin, Maria Louise, 347.
Merwin, Orange, biographical sketch
of, 359-361.
Merwin, Sarah F. Peet, 359.
Miantonomo, Indian chief, his story,
117-119; monument, 116-120, 333;
mentioned, 52, 53.
Miles, Capt. John, 365.
Miles, Gen. Nelson A., 351.
Milton, John, 193, 194.
Mohawks, Indian tribe, 74, 78, 87, 113,
US-
Mohegans, Indian tribe, 49, 55, 76,
87, 114, 118.
Mononotto, Indian chief, 76, 78, 87.
Monument, see "Memorial."
Morgan, John Pierpont, 210.
Morgan, Forrest, "The Three Memo-
rials," 109-124.
Mullins, Priscilla, 156.
Index.
377
Napoleon, Emperor, 209.
Narragansetts, Indian tribe, 48, 52, 53,
67, 68, 87, 113, 114, 117-119.
Nettleton, Wilfred H., 294.
Newton, Capt. Samuel, 365.
Officers, of the Society, 16, 21-24;
list of, 37, 38.
Oldham, John, 48.
Oliphant, Edward, 282.
Olmstead, Capt. Nicholas, 342.
Osgood, Cornelia, 369.
Otis, Michael, 84.
Palfrey, John Gorham, 52, 164, 171.
Palmer, George S., "Reminiscences
of a Collector," 205-219.
Parker, Judge Alton B., 320.
Parker, Rev. Dr. Edwin Pond, 280,
281, 333-
Parker, G. A., 120, 128.
Patrick, Capt. Daniel, 52, 55, 76, 79,
80, 82-84.
Pease, Mrs. Zeno K., 120, 127.
Peck, Henry A., 294.
Peck, Josiah Tracy, 294.
Peck, Miles Lewis, 273, 296.
Peck, Prof. Tracy, 294.
Penn, Admiral Sir William, 172, 174,
175-
Pepys, Samuel, 197.
Pequots, Indian tribe, character, 46,
73, 74, 113; atrocities by, 47, 48, 62,
63, 113, 114; the expedition against,
49-56, 62-70, 74, 75; pursuit and
Swamp Fight, 76-87, 115; results of
war with, 86, 115, 116; mentioned,
12, 25, 101, 117, 230.
Perkins, Ella Richards, 324.
Perkins, Dr. Nathaniel S., 324.
Perkins, Nathaniel Shaw, biographi-
cal sketch of, 324, 325.
Perry, Hon. John Hoyt, "The Great
Swamp Fight,," 71-89; mentioned,
112, 334-
Phelps, Prof. William Lyon, "Two
Colonial Americans," 191-204.
Pierpont, Sarah, 156.
Pirsson, Prof. Louis V., 282.
Pitkin, Capt. Roger, 342.
Platt, Charles A., 120, 127.
Platt, Hon. Orville H., 288.
Platt, Hon. Thomas C, 259.
Pokanokets, Indian tribe, 63.
Pond, Nathan Gillett, 324.
Pope, Col. Albert A., 356.
Porter, Gen. Horace, 154.
Potter, W. H., 309.
Pratt, George, 287.
Pratt, William, 280.
Prentiss, Capt. John, 326.
Prince, Rev. Thomas, 69.
Putnam, Hon. Edward, 335.
Putnam, Gen. Israel, 335, 356.
Putnam, Lieut. Thomas, 335.
Quay, Hon. Matthew S., 259.
Read, Ezra C., 312.
Reade, Charles, 223.
Reeve, Judge Tapping, 288.
Referendum, the Old Colony, 249-
254.
Registrar, of the Society, 17, 24;
list of Registrars, 38.
Riggs, Serg. Edward, 80.
Roberts, Gov. Henry, 319.
Robertson, Hon. A. Heaton, 319.
Robinson, Hon. Henry C., 350.
Robinson, Mary C., 350.
Robinson, Judge William C., 309.
Roosevelt, Pres. Theodore, 255, 320.
Russell, Dr. Gurdon W., 129.
Sanford, Col. George Bliss, biograph-
ical sketch of, 365-367.
Sanford, Margaret Craney, 366.
Sanford, William Earle, 366.
Sassacus, Indian chief, 46, 47, 51-53,
55, 56,64, 76, 78, 87, 117.
Scott, Howard B., 314.
378
Index.
Scoville, Rev. Dr. Samuel, 287.
Seal, of the Society, 19.
Searle, Daniel, 179.
Secretary, of the Society, 16, 22; list
of its Secretaries, 38.
Secretaries, Local, of the Society, 26.
Sedgwick, Gen. John, 183.
Sedgwick, Maria, 183.
Sedgwick, Gen. Robert, early life,
163; military abilities, 164; prepa-
rations for war with the Dutch,
165-169 ; expedition against Acadia,
169-171 ; work in Jamaica, 171-182 ;
death, 182 ; character, 182 ; descend-
ants, 182, 183.
Sedgwick, Sarah, 183.
Sedgwick, Hon. Theodore, 182.
Sedgwick, Theodore, Jr., 183.
Seeley, Charity Wilson, 339.
Seeley, Capt. Nathaniel, 339.
Seeley, Robert, 339.
Seeley, Lieut. Robert, 82.
Seeley Seth, 339.
Seeley, Hon. William Elmer, bio-
graphical sketch of, 339-341.
Sewall, Judge Samuel, 277, 278, 280.
Seymour, Charles, 289.
Seymour, Judge Edward, 288, 296.
Seymour, Elizabeth Day, 361.
Seymour, George Dudley, "The Old
Time Game of Wicket, and some
Old Time Wicket Players," 269-303.
Seymour, Hon. Morris W., 288.
Seymour, Major Moses, 287, 288.
Seymour, Prof. Nathan Perkins, 361.
Seymour, Judge Origen S., 287, 288.
Seymour, Sheriff Ozias, 287, 288.
Seymour, Rev. Dr. Storrs O., 286-288,
295, 296.
Seymour, Prof. Thomas Day, bio-
graphical sketch of, 361-364; men-
tioned, 289, 290.
Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper,
Earl of, 253.
Shaw, Judge Elias, 325.
Sheridan, Gen. Philip H., 366.
Shipman, Mary T. Deming, 347.
Shipman, Hon. Nathaniel, biograph-
ical sketch of, 347-350.
Shipman, Rev. Thomas L., 347.
Shirley, Admiral Sir Anthony, 171.
Simpson, Sir James, 335.
Smith, Adam, 245.
Smith, Archibald Henderson, bio-
graphical sketch of, 343-345.
Smith, Charles Stewart, 354.
Smith, Edwin Porter, 323.
Smith, Edwin Porter, Jr., biograph-
ical sketch of, 323, 324.
Smith, Eliza B radish, 354.
Smith, Elizabeth Henderson, 344.
Smith, Rev. Henry, 285.
Smith, Herbert Knox, 320.
Smith, James Dickinson, 344.
Smith, Mary A. Hepburn, 323.
Smith, Lieut. Samuel, 344, 354.
Smith, Stewart Woodruff, biographi-
cal sketch of, 354, 355.
Southworth, Alice, 156.
Spalding, A. G., 291, 292.
Standish, Capt. Miles, 62, 69.
Stanley, Frederick W., 294.
Stanton, Thomas, 48, 81.
Stares, Sergeant, 82.
Stearns, Asa, 334.
Stearns, Charles, 334.
Stearns, Dr. Henry Putnam, bio-
graphical sketch of, 334-338.
Stearns, Isaac, 334.
Stearns, Capt. John, 335.
Stearns, Polly Putnam, 334.
Stebbins, Mary, 241.
Stiles, Pres. Ezra, 187.
Stiles, Dr. Henry R., 54.
Index.
379
Stiles, Thomas, 82.
Stone, Rev. Samuel, 51, 63, 66.
Storrier, Annie Elizabeth, 335.
Stoughton, Sergeant-Major Israel, 76.
Strutt, Joseph, 275.
Sturges, Henry, 79.
Stuyvesant, Gov. Peter, 137, 144, 145,
165, 166.
Sumner, Hon. Charles, 261.
Swett, Benjamin, 277.
Taintor, Delia Ellsworth, 369.
Taintor, George Edwin, biographical
sketch of, 369-371 ; mentioned, 128.
Taintor, Henry G., 369.
Taxation, Colonial, 221-246 ; methods,
227 ; in Massachusetts, 229 ; in Con-
necticut, 231 ; in New Haven, 233 ;
poll taxes, 234; grand lists, 236;
exemptions, 235, 238; collection,
239; fees and fines, 240; lotteries,
241 ; local taxation, 243 ; present,
245-
Thayer, Hon. Eli, 261.
Thiers, Louis Adolph, 210.
Thurloe, Secretary John, 178.
Tilden, Hon. Samuel J., 315.
Torbert, Gen. Alfred T. A., 366.
Tracy, Gen. Benjamin F., 256.
Trask, Capt. William, 55, 79, 80, 82.
Treasurer, of the Society, 16, 23 ; list
of its Treasurers, 38.
Treat, Hon. Richard, 344, 352, 354.
Treat, Gov. Robert, 312, 324.
Trowbridge, Amos H., 318.
Trowbridge, Betsey Tomlinson, 345.
Trowbridge, Charles Hotchkiss, bio-
graphical sketch of, 345, 347.
Trowbridge, Edwin Dwight, bio-
graphical sketch of, 318, 319.
Trowbridge, John, 345.
Trowbridge, Julia Atwater, 318.
Trowbridge, Lieut. Thomas, 345.
Trumbull, Rev. Dr. Benjamin, 54, 86,
89-
Trumbull, Jonathan, 333.
Turner, Capt. Nathaniel, 101, 352.
Tweedy, Samuel, 314.
Tyler, Col. Augustus Cleveland, bio-
graphical sketch of, 367-369.
Tyler, Gen. Daniel, 367.
Tyler, Emily Lee, 367.
Tyler, Watt, 224.
Uncas, Indian chief, 46, 49, 55, 76,
117-119-
Underbill, Capt. John, 50, 52, 55, 101,
166.
Van Twiller, Gov. Wouter, 136, 137.
Venables, Admiral Robert, 172.
Vincent, Rev. Philip, 55.
Wadsworth, Capt. Joseph, 128, 129.
Wakeman, Robert Peel, in, 112, 334.
Walker, Rev. Dr. George Leon, 67.
Walker, Prof. Williston, "Early Co-
lonial Weapons," 91-108.
Walpole, Horace, 279, 280.
Ward, Andrew, 74.
Warner, Charles Dudley, 120, 127.
Washington, Pres. George, 325, 352.
Wayland, Pres. Francis, 308.
Wayland, Dean Francis, biographi-
cal sketch of, 308-312.
Webster, Gen. John, 352.
Webster, Noah, 50.
Webster, Lieut. Robert, 352.
Welch, Henry K W., 347.
Welles, Gov. Thomas, 88.
Wendell, Prof. Barrett, "On Colonial
Literature," 185-190.
White, Capt. William, 102.
Whitney, Hon. Eli, 319.
Whitney, Eugenia Lawrence, 341.
Whitney, Henry, 341.
Whitney, Stephen, biographical sketch
of, 341, 342.
380
Index.
Wicket, early history of the game,
274-285; relation to Cricket, 275,
278-280; played in Bristol, 271-273,
292-295; 298, 299; in New Haven,
285-287; in Litchfield, 288; in
Hartford, 288; in the Western
Reserve, 289; how played, 295-297,
299-303.
Willet, Capt. Thomas, 367.
William, the Conqueror, 93, 94, 96.
William III., of England, 121, 123.
Williams, Harvey Ladew, biographi-
cal sketch of, 338, 339.
Williams, John Townsend, 338.
Williams, Louise Ladew, 338.
Williams, Roger, 64.
Willis, Hannah, 339.
Wilson, Hon. Henry, 261.
Winthrop, Gov. John, 77, 78, 99, 101,
266, 335.
Winthrop, Gov. John, Jr., 47, 163,
323-
Winton, A. L. 360.
Wolcott, Hon. Oliver, 244.
Wolcott, Gov. Roger, 326, 369.
Woodruff, Hon. George M., 287.
Woodward, Almira Gurley, 364.
Woodward, Joseph, 364.
Woodward, Joseph Gurley, biograph-
ical sketch of, 364, 365.
Woolsey, Prof. Theodore Salisbury,
112.
Wraxall, Sir William Nathaniel, 279,
280.
Yerkes, Charles Tyson, 210.
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