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RURAL LIFE IN
LITCHFIELD COUNTY

RURAL LIFE IN
LITCHFIELD COUNTY

BY

CHARLES SHEPHERD PHELPS

PUBLISHED UNDER THE AUSPICES OF

THE LITCHFIELD COUNTY
UNIVERSITY CLUB

NORFOLK, CONNECTICUT
I917

Copyright, 1917, by

Charles Shepherd Phelps

/

MAY 21 1917

©C!.A4()7()58 y[_^

This volume forms part of a series published under
the auspices of the Litchfield County University Club,
and in accordance with a proposition made to the club
by one of its members, Carl Stoeckel of Norfolk, Conn.

Howard Williston Carter,

Secretary.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I Topography and Soil 3

II First Settlers and Early Home Life . . .14

III Field and Garden Crops in the Early Days . 32

IV Farming Tools and Implements 43

V Fruits and Fruit Growing 51

VI Cattle and the Dairy 64

VII Sheep and Wool 81

VIII The Modern Farm 98

IX Country Life, Old and New 108

X Country Community Progress 119

XI A Pioneer IN Agricultural Education . . .130

TO

THE FARM HOMES NESTLED AMONG THE

HILLS OF OLD LITCHFIELD, THIS

BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY

DEDICATED

RURAL LIFE IN
LITCHFIELD COUNTY

CHAPTER I

TOPOGRAPHY AND SOIL

IN" the northwest corner of the State of
Connecticut are twenty-six towns, one for
each letter In the alphabet, and taken to-
gether they constitute Litchfield County.
It Is the largest county In the State, the
area being about 885 square miles. It was organized
In 175 1 as the fifth county In the State, although It had
been settled many years before. Within the bounds of
the county are found the highest land, the greatest lake
area, the most rugged scenery, and some of the richest
agricultural lands of the State. The highest point of
land was for a long time a matter of dispute, but that
designation is now given to Bear Mountain, In the town
of Salisbury. This mountain reaches an elevation of
2355 feet above sea level, and there are a number of

[3]

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

other near-by points which come close to the two-thou-
sand mark. While it was at first supposed that Norfolk
contained the highest point of land in the county, the
topographical surveys made at the instigation of Rob-
bins Battell gave the palm to Bear Mountain. Later
Mr. Battell caused to be erected a monument to mark
the spot, thus permanently designating the highest point
of land in the State.

Some of the cultivated lands of the county lie at an
elevation of 1200 to 1500 feet, while much of the best
agricultural lands are at a considerable elevation,
notably in the towns of Goshen, Litchfield, Morris,
Bridgewater and Washington. The fact that a settle-
ment was begun on a hilltop made very little difference
to the settlers, for they could produce only about enough
to supply the home demands and there was little travel
from town to town. But now the question of marketing
crops has become a more serious one to many of the
hilltop farmers, for they are sometimes at loss to know
what can be grown that will market to the best advan-
tage. Improved highways, however, are slowly solving
this problem, and this, together with the automobile,
will soon make a distance of five to eight miles, for the
hauling of crops to market, seem but a slight drawback.

The mountains on the western border of the county
are often spoken of as the foothills of the Berkshires
and are of the same general type, being thickly wooded

1:4]

TOPOGRAPHY AND SOIL

with fine forests on the lower slopes and rocky and
covered with scrub oak and yellow pine towards the
summits. Many elevated areas probably never will
be of much agricultural value except for forestry, be-
cause of their inaccessibility and the shallowness of the
soil. On the mountains that are frequently burned
over there are often tracts of the native low blueberry
and the huckleberry, not perhaps regarded as a strictly
agricultural product, but one that certainly adds to the
income of the hill towns.

The soil in general is what is known as glacial drift
or till. There is ample evidence of glacial action
throughout the county, in the polished ledges cut with
furrows, in the smooth boulders scattered everywhere,
in the steep-sided kettle holes, and especially in the uni-
versal mix-up of the soils. But no outcome of the
glacial forces adds more to the beauty of the country
than the numerous lakes. There are over a thousand
lakes in Connecticut, and of these Litchfield County has
the greatest surface, Bantam Lake, lying in the towns
of Litchfield and Morris, being the largest. In the
town of Salisbury lie the Twin Lakes, which, if they
had not built a barrier and divided themselves into
two lakes, would be almost as large as Bantam. In the
town of Warren is Lake Waramaug, in Kent are the
Spectacle Ponds, in Canaan and Norfolk is Lake Wan-
gum, and in Winchester is Highland Lake. The lakes

LSI

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

of the single town of Salisbury cover nearly 1700 acres
and afford natural beauty spots as well as popular sum-
mer resorts.

In many places in the county will be found extensive,
low, peaty tracts of land, that once represented lake
areas, but which have been filling in for thousands of
years by the slow growth and decay of vegetation. In
some instances such areas still have a small lake or pond
near the center, as in the case of Beeslick Pond in Salis-
bury. During the slow processes of time, water-weeds
crept into these old lakes, peat moss and bushes reached
out from the shallow water at the edge, and in the
course of many years the lake was transformed into
a mere bog, rich in all kinds of botanical treasures.
After many more years, as the outcome of changes due
to tillage and drainage, it may have become a good
piece of mowing land.

In mountainous regions there are sure to be brooks,
and wherever there are mountain brooks there ravines
will be found. In the hills of Litchfield County are
found some of the wildest, most picturesque ravines
in New England. Kent Falls ravine is of peculiar
beauty, carved as it is partly out of white limestone. On
the banks and limestone ledges grow the most graceful
of ferns— the Cystopteris btilhifera, or bladder fern;
while the abundance of the Camptosorus rhizophyllus,
or walking fern, is a delight to the botanist.

TOPOGRAPHY AND SOIL

Of Sage's Ravine I will give two comments made by
Henry Ward Beecher. "If this were in Colorado a
safe path would be cut along the bank and it would be
the show place of the region." "Never have I climbed
a more wild or beautiful ravine. It is dangerous, too."
Those who have followed it to its head, clinging to the
roots of trees, along the wall at the foot of the falls, to
cross the little side ravine, will appreciate the danger of
the climb, but lovers of the beautifully wild will find
above the falls even more beauty than below.

The principal rivers of the county are the Housa-
tonic, the Naugatuck, the Shepaug and their tributaries,
which drain the county from north to south, and the
Farmington and its tributaries on the east. The larger
rivers offer many advantages to the manufacturers and
have afforded the natural resources for building up
prosperous towns and boroughs that have developed a
variety of industries. This diversity of industries has
had an important bearing on the agricultural develop-
ment of the county, for the most prosperous agriculture
is always found near good markets. In the past many
of the smaller streams afforded power for operating
numerous small industries that were closely linked with
the agriculture of the county, such as tanneries, woolen
mills, wagon shops, cheese-box factories, nail and
scythe works and so forth. The concentration of these
various industries into big central plants has changed

117]

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

the entire life of many rural towns. The time will
again come when these numerous small waterfalls will
be harnessed to provide electric power and light for
many farm homes, and thus they will again be of value.

Of the forests that clothed this region when it was
first settled scarcely a vestige remains. Until recently
there was a bit of what might be called primeval forest
in Colebrook, but even this has not been spared the
woodman's axe. On the mountains there are a few
spots too steep and inaccessible to be lumbered, and here
we still find a few forest giants. But the hills are cov-
ered with pine, chestnut and birch, in spite of frequent
cuttings and forest fires. Wherever we go up and down
throughout the county, there is forest beauty every-
where. Perhaps the most notable example of the
preservation of the stately monarchs of the forest is to
be found on the Calhoun estate in Cornwall. Here
may be seen a beautiful grove of pines, many trees of
which tower majestically a hundred feet or more in
height and have trunks three to four feet in diameter.
A botanist, rushing through the county on the train,
noted the abundance of paper birches. "It is a good
country," he commented, "for paper birches do not
thrive on poor soil." This is true, and though the soils
of the county are extremely varied, yet the strictly agri-
cultural lands are second to none.

The soils of the hill country, and in general those

en

TOPOGRAPHY AND SOIL

outside the river valleys, are composed of glacial drift
varying in fineness from coarse boulders and small peb-
bles down to fine sand and silty clays, these materials
being mixed in widely varying proportions. These soils
were, without doubt, formed by the slow grinding,
scraping and pushing action of powerful glaciers, which
in prehistoric times moved slowly over the whole region
in a southwesterly direction. In many instances the
powerful movement of the glaciers broke off and car-
ried along massive boulders which lodged on the higher
hills, and many fields were left so densely studded with
small boulders as to make plowing almost impossible.
In general, there is one type of soil on most of the
higher lands of the county. This soil has been formed
by the breaking down of rocks of granitic type. For
many miles to the north the rocks are of the same gen-
eral class as those on the higher lands of this county,
and the bulk of the glaciated material is supposed to
have been transported not more than ten to fifteen
miles. When the granitic type of rock becomes weath-
ered it makes a close-textured, clayey soil, which is usu-
ally more or less studded with boulders. These soils
are typical hay and pasture soils, and Litchfield County
has always been noted as a good hay and grazing coun-
try. Soils of this type are retentive of moisture and
manure, and furnish liberal amounts of the elements
needed in the growth of grasses, clover and most

[93

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

cereals. In the earlier days the county was noted for
Its fine quality of cheese and butter, as it is now for its
milk, and much of these higher lands are dotted over
with rich dairy farms.

Another class of soils is that found in the river val-
leys, known as the alluvial soils and the terrace gravel.
In general these soil areas are limited in extent owing
to the narrowness of the valleys. The lower portion of
the valleys represents soils of a sandy loam type, gen-
erally free from boulders. These are known as alluvial
soils and are composed of gritty particles of rock which
settled out of comparatively still water, while the finer,
silty material was carried to the seas. Along the bor-
ders of the valleys are found terraces of gravel and
coarse sand which were formed by the rapidly moving
waters.

Following the great glacial epoch, our rivers were
many times their present size, probably filling what now
represents the river valleys. In some cases these river
valleys were dammed by rock barriers, causing great
lakes which later were drained out by the wearing away
of the barriers. One of these ancient lakes seems to
have covered the upper Housatonic valley, extending
from a natural barrier at Falls Village to the northern
part of Sheffield, Massachusetts, with a great arm ex-
tending up the Blackberry River valley nearly to West
Norfolk. Another, with little doubt, covered the

Do]

TOPOGRAPHY AND SOIL

fertile Pomperaug valley at the south side of the county.
Into these vast deep-water areas were washed fine par-
ticles of rock materials from many sources, thus making
soils with a great variety of mineral compounds and of
a fine sandy texture. These soils now constitute some
of the richest farm lands of the county. Near what
must have been the shores of these old lake areas will
be found deltas and beaches that constitute plateaus of
coarser sandy or gravelly material. Such areas must
have been formed by the swift inflowing rivers or the
lashing waves. These soils are more sandy and less
fertile than those that were formed beneath the deeper
waters of the lake.

In the larger river valleys, such as the Housatonic,
the Farmington, the Naugatuck and the Shepaug, will
also be found soil areas formed similarly to those just
mentioned. The extent of these areas depends on the
width of the valleys and the volume and the velocity of
the water of those early times. For example, the
Naugatuck River on the east, while it was probably
many times as large as now, apparently always had a
rapid movement, and flowed over very hard rocks, and
these two factors tended to prevent the formation of a
wide and fertile valley. On the other hand, the waters
of the Housatonic represented a larger volume and
passed over rock formations which were not especially
hard, and so the conditions were more favorable for

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

carving out a wide river valley. These valley soils, al-
though fine in texture, are rarely clayey, as the fine
rock particles were carried to the sea. They are usu-
ally composed of a great variety of minerals, depending
of course on the variety of rock materials in their make-
up. The absence of the finer clay silt, however, makes
them more or less deficient in potassium compounds and
often in calcium or lime compounds. Both of these
elements, being somewhat soluble, were dissolved out
and washed along to the sea. The porous texture
of such soils causes them to leach manure and soluble
plant food more readily than the heavier, finer textured,
clayey soils of the hills. The warmth and natural dry-
ness of the sandy soils cause the vegetable matter in
them to decay and waste more rapidly than in the
heavier soils of the uplands. If rightly managed, how-
ever, and especially if kept well stored with decaying
vegetable matter, they are the very best soils for many
cultivated crops, such as corn, potatoes, root crop,
tobacco, and many kinds of garden vegetables.

A third type of soil, but smaller in area, is the lime-
stone formation of the northwest section of the county.
Much of the land in the towns of Canaan, Salisbury
and Sharon is underlaid with the dolomitic form of
limestone, and such soils are generally well supplied
with lime and magnesia, and with this seems to be
associated considerable fine material from the potash

[.2]

TOPOGRAPHY AND SOIL

and the phosphate bearing rocks. The soils of these
towns, especially of Salisbury and Sharon, once produced
fine crops of wheat and are still noted for producing
luxuriant fields of oats and corn and hay. Clover
thrives better in these soils than in the clay soils of the
hills or the sandy soils of the valleys, and alfalfa has
also been grown with considerable success in these lime-
stone sections.

D33

CHAPTER II

FIRST SETTLERS AND EARLY HOME LIFE

HEN we write about the first settlers we
naturally think of those brave white men
and women who sought homes in "The
Wilderness," as Litchfield County was
designated in those early days. But be-
fore we attempt to trace the gradual settlement and
subduing of the wilderness it may be well to give a little
time and thought to those who possessed the land even
earlier. While the Indians of the East were, of neces-
sity, of roving habits — the various bands moving from
place to place as game became scarce — yet, according
to the old records, they did have semi-permanent
homes. Along the fertile river valleys their wigwams
were clustered in the summer-time, and here the friable
soil was doubtless "tickled" by the rude implements of

FIRST SETTLERS AND EARLY HOME LIFE

the industrious squaws and made to yield the meager
harvests of corn, beans, or squash, to eke out, during
the long, tedious winters, the uncertain supply of game.
For many years after the coming of the white man, the
Indian lived on the river bank and forest edge, every
now and then satisfying his desire for hunting by de-
scending on some unsuspecting settler, as he wrought in
his fields, and carrying him away captive, or killing him
on the spot, if he attempted to escape. Some of those
taken captive were fortunate enough to escape, but
oftener they never came back.

At Kent and at New Milford, there were quite large
Indian settlements. In fact, the center of the so-called
Indian kingdom was in this vicinity. The history of
the Indians of Kent, and of the Moravian mission
among the Indians of Sharon, is too well known to need
repeating here. According to Barbour's history, there
were about two hundred warriors in the town of New
Milford at the time of its settlement in 1707. Here
dwelt a powerful sachem whose palace was standing
when the white man came. "On the inner walls of this
palace [which were of bark with the smooth side in-
wards] were pictured every known species of beast,
bird, fish and insect, from the largest down to the small-
est." At the falls below New Milford was a favorite
fishing place of the Indians, great numbers of lampreys
being taken there. As late as 1830, a few remnants of

IT'S]

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

the tribe annually claimed their fishing rights, which
they never could be persuaded to sell.

Now, though there are doubtless a few descendants
from this ancient people, our thoughts are oftenest
turned to them when, by chance, we are lucky enough
to turn up an arrow point or find a rude flint chip. Some
very fortunate persons have found banner stones, pieces
of crude pottery or spear points of fine workmanship.
One legacy they have left which should be preserved
with the greatest care — the legacy of names. There is
not a town where we do not find hill, lake or stream
bearing an Indian name. Unfortunately there is a ten-
dency to rechristen natural objects and too often to give
them merely sentimental names, or names of temporary
owners. As a nation we lack originality and imagina-
tion in our names. We have found it easier to say North
Pond than Keheketookosook, to say Lakeville Lake
than Wononscopomoc, and yet how much more indi-
vidualistic are the Indian names than those given by
the white men ! And if the Indian name be retained, it
has the advantage claimed by the students of Greek and
Latin— it belongs to a dead language and will not
change; whereas Dow Hill is Dow Hill only as long
as Dows live there— then it becomes in turn Huntington
Hill, Parker Hill, Hale Hill, and Russell Hill, all
within the memory of man. So let us forswear the
questionable glory of giving our name to our village or

FIRST SETTLERS AND EARLY HOME LIFE

hill or stream and keep the name given it by the Indians,
even if it has seventeen syllables.

It would be interesting to know how the first white
man came, whether afoot on a hunting excursion, or on
horseback, or by canoe. When history was beginning,
the makers were so occupied with the problems of just
living that it probably never occurred to them that in
the after years people would be glad to know the small-
est details of their daily life. As soon as they had
gotten a foothold and built up a few rough houses, they
called a minister and voted a church. This, as being of
the utmost importance, they carefully recorded. Little
side lights on the life of those early times often shine
from these records, as, for instance, a minister was
called and settled and given as pay "twenty pounds law-
ful money, forty cords of wood and the privilege of
running the town cider mill"; or from the account of
the settlement of another whose salary was to be paid
in pork, corn, rye, peas, and other farm products. So
strong was the power of the church and so important
the minister in the town or State that nearly every town,
in making allotments, set aside one or two or three
for the use of the minister forever. In some towns one
plot was given to "the first minister, his heirs and as-
signs forever," and another "for the use of his succes-
sors."

As has ever been true, the march of civilization was

[■73

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

continually westward. When the western part of the
State was settled much of the best land in the central
valleys and the coast country was already fully occupied
and a new field must be sought. That the land to which
they were going was known as the almost impenetrable
"Green Woods" country, that it comprised rockbound
hills, and that its dense forests were alive with wild
beasts and untamed savages, were but trifling obstacles
to their progress. The original settlers of the county
were several generations removed from the first emi-
grants from England. Their fathers had known the
hardships of wresting a livelihood from the unbroken
forests, ever harassed by the cruel and treacherous sav-
ages; and though the sons retained the sturdy qualities
which go to the making of a real pioneer, yet some of
the sterner and harsher peculiarities of the race had
become softened or modified by the influence of time.
A more tolerant and liberal spirit was manifested In
religion, and later in politics, by the people of this
county than In some other settlements in the State.

The usual method of organizing a town was the sell-
ing of a parcel of land at auction to a number of men,
called patentees, who might take up the land them-
selves or sell it to others. Cornwall was sold by the
colony at Fairfield in 1738. It was laid out In "fifty
three allotments and sold for fifty pounds per right."
Canaan was sold at auction In New London. Goshen

FIRST SETTLERS AND EARLY HOME LIFE

was sold in New Haven, Norfolk at MIddletown, Salis-
bury at Hartford, Kent at Windham. There seem to
be various conjectures as to the reason for these differ-
ent places of sale. It is probable that the government
allotted portions of the unsettled territory to the towns
already established, that the people might have oppor-
tunity to seek new homes, if they so desired, without the
trouble and expense of a trip to the seat of the govern-
ment.

The earliest settlement in Litchfield County was
doubtless in the town of Woodbury. There is a tradi-
tion of the coming of these pioneers, that they were
ordered by Governor Winthrop to follow the Pom-
peraug River up eight miles from its junction with the
Housatonic. But the Pomperaug looked so small that
they thought they must be mistaken and kept on until
they came to the Shepaug. This they followed up eight
miles to what is now known as Roxbury Valley. As this
did not quite agree with the description of the land they
were seeking, they crossed over the wilderness and dis-
covered from Good Hill the rich valley which was the
object of their search. On this hill they kindled the
first recorded home camp-fire, and then in the name of
God set up their altars. As an expression of gratitude
for their safe arrival on the borders of such a rich val-
ley—their "promised land" — a devout deacon of the
party "fell on his knees, leading to prayer the little band

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

of hardy adventurers, invoking the blessing of Heaven
upon their enterprise, and praying that their posterity
might be an upright and godly people to the land."

A very different view of what constituted blessing
and honor is said to have been voiced by another mem-
ber of the party when he put up a petition praying "that
his posterity might always be blessed with plenty of rum
and military glory."

On further investigation of the region the following
day, they found much of the valley land free from un-
derbrush as a result of the Indian custom of annual
burning. A suitable location for the "home lots" being
agreed upon, this tract was divided into parcels, the
outlying areas being held for later division. "No one
could have more than twenty-five acres for his home lot,
and the poorest among them was entitled to ten; so that
a few rich could not control the township." This was
the usual plan for these earlier settlements, and a very
wise one it was. It provided for compact villages where
defense against the Indians was effective. It laid the
foundations for developing a sturdy race of yeomen,
who, being land owners, would each feel an interest in
the welfare of the new country, and it almost unwit-
tingly provided the villages with the little open parks
which are now so attractive in many of the country
towns. The houses of the home lots were usually built
around a hollow square enclosing the common. When

FIRST SETTLERS AND EARLY HOME LIFE

this was first set aside it was the common home pas-
ture, so to speak, and upon it ranged all the livestock
of the community. At evening the stock was driven
into this common and tethered or fenced there for
safety from Indians or wild beasts. This custom of
letting the livestock run at common gave rise to fre-
quent disputes concerning the ownership of such ordi-
nary stock as sheep, pigs and cattle, until the town fa-
thers decreed that each owner should have a registered
ear mark. These were duly recorded, and in many a
quaint volume of town records bound in pigskin may
one read as follows :

"John Bird's ear mark for his creatures is a cross on
the off ear taken out."

"Hezikier Culver's ear mark for his creatures is a
half penny in the underside of the near ear."

"Saml Smedley's ear mark for his creatures is a hole
in each ear."

"Samual Root, his ear mark for his creatures is a
cross in the off ear and a half penny in the underside of
the same."

As the marks on record increased the style of the
marking became more complicated, as indicated by the
following:

"Nathan Mitchel, his ear mark for his creatures is a
cross cut on the off ear and a slit in the cross of the near
ear and a slit in the underside of the near ear."

RURAL LIFE LN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

The taking of stray animals, and their impounding
and sale when not claimed by the owner, was also com-
mon, as shown by the following, copied from the Litch-
field town records :

"Two red yearlen heffers marked with a cross in the
off ear and one black yearlen heffer with some white
upon the rump, white under bolly and sum white upon
the inside of the hind leggs— also marked with a cross
in the off ear— which heffers are in the custody of
Thomas Lee and have been prized by his desire on the
27th day of November last by us, by the sum of three
pounds and fifteen shillings, by us John Boldwin,
Joseph Bixy, The above named heffers are put upon
record this fifth day of December anno domini 1723."

Also the following, which is a record of sale :

"Taken damage feasant, and impounded by Samuel
Plum in Litchfield and sold as the law demits by Ozias
Lewis, the following sheep, marks as follows :^^^^X!II^
sold for i£ lis; <CZ)CI^ sold for i£ 13s."

Although King Philip's war, two years later,
wrought havoc to the little band of a dozen or more
families that had ventured to settle in new homes in
the wilderness, and drove them back to the parent town,
yet the records show that within a few years a road was
laid out along the old Indian trail from what is now
Southbury to the present site of Woodbury, and new
settlements were rapidly made along this highway.

FIRST SETTLERS AND EARLY HOME LIFE

New Milford, in the rich valley of the Pootatuch
(later known as the Housatonic) , was the second settle-
ment, being occupied first in 1707. The fact that the
settlers came mostly from Milford gave to the settle-
ment the name New Milford.

As Litchfield County is only about sixty miles from
the Hudson, it is not surprising that settlers of Dutch
descent early came to its western border, purchasing
lands from the Indians and making settlements. In
fact, the western border of the county was long in dis-
pute between the Dutch and the English. Tradition
has it that the redoubtable Ethan Allen settled it for-
ever— in his mind, anyway— by planting a cannon on
Town Hill in Salisbury and declaring that it should be
Connecticut territory as far as this cannon should carry
a ball. These Dutch settlers took up holdings at
Weatogue in Salisbury as early as 1720, although the
sale of the town did not take place till 1737. The pres-
ence of prominent families of both Dutch and English
extraction, in the early history of the town, is shown on
the land records by such names as Dutcher, Knicker-
bacher and Van Duzen on the one hand, and Russell,
Lamb, Porter and Church on the other. The influence
of the early Dutch settlers is still seen in the Dutch style
of architecture. There are several quaint, low houses
which are in decided contrast to the more dignified
square-built houses of colonial architecture. The

[23]

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

houses of the Dutch type are built usually under the lee
of a protecting hill which afforded opportunity for the
basement rooms much affected by the Dutch.

The close of the first century in the history of the
county was celebrated in 1851 by a centennial at the
county seat. Among the many notable addresses was
the classic discourse, "The Age of Homespun," by the
great divine Horace Bushnell, who, although his fame
had taken him to other realms, was himself a son of
the county. So clearly does this discourse set forth the
spirit of the age, as represented in the first century of
our history, that I venture to quote briefly: "Given the
fact that a people spin their own dress, and you have in
that fact a whole volume of characteristics. The dis-
tinction will show them to be a people not in trade,
whose life centers in the family, home bred in their
manners, primitive and simple in their character, in-
flexible in their piety. If the clothing is to be manu-
factured in the house, then flax will be grown in the
plowed land, sheep will be raised in the pasture, and the
measure of the flax ground and the number of the flock
will correspond with the measure of the home market,
the number of sons and daughters to be clothed, so that
the agriculture out of doors will map the family in-
doors."

In other words, this was an age when agriculture was
a self-supporting industry. The wants of the family

[24]

FIRST SETTLERS AND EARLY HOME LIFE

were fully supplied from the fields, the flocks, the herds
and the forest. The house was a factory on the farm,
and the farmer the producer of the raw materials used
in the factory. The conditions, throughout the entire
county, were much the same during the earlier part of
the first century of our history, and were marked by an
almost entire absence of trade. True, the farmers In
the southern edge of the county could reach the coast
and found a limited market with the West Indies, and
the extreme western towns found a small outlet for
farm products by way of the Hudson River, but the
almost entire absence of roads and the scarcity of
vehicles for transportation made travel almost impos-
sible, except on horseback. In the earlier days this
mode of travel was practised alike by the women and
the men.

The first dwellings were doubtless made from hewn
timbers taken directly from the forests, but as power
saw-mills were early constructed along the many
streams, rough boards were soon sawed for the outside
covering, flooring and interior finish, and the original
log houses were soon replaced by more pretentious
dwellings. All of the finish had to be done by hand-
working, and so skilled were many of the workmen that
the interior arrangements are without parallel to-day
for utility, combined with good taste. The heavy hewn
timbers, often showing in the corners and ceilings of the

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

rooms, were features of beauty as well as strength.
The mellowed color of the wood gave a tone to the
whole room, and when the beams were ornamented
with a simple carved design, as was sometimes done In
the "best room," the effect was, as an old, old lady once
said, "right neat and tasty." Very often the walls of
the rooms in these old houses are covered with wooden
panels, especially about the chimney, where the panels
concealed the various handy cupboards and snug re-
cesses.

The long lean-to roof, sometimes sloping nearly to
the ground, was a shrewd attempt of the early settlers
to avoid the tax laid by Queen Anne on all two-story
houses. These salt-box houses, as they are called, are
quite characteristic of rural New England. They allow
for great surface area on the first floor and provide full
height chambers on one side of the upper story. The
low roof with its gentle rise had its possible disadvan-
tages, as voiced in the old couplet,

"O for a thousand bricks

To build my chimney higher;
To keep the pesky neighbors' gals
From putting out my fire."

One of the earliest and most important improve-
ments bearing on building construction Is credited to

L^62

FIRST SETTLERS AND EARLY HOME LIFE

the astuteness of a Litchfield County man during Revo-
lutionary days. Up to this time nails were all ham-
mered out of bar iron, a slow and expensive process.
There was a slitting mill in New Jersey in which nail
rods were made, but the process was kept secret.
Samuel Forbes of Canaan wished to obtain a know-
ledge of it, and so employed an ingenious mechanic and
millwright, who, under disguise, obtained admission to
the mill and critically and without suspicion marked the
machinery and its operations so as to be able to make a
model of the machine and construct a mill for Forbes.
The shingles used in the early days were all riven
by hand. "A block was sawn from whatever wood was
handy, ash or chestnut or pine, but a good straight
grain. Then the piece was set on end and it was care-
fully split into thin pieces by frow and wooden mallet.
These were then shaved to the proper thinness and
would last, even the pine shingle, for fifty years. And
that was because they didn't lay 'em so tight. What
was a frow? Oh, it was like a broad, thin-bladed axe,
and was always struck by a mallet to drive it in."

But it was the great stone chimney with its flanking
fireplaces that was the heart of the home. Built of
rough field stone, rudely cut into blocks, the chimney
often took up as much space on the first floor as a mod-
ern city room. This great size was necessary to pro-
vide flues for the many fireplaces which were built in it,

RURAL LIFE LN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

up and down on all sides; often there were six, some-
times twenty. In some of these old chimneys, too, there
was built a little room where, on projecting pegs, could
be hung and smoked the yearly supply of hams and
bacon. Often a rude ladder was constructed of
projecting stones on the outside of the chimney, by
means of which one could climb from cellar to roof.
Around the hearth, in the great living room, the family
gathered in the long winter evenings, each one busy
with some task. The smoke from the great logs of
beech, birch, oak and hickory, against the evening sky,
bespoke a condition of interior comfort and signaled a
welcome to many a stranger. To give a little idea of the
size of those great fireplaces, a lady told me not long
ago that she well remembered standing in the corner of
the fireplace with a good fire blazing on the hearth and
looking up with awe and wonder at the stars twinkling
above the chimney top.

In these days of ready-made goods one can scarcely
imagine the variety of occupations pursued in these old
living rooms. Here the wool was carded and spun,
here stockings were knit and the flax was spun, and pos-
sibly the earlier preparation was given it here. By the
light of the blazing fire the thrifty farmer carved out
the simple tools used in his primitive agriculture. Here
he fashioned flails, hand cards, wooden rakes or harrow
teeth, made spiles for tapping the maple trees, or fash-

FIRST SETTLERS AND EARLY HOME LIFE

ioned snow-shoes to be used in crossing the drifted
snows they had in those good old-fashioned winters.

During the Revolution much of the cherished pewter
was melted for bullets. The story goes that in the town
of Sharon there was a bullet "bee" and several bushels
of bullets were moulded in an evening. Then, the
household supply of pewter dishes being seriously de-
pleted, there was another "bee" at which the young
men carved wooden plates and trenchers to take the
place of those patriotically sacrificed to the cause of
freedom.

Aside from the fashioning of the lighter implements
by the fireplace and the cutting and hauling of the great
piles of wood needed for the year's supply, the farmer
and his sons often worked during the winter at some
minor trades in small shops built for the purpose.
There they broke and hetcheled the flax, made barrels,
butter firkins, wash tubs, and buckets for water, for
milk or for sap. They put flag or rush bottoms in
chairs and the more skilful fashioned some of the plain,
strong pieces of furniture out of the great black cherry
trees that had been felled and seasoned for the purpose.

In the towns where there were limestone outcrop-
pings, the farmers used to make a rough kiln, piling it
full of the pieces of limestone and then burning it.
After burning it would be left in a heap until a conve-
nient time, when it would be hauled by ox teams to

L^9l

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

Hartford or Albany, to be exchanged for household
necessities. It took three days to make the trip from
Canaan to Hartford and return— two trips a week.

On some of the farms slaves were kept to do the
heavier work for the house and farm. One man
brought with him from his former home in the South
over a hundred slaves, but soon sold most of them for
lack of slave quarters.

The days of the house-mother in those early times
were filled with duties, many and various. She had to
look well to the ways of her household, else it suffered
from lack of food and clothes. She took the raw ma-
terial produced by the goodman of the house and the
stalwart sons, and from the flax made clothes and from
the corn made food. Very little that was used in the
house came from outside. The sugar was made from the
hard maples, the meats were home-grown and home-
cured, soap was made twice a year; candles to supple-
ment the light from the blazing fireplace were dipped
for daily use, or run for company candles. I remember
the tall candlesticks with a curved hook projecting
from the top rim. This was to catch into a staple driven
into the edge of the mantel over the fireplace to bring
the light nearer to one who would thumb the almanac
or peruse a volume of sermons. All the clothing of the
family, as well as household linen, was usually made in
the home. A dress of cotton print was a greater

n3o:

FIRST SETTLERS AND EARLY HOME LIFE

treasure a hundred years ago than a silk one is to-day.
A busy, busy life they led, these sturdy forefathers and
foremothers of ours; toil was tedious, but they were
content, and life was sweet.

C3>n

CHAPTER III

FIELD AND GARDEN CROPS IN THE EARLY DAYS

|T has been noted that the earliest settle-
ments were along river valleys. This was
most natural for two reasons: the rivers
were the usual means of penetrating the
wilderness, and the valleys through which
they flowed were comparatively free from forests and
were composed of a kind of soil more readily cultivated
than the rocky areas on the hillsides.

After a field was stripped of trees and freed from
stones, it was plowed and roughly harrowed. The only
plow in use up to the early years of the nineteenth cen-
tury was the unwieldy, heavy-beamed, wooden plow. It
was not of a type suited to lifting boulders in its course
through the soil. Perhaps this may account for the
thoroughness with which fields on our hills were cleared

L32-2

CROPS IN THE EARLY DAYS

of loose stones and boulders. There were many tradi-
tions of "bees" where men and teams turned in to help
a neighbor clear a field of rocks, which were afterwards
utilized in making great walls about the fields. After
the rude plow, the heavy, wooden, peg-toothed harrow
was used for fitting the seed bed, and after seeding, the
brush was dragged over to scratch in the seed. These
were the only implements of tillage, excepting, of
course, the strictly hand tools, in use until after the
Revolution.

Corn was planted by hand, following the old Indian
custom. A child often carried a sack of corn, walking
up and down the plowed field and dropping in the tra-
ditional five kernels,

"One for the bug.
One for the crow.
One to rot

And two to grow."

Following the dropper came a stalwart man armed
with the heavy, clumsy hoe, who drew the earth over
the kernels and gave it three pats to fix the earth
about them.

The sown crops needed little care till harvest, but
progressive farmers, or those having many boys to keep
employed, always hoed the corn. A man who in his

D33

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

eighty-third year "raised 171 bushels, on the ear, of
corn to the acre" told me that the plowing was poorly
done in those days, but good crops were harvested be-
cause the land was new and rich. He also said that In
his grandfather's day, after a piece was plowed and
sown, "the farmer would cut down a good stout thorn
bush and kinder hetchel in the seed." Flax, rye and
wheat were "hetcheled" in, or scratched in with a
brush. This brush generally consisted of birch trees set
in a head. A long chain connected it with the ox yoke.

For many years the grain harvest was entirely de-
pendent on the sickle— a slow, tedious process indeed,
and not so very much lightened by the Introduction of
the grain cradle. It took a strong man with an un-
breakable back and an alert eye to be a good cradler.
Great are the stories told even to this day of the mighty
feats of cradling performed by our fathers or grand-
fathers. The usual day's work was two or three acres,
but there is a record of thirty acres in six days. It took
a skilful swing of the cradle to cut the grain close to the
ground and yet not close enough to hit the small stones
and dull the scythe.

The corn crop, aside from the hoeing, was more
easily raised than the small grains. The ears could be
picked from the standing stalks, or more often the corn
was cut, the stalks dried in the field and then either the
unhusked ears picked off and carried to the barn, or else

D43

CROPS IN THE EARLY DAYS

the whole shocks of corn were thus stored. The husk-
ing of the corn gave opportunity for great frolics, and
it is one of the few diversions of our ancestors which
possesses romance enough to be popular among young
people of the present time. Probably its popularity is
due to the perpetual presence of red ears.

Such good things as were made of the corn! — mush
or hasty pudding, well deserving the eloquent tribute
paid to it by Joel Barlow in his "Ode to Hasty Pud-
ding," as it came hot and fragrant from its long, slow
cooking over the coals; hoe cake or ash cake, crisp and
so brown and tasty around the edges. A delicious
johnny-cake was made by mixing the meal with hot
water, spreading it on a smooth oak board, covering
the dough with thick cream and slightly tipping it up in
front of the fire to cook, turning it as needed. The truly
old-fashioned bean porridge was thickened with corn
meal.

A lady who was born in 1818 once told me her ex-
planation of the common saying, "He'll never set the
Thames [or river] afire." The Indian meal used to be
sifted into a long wooden bread tray, and from one end
to the other ran a flat stick to support the coarse cloth-
bottomed sieve or "tempse." A swift worker moving
this quickly back and forth might possibly "set the
tempse afire," but a slow person never would.

In most communities, in the early days, wheat was

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

seldom raised; and when it was, the flour, though not
much like the product of the modern flour mills, was
saved for extra occasions. The common bread was
"rye and injun," made of rye meal and corn meal
mixed.

The farm garden was probably meagerly supplied in
those early days. Aside from the field crops of rye,
buckwheat, wheat and corn, they had beans, peas,
turnips, parsnips, and carrots. Potatoes were little
used until after the Revolution. The native pumpkins
and squashes were much appreciated by the early set-
tlers and were utilized in astonishing ways, and what
they couldn't eat fresh the good housewife dried for
the winter's supply. Helen Evertson Smith, in her at-
tractive book "Colonial Days and Ways," transcribes
a letter describing Thanksgiving Day in 1779. The
writer remarks that they have no beef and have not had
for three years because it has all gone to the soldiers in
the army. They had venison from a good red deer,
huge chines of roast pork, a big roast turkey, a goose
and two big pigeon pasties. "Then there was an
abundance of good vegetables of all the old sorts and
one which I do not believe you have seen yet. Uncle
Simeon had imported the seed from England just be-
fore the war began and only this year was there enough
for table use. It is called Sellery and you eat it without
cooking. It is very good served with meats. ... It has

CROPS IN THE EARLY DAYS

to be taken up roots and all and burled in earth in the
cellar through the winter and only pulled up when you
want some of it to use."

A crop of the greatest importance, though one sel-
dom raised now, was flax. Its culture was considered
so important that the government directed that it be
raised by each farmer, being sown in May and ready to
pull by the last of July. A more beautiful sight than
a field of blossoming flax, as blue as the heavens, can
hardly be imagined. Although the flax was so quickly
grown, yet its preparation for household use was slow
and tedious. It was pulled by the roots and then ripped ;
that is, the seed pods were combed off by a ripple comb.
These pods and seeds were caught on a sheet to
furnish seed for another season. Rippling was done in
the field and then the stalks were tied by the blossom
ends and dried. When dry they were put in running
water and left till the leaves rotted off, a process that
took only a few days. This was called retting the flax.
After retting it was dried and tied in bundles and then
broken on the heavy flax brake to separate the fibers.
This was very heavy work, properly belonging to the
men of the farm. After breaking, it was "scutched or
swingled" to take out the bark. The swingling had to
be done on a dry day, and from the coarse refuse which
was taken out, sacking could be made. Then the flax
was ready to be hetcheled. This process consisted in

1:37:

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

threshing small bunches of the straw across the teeth of
a hetchel, thereby straightening the fibers and combing
out the small pieces. As many as six hetchels were
sometimes used if especially fine linen was desired, and
it was astonishing that so small a quantity was left for
further manipulation. But it was also surprising to see
how much thread a small handful of good fiber would
make. Thus after twenty handlings of the flax it was
only ready to spin. When spun and reeled it was ready
to be bleached in the thread, and various bleachings
marked the finished product.

As more cattle came to be kept, it became necessary
to house winter food for them. The great meadows
produced native grasses, but the early settlers regarded
these with scant favor and imported seed from England
to improve the grass lands. This custom has been kept
up, and now, nearly three hundred years since the first
settlement in New England, there is, with the exception
of Phleum pratense, the herd's grass or timothy, not a
native grass deemed worthy of cultivation. And the
botanists are trying to prove that the quaint little tradi-
tion of Timothy Herd and his native grass must go into
tradition's scrap heap along with the stories of the
apple and cherry tree.

However, there were big hay fields, and up to about
1850 these were all cut by hand. One aged farmer thus
tells his first experience: "Say, I've got the first half

CSS]

CROPS IN THE EARLY DAYS

dollar I ever earned. I worked for a man in haying
time a week for my board and earned that half dollar;
we worked, I tell ye. We'd get up'n the morning, say at
half past two, or soon's we c'u'd see, 'n' mow till five (I
spread) . Then I'd get up the cows and the women 'n'
I'd milk the cows, 'n' we'd have breakfast. 'N' then
we'd go at it ag'in, mowin' as hard's ever we c'u'd till
ten. Then all hands, women 'n' all, would turn in 'n'
rake and get in. I 'member that five men got in thirteen
loads one day. It'd bother a mowing machine some to
do that."

One means of enlarging the hay crop that was in use
on many farms sixty to eighty years ago was by irriga-
tion. Whenever a brook could be turned from its
course and carried along some slope and then be turned
over the grass fields, it was commonly done and the hay
crop thus greatly improved. On many farms through-
out the county may be found old irrigation ditches that
have long been abandoned. In the first report of the
State Board of Agriculture in 1866 will be found series
of letters on what was then being done with irrigation
in agriculture, and some of the best results are reported
from Litchfield County.

Although the potato was a plant of American origin,
it was not known to the natives of the North at the time
this country was settled. It was introduced into Eng-
land and on the European continent from our southern

[39]

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

colonies and probably came to New England with the
soldiers who were engaged in the South during the
Revolutionary War. At any rate, it was not widely
grown in Connecticut until after this period. Early in
the nineteenth century this crop became generally
known through New England and every family grew at
least what was wanted for home use. New land, well
stored with decaying organic matter, proved ideal for
this crop, and such soils frequently gave yields of 300
to 400 bushels an acre. Everything connected with the
crop had to be done by hand labor. The usual method
of planting was in hills, and by hand hoeing a mound of
earth was piled around each hill about the time the
tubers began to form. This was thought necessary to
prevent the tubers from becoming exposed to the direct
sunlight when they became large.

A much earlier crop than the potato was the turnip.
This crop was grown in England and in the north of
Europe long before the potato was cultivated in those
countries. In this country it was early found to be a
valuable feed for sheep. The coarse, dry fodders that
were used in winter afforded little nutriment for the
sheep and they often came through the winter gaunt
and flabby. In order to put the ewes in good condition
before the lambing season it was a common practice to
feed them turnips during the latter part of the winter
and in the early spring. Turnips were frequently sown

C40]

CROPS IN THE EARLY DAYS

in the corn fields in midsummer, and made good growth
through the fall, after the corn was cut.

Carrots were another root crop whose feeding value
was early recognized. Before the days of patent butter
colors, carrots were commonly fed to milking cows,
when they were not on pasture feed, in order to impart
a "June color" to the butter. Carrots, too, were com-
monly fed to horses before the days of western grain
feeds. They were found to be especially valuable as a
tonic and corrective.

America gave to the world two of the most useful
food plants — corn and the potato — and in addition the
worthless and yet commercially valuable weed, tobacco.
This plant was found by the first settlers, being cul-
tivated by the Indians in Virginia, and they taught
the white man the use of the soothing narcotic. While
tobacco was grown as a garden crop in Connecticut in
colonial days, it was not cultivated for market until
about 1830. It was grown in the Connecticut Valley
for about twenty years before it came into the Housa-
tonic Valley. Up to about thirty years ago the Con-
necticut broad leaf, introduced from Maryland into this
State in the early thirties, was the leading variety grown
for the trade. For the past thirty years the highest
grade of Havana wrapper leaf has been grown with
good profit on the sandy loam soils of the Housatonic
Valley.

1:40

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

Many of the garden crops that are now so readily
preserved for winter use by canning, were preserved in
the early days by drying. Nearly every kitchen was
festooned from the ceiling with strings of dried apples,
sliced pumpkins and squash and red peppers, and often
the shelves were covered with sweet corn, green peas,
currants and sometimes with berries from the woods
and fields. Before the days of railroads, when there
was little travel from place to place, each family was
sure to provide itself with a goodly store of everything
that could add to the physical comfort of the family
during the long winter season. The family constituted
the only market for the farm products, and the needs of
the family and of the live stock were a measure of the
crops grown.

n423

CHAPTER IV

FARMING TOOLS AND IMPLEMENTS

S has been incidentally noted in the pre-
ceding pages, the tools of the early set-
tlers were of the simplest, crudest con-
struction, and generally home-made. The
farmer and the members of his household
made the rakes, the forks, axe helves, shovels with
wrought iron edges, flails, baskets, ox yokes, cheese
presses, butter bowls and paddles. Even plow frames
and drags were fashioned by the aid of adze, draw-
shave and knife, from the timber of the forest which
stood almost at the farmer's door.

The first plows were heavy, clumsy affairs, almost
wholly of wood except that the mouldboard was rein-
forced by bands of iron; and yet some of the older men
say that "Grandfather with one of these heavy wooden

1:43]

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

plows, drawn by a yoke of oxen, could do handsomer
plowing than is done with the best sulky plow of to-
day."

The mechanics of the plow were practically unknown
until Thomas Jefferson made a study of the subject and
constructed a plow along scientific lines, basing his work
on the mechanical principles of the wedge, by which the
plow operates. From this time (about 1800) the real
improvements in the plow began. For years after these
experiments the farmers were slow to appreciate the
benefits which might result from them. They thought
the iron plow would poison the soil, and so, for many
years, they clung to the heavy wooden plow which
varied but little In pattern from that used 3000 years
ago. Some of these old plows were so heavy that sev-
eral men were required to hold one In the soil. When
the plow which Israel Putnam left in the furrow to
answer the call of Bunker Hill was exhibited in Hart-
ford, some twenty years ago, an up-to-date farmer was
heard to say, "Well, I don't wonder he left it in the
furrow to answer the call. He'd never have got there
if he'd waited to finish plowing, and I don't know but
death by a bullet would be full as easy as wearing your-
self out bunting rocks with that thing."

After the land was prepared by the plow the seed
was sown broadcast by hand, and in the very early times
"kinder hetcheled In with a thorn bush set In a stick."

[44]

FARMING TOOLS AND IMPLEMENTS

Then the seed was "firmed in" by the use of a heavy
stone boat loaded with stones or by a wooden roller
hewn by hand from a tree trunk, two feet or more in
diameter.

The common form of harrow of one hundred years
ago was the wooden framed, A-shaped harrow, set with
hardwood pegs more than a foot in length. Of course,
on our rocky hills it became necessary frequently to re-
place the teeth, as they soon became dulled so that they
only slightly stirred the surface soil.

The grain was for years cut by the sickle, a method
dating back to Bible times. From the New England
Farmer, issue of July 21, 1849, the following is taken
regarding "Grain Cradles":

"This is truly a labor-saving implement, doing work
in a neat manner in good hands, and with great expedi-
tion, having decided advantages over the sickle with its
slow, tedious, back-aching operation. The gain in dis-
patching the harvesting of grain is not merely doing it
at less expense, but often the advantage is in perform-
ing it in the very nick of time and thereby saving the
grain from a storm or from standing too late."

Although the first reapers had been patented prior to
the introduction of the grain cradle, for many years
they did not work satisfactorily. What proved to be
the first satisfactory style of horse-power reaper was
shown at the World's Fair in London in 1 8 5 i , and this,

1:453

RURAL LIFE LN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

like nearly all of our improved farm machinery, was of
American invention. It is only within the past thirty
years that reapers have been used at all commonly on
the stony side hill fields of Litchfield County.

After the grain was cradled it was bound in bundles,
and when sufl'iciently dry was laboriously threshed by
hand. A flail is one of the simplest of farming tools,
and yet its manipulation requires great skill. Two
smooth, rounded sticks are tied together by a thong,
preferably of eel's skin, and the trick is to grasp the
handle and then rhythmically thump out the grain with
the swinging end and not thump your own head or the
person of your threshing mate. Yankee ingenuity soon
contrived an easier way of threshing, and water-power
threshers early came into use. These did away with
the labor of threshing by hand, but the straw was
chopped up and spoiled. With the invention of the
horse-power thresher, improvements were made so that
the straw came out in shape to use as desired. One
successful farmer, now living in Canaan, has recently
told me that seventy years ago his father raised forty
acres of oats, threshed them by "water thresher" and
carted them to Winsted, where they were sold for
twenty-six cents a bushel. In the early times the
threshed grain was winnowed by pouring from one re-
ceptacle to another and letting the wind carry away the
chaff. Or on a windy day the big barn doors were
[46]

FARMING TOOLS AND IMPLEMENTS

opened and the threshed grain was tossed In the air by
clean wooden scoop shovels and the lighter chaff blown
away. In a collection of old implements I saw not long
ago were several broad, shallow, close-woven baskets
of splint work, which were labeled "Use Unknown."
I may be mistaken, but I strongly suspect they were bas-
kets woven for the special purpose of winnowing grain.

The cleaned grain was now ready for the mill.
Among the earliest grants in nearly every township was
the water privilege which was given on the condition
that the grantee should grind all the grain for the com-
munity. It is probable that until after the establishment
of grist mills not much use was made of the small
grains. Indian corn was the staple grain in the earliest
times and was ground into meal in the Indian fashion.

The corn when husked had to be shelled, and many
and various were the devices employed to make the
flinty kernels rattle off faster. The common method
was to rub one ear across another In the hands and thus
make them shell each other; but seekers after an easier
way used to rake the well dried ears across the edge of
a clean shovel or the sharp edge of a skillet. Yankee
ingenuity soon devised a crude shelling machine, and
those in use to-day are fashioned upon the same prin-
ciple.

The shelled corn. In the absence of the power mill,
might be pounded In a hollow stump made for the pur-

:47]

\
RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

pose, and thus cracked or ground, or be crushed in a
primitive hand mill. Where the Indian method of
cracking in a stump was employed it was often set out
of doors under a tree and the pestle tied to a bough to
give it a rebound and save, for the down stroke, the
weary arms of the miller.

Mr. W. E. Pettee of Salisbury invented the first
spring-toothed harrow, one of the first steps in making
farm work easy. By a peculiar process of tempering
the steel he was able to construct a harrow with curved
teeth that would spring back and pass over obstacles
but not break. He also bought and brought to that
town the first mowing machine.

Up to about 1850 all grain and hay had to be cut and
handled entirely by hand. It was no uncommon thing
to see six or eight mowers, with rhythmic swing, tread-
ing the hay fields from "sun up" to midday. The rak-
ing, too, was all done by hand, and it took every member
of the household to gather up and haul in the afternoon
what the men folks had laid down in the forenoon.

The first mowing machine was known as a one-
wheeler— "awkward, heavy, and clumsy," it is charac-
terized by a man who used one. Then came the
Eureka machine, with high wheels and the cutter-bar
working in front and between them. This type of ma-
chine is in use at the present time, though almost en-
tirely superseded by the side cutter-bar type. In using

[483

FARMING TOOLS AND IMPLEMENTS

the Eureka machine the team was driven back and forth
instead of around a piece.

To supplement the forks bought at the store the boys
were supplied with forked sticks cut out of the
forest and seasoned a little. In my childhood I well
remember Father cutting a stout forked sapling for me
to use in spreading the swath as I followed the mowers.
Rakes, too, were contrived at home, and as the harvests
became larger, the bull rake — having teeth eighteen
inches long, set into a head more than six feet wide —
was invented to use in raking after the load.

One of the earliest horse rakes consisted of wooden
teeth more than six feet long set through a roller— the
roller mounted on wheels. The teeth were pointed only
on the side next the ground. When the teeth were full
the thing twisted itself over and started the teeth on
the other side picking up a mouthful. It was never very
successful and was quickly forgotten when the iron-
toothed rake with a foot dumper came into use.

From the settlement of the country down to the close
of the eighteenth century there was practically no im-
proved farm machinery, in the sense that we think of
improved machinery to-day. The use of steam as a
motive power was unknown until after Fulton's steam-
boat plied the Hudson River in 1809. Horse-power
machinery was not known till near the middle of the
last century. The chief motive power for all farm

[49]

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

work prior to seventy-five years ago was the ox team.
Horses were little used for farm work, and so most of
the hauling of heavy loads was done with the two-
wheeled ox cart. Many of these were homemade and
often the axles were made from hickory. Practically
the only iron on many of the older carts was the tires.
When the body of this two-wheeled cart was fitted with
sloping racks extending many feet In all four direc-
tions, heavy loads of grain and hay could be hauled.

In the earliest days all of the long-distance travel was
on horseback, as the bridle paths were the only high-
ways and horseback travel was the common means of
going from one settlement to another. When roads
became more common heavy loads of farm produce
were occasionally sent to the Sound at the south or the
Hudson River at the west by the slow but sturdy ox
teams. The extent to which the ox team came into use
is illustrated by the account given by a man now living,
whose uncle took an ox load of gun barrels from the
place of casting at Mount Riga to Harper's Ferry, sell-
ing his oxen at the end of the journey and making the
return trip on foot.

1:503

CHAPTER V
FRUITS AND FRUIT GROWING

N page 455 of Barbour's "Historical Col-
lection," printed In 1836, Is this note:
"There Is an apple tree now standing on
the farm of Mr, Solomon Marsh In
Litchfield, supposed to be about 116
years old, and Is now In a vigorous state. Its trunk,
two feet from the ground, measures eleven feet five
Inches In circumference. The circumference of Its
branches is nearly eleven rods In extent. It bore In
1835 one hundred bushels of apples of a fine quality."

As Litchfield was sold for settlement in 171 8, this
apple tree, if the above record is accurate, must have
been about the first thing planted by the first man who
settled in the town. However that may be. Its great
size and vigor are sufliclent warrant for the statement

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

that the hillsides of this county, with their natural fruit
soils, furnish some of the best apple lands in the coun-
try.

Very little attention was at first paid to the selection
of choice varieties of apples. This is evidenced by the
fact that very old orchards of the present day often
contain none of the choicer kinds. Most of the very
oldest trees around abandoned homesteads bear only
native fruit, except possibly here and there a branch
where top-grafting was practised after the tree had at-
tained considerable size. I recall one old, decaying
orchard In Salisbury where I have searched for several
years for grafted varieties of fruit, but without avail,
although the trees have nearly all borne abundantly.
Little use was made of the fruit as food in the early
days of the colonists. But cider was made and was
stored and used in great quantities on every farm. It
was taken to church to drink with the hearty luncheon
with which all fortified themselves In the noon hour
between the long discourses of morning and afternoon.
In one case, as previously recorded, even the minister
did not hesitate to Increase his meager salary by engag-
ing in this traffic, for he was "hired for fifty pounds of
lawful money and the privilege of running the town
cider mill."

Stills for cider brandy, too, were common every-
where, and large quantities of the cider were converted

FRUITS AND FRUIT GROWING

into this strong intoxicant. When it was desired to
save the expense or the trouble of making this bever-
age, what was said to be a good substitute was made by
freezing cider that had been fermenting in barrels for
several months. Then the brandy would collect at the
center unfrozen, and by boring a hole with a long auger
the concentrated product could be drawn off.

From Orcutt's "History of Torrington" the follow-
ing notes have been gleaned: "Many of the early set-
tlers, having been reared in those parts of the State
where apples had become an important commodity in
the enjoyment of life, were led, in the early stages of the
settlement, to give much attention to the planting of
this kind of tree. This is very evident from the large
quantity of apples and cider found here in 1770 and
afterwards. In 1773 there were four cider mills on the
west side, and at least one brandy still. An apple or-
chard would not reach any considerable maturity under
twenty years, and therefore the planting of such or-
chards must have been one of the great enterprises of
the town."

T. S, Gold, in his "Reminiscences," writes: "Fruits
at the beginning of the century were few from
grafted or budded trees. I have a single tree, a 'Seek-
nofurther,' grafted near the ground, the last survivor
of an orchard which is said to have been planted about
1760. A few Pearmain trees were also in the orchard;

D3]

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

the rest were native fruit— two so good we have per-
petuated them by grafting."

"Peaches, good, bad and indifferent, grew abundantly
from the stones planted In the fence corners of the gar-
den or orchard, till the yellows came about fifty years
ago and swept them all away."

"One hundred years ago the culture of small fruits
for market was unknown, but they crept Into city and
village gardens. Sixty years ago President Day, of
blessed memory, could be seen from the Yale dormi-
tories hoeing his own strawberry bed. Professional
men were good gardeners and the best farmers. The
introduction of new and choice fruits was due to them."

The doctor, the minister and the lawyer always had
their farm to eke out the meager incomes of their pro-
fessions. As they were about the only members of a
community who indulged in the luxury of books and
papers, they alone were in a position to know what new
fruits and vegetables were being introduced from other
countries, and they were ever ready to test out interest-
ing introductions.

Nearly all of our Improved fruits are of old-world
origin. The wild apple was brought to this country by
the first settlers, and our improved varieties had their
origin in what are known as chance seedlings. It Is a
well known fact that apples, peaches, cherries and some
other fruits will, when grown from seed, occasionally

n54]

FRUITS AND FRUIT GROWING

develop a tree of choice fruit. By grafting or budding
from this natural selection a new variety is dissemi-
nated, and if especially choice it finds widespread
use. Within a few years the original Rhode Island
greening tree was still standing, just over the Con-
necticut line; not many years ago the original Baldwin
tree stood in its native town in Massachusetts, and
until within a few years there existed the original
northern spy tree in western New York. To-day the
spot is marked by a monument erected by the many
admirers of this choice variety. It may not be amiss to
relate here the tradition that the seed from which this
choice apple was developed was taken to western New
York from the Holmes farm in Salisbury, Connecticut.
A few years before his death the owner of this farm
told the writer that he still had on his farm a tree the
fruit of which closely resembled the northern spy. At
any rate, authentic records of the origin of this choice
variety show that the seed was taken from Salisbury,
Connecticut, to western New York.

Grafting and budding, as means of propagating fruit
trees, were known long before the settlement of this
country — grafting at least having been practised by the
Romans. The method of root grafting of the small
seedlings is probably of comparatively recent origin, as
most of the older trees show evidence of having been
top-grafted quite a distance above the ground. This is

1:553

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

what causes the distinct enlargement on many apple
tree trunks. The scion, which was inserted by means
of the cleft graft, often grew more rapidly than the
original stock, making the enlargement or bulge at the
point of union.

Choice varieties of apples and pears began to be
propagated shortly after the American Revolution.
Aside from the northern spy, to whose Connecticut
origin reference has already been made, another fine
commercial apple was originated in Litchfield County.
The Hurlburt stripe, or Hurlburt, is a well known late
fall variety that originated on the farm of Lemuel
Hurlburt of Winchester, and is first recorded in the
works on fruit about 1850.

The growing and selling of nursery stock became an
established business about one hundred years ago. As
the people began to select improved varieties and the
nurseries began to propagate and disseminate them,
every family soon made a practice of surrounding their
dwelling with choice varieties of pears, peaches, plums,
quinces and cherries, to say nothing of the smaller
fruits, such as grapes, currants and gooseberries.

The native berry fruits, such as the strawberry, the
blackberry, the huckleberry, the blueberry and the rasp-
berry, were common everywhere, either in meadow,
swamp, on hillside pastures or newly cleared forest
areas; and so, little attention was given to the garden

C563

FRUITS AND FRUIT GROWING

culture of any of these fruits until within the past sixty
years. As far as known, the strawberry was the only
berry fruit brought under cultivation prior to 1850.

In 1802 Mr. Blakesley of Plymouth writes: "My
method of making a nursery is to separate my apple
seeds from the pomace in the fall of the year, let the
seeds freeze one night in the latter part of the winter,
plant them in my garden in the spring, and after they
have grown five or six inches high, I transplant them
and find they do much better than when raised In the
usual way." This would seem to show that It was this
man's practice to set his orchard from seedlings of the
first season's growth. These were doubtless grown in
the orchard until one to three inches in diameter and
were then top-grafted. Mr. Samuel Bushnell (the
elder), who became famous as an orchardlst in Salis-
bury near the middle of the past century, made a prac-
tice of growing his seedling trees by planting the seeds
in his corn field with the corn.

In the earlier reports of agricultural societies In the
State there are interesting notes on the methods In use
in handling apple orchards. One man In this county
speaks of using corn cobs about his trees, while his son
had an orchard "on which he put stones around his
trees at a small distance from the trunk and thinks them
beneficial to his orchard." The same writer concludes
with the statement that "I have never, however, found

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

anything so good for my apple trees as top-tow laid on
the land near the trees." What "top-tow" Is can only
be conjectured from the knowledge of the fact that flax
was grown and retted on nearly every farm, and the
fiber was commonly called "tow." The coarse bark of
the plant was of little value for cloth and it seems most
probable that this got the name of "top-tow," and being
a waste product, could be used as a mulch around small
trees.

In a long list of questions submitted for answer in the
"Transactions of the State Agricultural Society," pub-
lished in 1802, the following will indicate the trend of
thought relating to apples in those days:

"What kind of apples afford the best cyder?"

"What is the best management of apples to prepare
them for cyder?"

"Is it beneficial to house them in heaps until mel-
lowed, and will this method better the quality of the
cyder?"

"Are grafting and innoculation [budding] of fruit
trees in general use and the best method known?"

"Have any means or methods been found successful
in destroying the worms that annoy the trees or pre-
venting the miliars from ascending the trees?"

The ravages of insects are not confined to recent ex-
perience. One of the worst periodic pests was the
canker worm. In the "History of Ancient Woodbury"

1:583

FRUITS AND FRUIT GROWING

it is recorded that "in 1791 the canker worms devoured
the orchards not only here but all over the northeast-
ern states, and their ravages were repeated the two fol-
lowing years. Orchards standing in stiff clay soil and in
low grounds which are wet in the spring escaped, but on
all kinds of light and dry soil the trees were almost as
dry on the first of June as the first of January. The
same insect has this year [1853] attacked the orchards
in the same manner and with the same result. The
trees, the fifteenth of June, were as brown as in autumn,
and almost entirely stripped of foliage. The fruit has
been entirely ruined, although at present writing [Au-
gust] the trees have again put on a fresh garment of
foliage. The eye of man could not well behold a denser
shower of vermin than these trees presented."

One of the interesting prejudices of one hundred
years ago, relative to orchard management, will strike
the present-day fruit grower as queer, if not amusing.
This was the prejudice that prevailed against the grow-
ing of clover in the orchard. Several writers of that
time refer to having seen or experienced injury from
growing red clover in the orchards. One man in this
county reports that "he liked to have ruined his orchard
by raising crops of red clover on the land," but that
when, on seeing his trees decaying, he conjectured the
cause, "he left off raising the clover in his orchard,
when it soon recovered." Another man reports similar

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

Injury, but adds that when he began pasturing the
clover the injury ceased, and his conjecture was, that
"by carefully feeding it to keep it from having any
bloom, it does not injure as it manifestly did when suf-
fered to come to such maturity as to fit it for mowing."

To-day orchardists find that there is nothing more
valuable to grow in the orchard than clover, providing,
of course, it is grown at the right time of the year and
not allowed to check the tree growth early in the sea-
son. The trouble experienced in the early days was
probably due to the serious check given the growth of
the trees in the early summer, mainly due to the large
use of soil water by the clover. The present-day or-
chardist cultivates his orchard lands the early part of
the season, when the trees are growing rapidly, and thus
conserves soil moisture; and then he often sows clover,
during the middle or late summer, in order to check the
growth of wood, so that it will harden before winter.
The clover is generally plowed under early the npxt
spring and serves as a fertilizer for the trees.

In the "Report of Greenwood's (Litchfield County)
Agricultural Society for 1845" will be found the fol-
lowing record of varieties reported on by Thomas A.
Miller of Torrlngton, Including eight varieties of win-
ter apples: "two varieties of Pippins, the Seeknofur-
ther, Roxbury Russett, Gllliflower, Pounder, Peck's
Sweet and Long Island Red Cheek, all fine specimens

[60]

FRUITS AND FRUIT GROWING

of their kind." Several of these will be recognized as
well known varieties of the present day.

There was also a specimen of an apple by Thomas
M. Clark, "evidently a pounder." With this apple
there was a newly invented machine for picking apples
consisting of a hoop made of wire attached to a handle
with a sack suspended from the hoop resembling an eel
pot. "The committee think it a valuable instrument for
gathering choice fruit. Donated by the above men-
tioned Clark."

There are now a few bearing apple orchards in the
county that are sixty to seventy-five years of age. Most
of these are grafted fruit, which shows that attention
was generally drawn to the value of the apple as food
only within about the last hundred years.

Practically all of the best varieties of to-day, how-
ever, were grown more than sixty years ago. In the
Patent Office Report for 1859 (in which division the
first reports on agriculture were made by our govern-
ment), T. S. Gold reports twenty varieties of apples,
and among them nearly all of the leading varieties of
the present day. The same impression of decay and
decline in orchards seemed to have prevailed then as
to-day, for Mr. Gold reports: "Within the past twenty
years, orchards in this part of the State have declined
rapidly, many old trees dying or ceasing to bear good
fruit. Decay dates from the ice storm of the winter of

C60

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

1855-6. Within the past ten years I have planted five
hundred trees, most of which are in tolerably thrifty
condition and some are beginning to bear."

The most extensive bearing orchards in the county
to-day are found on the Gold Farm on Cream Hill in
Cornwall, and in the towns of Morris, Litchfield, Salis-
bury and Bridgewater. The fact has been well estab-
lished that the higher hilltops of Connecticut, with their
heavy loam and clay-loam soils, produce apples of un-
surpassed flavor and keeping qualities. The higher
elevations give less trouble from fruit diseases than the
valleys, while the good air drainage draws the cold air
down the hill slopes so that less injury results from late
spring frosts. The air of the hills, being cooler than
that of the valleys, causes the fruit to mature more
slowly, and this gives a firmness and crispness that add
greatly to the flavor and keeping qualities. There is no
comparison in flavor between the fruit of our Connecti-
cut hills and that of even the famous fruit region of
Oregon. For several years T. S. Gold of Cornwall sent
his apples to London, with a market more exacting than
that of most cities in this country. To-day the fruit
from this farm finds a ready sale in a select trade,
mostly in New Haven and Bridgeport.

Even the sons of sunny Italy, whose love of fruits
runs back through many generations, have recently
migrated to our western Connecticut hillsides, where

FRUITS AND FRUIT GROWING

they are likely to prove to the native stock that Litch-
field County hills have greater possibilities in fruit cul-
ture than we have ever dreamed. The hilltops of
Salisbury are already being dotted with apple and peach
orchards and the lower slopes with vineyards that give
promise of bloom and fruitage beyond the highest ex-
pectations of the native population.

1:633

CHAPTER VI

CATTLE AND THE DAIRY

ERY little farm livestock was kept in the
early days of the Colonies, though be-
fore the time Litchfield County was set-
tled enough had been imported from
England to furnish draft cattle for work
and cows to produce enough milk to meet the home de-
mands for fresh milk and for butter and cheese. There
were comparatively few areas suitable for hay, which
was so necessary to provide food for the livestock dur-
ing the long winters. As the fields were cleared of
forest and later of rocks, the amount of fodder grown
for winter use was increased, and the number and va-
riety of farm animals were gradually increased.

The first barns were hewn-timber structures, loosely
covered, built mainly for the shelter of grain and

:64n

CATTLE AND THE DAIRY

fodder rather than for the comfortable housing of the
cattle, and yet these heavy-timbered barns lasted for
years. Though I do not know the oldest in the county
by any means, yet I know of one standing, sound and
good, which sheltered a part of a company of Hessians
when they marched down through Litchfield County
after the defeat at Saratoga in 1777. The main struc-
ture was flanked, oftentimes, by open sheds where the
cattle and sheep could take shelter and be foddered.

As we have noted, the early plan of settlement ar-
ranged for the commons around which were the home-
stead plots, with an outlying farm to be later improved
and reclaimed. After the danger from Indians and
wild beasts became lessened it is probable that the out-
lying area was often utilized as summer pasturage for
young stock— a custom still continued.

The town of Woodbury early set aside a common
pasture. "At a lawful town meeting the 8th of March,
1705, it was voted and agreed that all the bare hill and
ragland from the highway to the westside through pop-
lar meadow, down to the highway from Whiteoak
through Sawteeth, we say all that is now common land
unlaid out, is and shall be sequestered land for common,
for the feed of sheep and other cattle forever, for the
use of the inhabitants in gen'l." A pretty extensive
pasture, and yet, if it is still "forever kept," it must be
all too small for the flocks and herds of Woodbury.

[6s]

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

Helen Evertson Smith says that in 1672 the bequest
of a cow and heifer was esteemed of more than ordi-
nary value. Trumbull gives the value of a good milch
cow about 1640 as thirty pounds. The work of a
"paire of Oxen with tacklin" was held to be worth two
shillings and five pence for "six bowers" in winter and
"eight bowers" the rest of the year, eight hours making
the full day's work for cattle except in heavy upland
plowing, when "six bowers" were considered enough.
"A man's working hours were reckoned from sun to
sun in summer and from six to six in winter; but the
cattle were more precious than men."

For a long time there seems to have been little at-
tempt at butter making, and in the early days so much
salt was put into it as to make it scarcely palatable as
an article of diet. In one of Mrs. i\ustin's books of
early New England life, she makes the house-mother
put a pound ball of butter on a spit, and, deftly turning
it at exactly the right distance from the fire, constantly
sprinkle it with flour until it is a great brown crackling
toothsome mass, which she serves as a hearty treat for
her goodman's supper.

When the supply of stock was increased enough to
warrant, butter and cheese were made in the summer to
supply the family for the year. Cattle kept for dairy
purposes were at first limited to the needs of the family.
The family cows were not expected to produce milk

1^62

CATTLE AND THE DAIRY

more than six or seven months after calving, and only
at that season of the year when nature provided an
abundance of pasture feed. All the grains grown were
needed to support the family. The coarse fodders that
were harvested whenever the work could be done, were
the chief food of livestock. The haying season gen-
erally lasted from the time the rye and wheat harvest
was finished until the corn was ready to cut. With
loosely constructed stables and with woody, coarse fod-
ders that could barely sustain life as the main source of
feed, such a thing as winter dairying was never heard
of, and the good housewife was fortunate if she got
milk enough in winter to feed the young children.

In the early days of the colonists there was no im-
proved livestock in the sense that we think of improved
stock to-day. The cattle and sheep brought over from
England, where they were accustomed to a milder cli-
mate, did not prosper as in their native country. It is
said that the farm animals that were raised here, for
the first two or three generations, were smaller and not
as well developed in their useful qualities as those im-
ported. This was probably due to the severe climate,
poor shelter, rough pastures and the poor quality of
the dried fodder. The natural grasses were not as
nutritious as those later introduced from Europe, and
the clovers were at first entirely unknown, as this was a
crop of European origin.

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

In order to be able to recognize his cattle each settler
had his "ear mark," which was registered in the town
records, and in case an unknown animal was found it was
reported and a description was "posted" for recogni-
tion by the owner.

While distinct breeds of cattle, sheep and horses
were being developed in England and other European
countries during the middle part of the eighteenth cen-
tury, we have no records of any of these breeds being
imported to our shores until near the close of the eigh-
teenth and the early part of the nineteenth century.
Litchfield County can justly claim credit for early be-
coming interested in the introduction and development
of two breeds of improved stock that proved of great
value to the country. These were Devon cattle and
Merino sheep. A few specimens of the famous breed
of cattle that later made Litchfield County famous for
its fine working oxen, were first brought to Maryland
in 1 793 or 1 794, and a few years later Lemuel Hurlburt
of Winchester bought a famous bull and a little later
several heifers from these early importations. These
choice specimens were the foundation stock of a valu-
able herd, and their progeny was gradually dissemi-
nated throughout the county and the State. The
Devons proved to be hardy, rugged animals, well suited
to our rigorous climate, and many of them had good
dairy qualities. Their distinctively valuable quality,

[68]

CATTLE AND THE DAIRY

however, was their adaptability for use as working cat-
tle. Nearly every male calf was saved and reared for
this purpose. The success attained in subduing our
rough hill lands can be ascribed, in no small degree, to
the sturdy qualities of this valuable breed. They proved
to be not only rugged but teachable, quick in action, and
very strong in proportion to their size, all of which
were decidedly valuable qualities for working cattle.

Near the middle of the nineteenth century Litchfield
County fairs were famous for their fine "strings" of
working oxen. It was no uncommon occurrence to see
town "strings" of more than one hundred pairs shown
at the fair at the county seat. Of these cattle the hand-
somest and most admired were the Devons because of
their solid red color and fine forms. Choice herds of
Devons were also developed on the farm of Mr. Peck
at Watertown and by the elder Dr. Buell of Litchfield.
The latter herd has never lost its identity, as the pres-
ent Dr. Buell keeps up a valuable dairy of this breed
and still finds ready sale for all the steers he can raise.
This herd to-day shows exceptionally good milking
qualities. The milk is above medium richness as re-
gards fat and is considered very valuable as a food
for infants and invalids.

In the early days every farmer raised his own beef
and pork, and it was no uncommon thing for the farmer
with a large family to "put down" five or six barrels of

1:693

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

pork, besides packing or freezing several beeves for
home consumption. Beef cattle could be grown and
fattened on the hill pastures, and a little late-cut hay or
corn fodder would carry them over winter. Improved
types of beef cattle, however, were little known until
after the first quarter of the last century. Following
the introduction of the Devons, soon came fine speci-
mens of the Shorthorns, and later the Herefords, com-
monly known as the "white faces." These two breeds
did much to improve the quality of the beef, and it was
no uncommon sight to see large droves of sleek beef
cattle being driven from this county to New Haven and
Bridgeport for use in these markets, or for shipment to
New York.

The Durham breed of cattle (later known as Short-
horns) had beef qualities that early led to their use on
many farms. It was found, too, that some families or
strains of this breed were excellent milkers, especially
for the first six months of lactation, and many good
dairies of grade Shorthorns were developed in the
towns of Goshen, Litchfield, Watertown and Wood-
bury. The Ayrshires, too, early attracted attention for
their heavy milking qualities, and large herds of the
grades of these two breeds were early developed in
connection with the cheese industry.

About the middle of the last century, following the
settling of central and northern New York and Ver-

1:703

CATTLE AND THE DAIRY

mont, the "droving" (driving) of young cattle from
these States each fall became a big business. They
were commonly brought to Connecticut as two-year-
olds, and by feeding one winter with coarse fodder and
grain 'they made a sufficient gain to pay the "cost of
keep," were the right age to be fattened on the rich
pastures the next season, and were ready to be mar-
keted early the following fall. There was always a
demand for beef, and beef cattle could be driven long
distances to market, while there was relatively little de-
mand for dairy products and poor facilities for their
transportation. This gave cattle of the beef type a
prominence over what we now know as the dairy type.
Down to 1850 nearly every family living in the more
populous centers kept at least one cow and thus pro-
duced their own milk and butter. Such a thing as the
village milkman was unknown except in large cities of
the State, such as Hartford and New Haven. There
was little demand for milk and butter in the larger
towns until after the middle of the last century.

The domestic cheese industry, however, early found
an important place in our farming. Our southern coast
towns and the West Indies made a market for cheese
that this country could supply more easily than Eng-
land, and with the development of the coast shipping
trade there was opened up a good market for cheese.
Then, too, cheese was a product that could be held

RURAL LIFE L\ LITCHFIELD COUNTY

many months without deterioration and would remain
firm for long shipment to warm climates. Butter, on
the other hand, would deteriorate with age and could
not be handled at all for a southern trade except in win-
ter.

For many years the making of butter was limited al-
most entirely to the family supply and was confined to
the months of June and September. The butter from
the spring and early summer pasturage was esteemed
of especially fine flavor, while that of the cooler months
of the fall was thought to have better keeping qualities.
As the use of bacteria cultures had not been discovered,
their part in the production of fine flavor was not yet
recognized. When one considers the conditions of
barn and stable, the wonder grows that butter would
keep at all. One reason why good butter was made was
doubtless because during the butter-making season the
cattle were kept in the open practically the whole time.
Even the milking was done in the barnyard or in a small
enclosure in a corner of the pasture. Thus there was
little chance for contamination by undesirable forms of
bacteria, and the housewife had discovered the neces-
sity of scrupulous cleanliness in the case of all milk
utensils in order to make good butter.

The milk was drawn into open wooden pails, strained
and set in wooden buckets or later in earthen crocks or
tin pans. Sometimes a spring house or milk room was

CATTLE AND THE DAIRY

provided, but quite as often the receptacles were set on
the cooler side of the buttery, if it had one, and were
left undisturbed until the milk was lobbered. Then the
thick, leathery cream was taken off with a spoon, or, in
the very early days, with a shell. It was stored in a
stone crock to await churning day.

The earliest type of churn in Connecticut was prob-
ably merely a deep crock, and the mass was stirred with
a wooden paddle until the fat grains separated from
the milk. A little later came the tall dasher churn,
worked up and down; then the churn with revolving
dasher. Mr. E. S. Stevens of East Canaan has a churn
which has four wooden paddles inside to beat the cream.
It was bought from a man who brought it on his back
all the way from Newburg, N. Y. When the butter
came the mass was taken out and put into a wooden
bowl and worked either with the hands or with wooden
paddles until all the buttermilk was extracted.

Various old-time suggestions as to the making and
keeping of butter follow:

Transactions of the Agricultural Society,
printed in 1802.

"To Preserve Butter: Take butter made in May or
beginning of June and, being perfectly sweet, roll it in
rolls of two or three pounds; after carefully extracting
the milk and properly seasoning it, put into the vessel

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RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

in which it is to be kept. Make a brine, boil it, and
skim it till it begins to crystallize and when it is per-
fectly cold cover the butter with it and carefully cover
the vessel from the air; it will keep good during the
summer. M. Chaney."

From the Report of the Connecticut State
Agricultural Society, l8^g.

"Two tubs butter presented by E. A. Phelps were
manufactured in Colebrook, Litchfield County, churned
from the milk. The dairy consists of twelve cows; the
churning is performed every day. The churn used is a
large dasher churn holding forty to fifty gallons, which,
with a thermometer, combines all the advantages of any
churn now in use. Butter taken from the churn is
washed in pure spring water, which does away with the
necessity of working the butter too much— the great
fault of most butter makers. No ingredient is used ex-
cept pure rock salt to give it flavor or for its preserva-
tion. The tubs used are made of white hemlock, a kind
of timber devoid of all flavor and perfectly sweet. The
tubs are soaked some three weeks in a strong brine be-
fore packing. When they are full they are set away in
a common cellar and the butter is marketed in Novem-
ber and December to private families. No cheese is
made from the dairy and no difference is made in price

C74]

CATTLE AND THE DAIRY

throughout the season. I have eaten butter of this
manufacture two years old, sweet and good. The churn-
ing is performed from twelve to fourteen hours after
milking. The hand is never allowed to come in contact
with the butter. E. A. P."

"P.S. I know of no other dairy in the State where
butter is made by the same process."

Fro in the Same Report.

"Lakeville, Conn.

"To the Committee of Conn. Agrl. Soc. on Butter:

"This butter was made from a dairy of five cows.
Cows feed In old pasture, stabled and soiled night and
morning with grass or corn fodder. Milk kept in tem-
perature varying from fifty-five to sixty degrees.
Churned at sixty degrees. Milk Is skimmed before
sour; cream churned every other day while still sweet.
Salted, at first working, with three-fourths of an ounce
to a pound. Butter worked three times, being careful
not to work it enough at any time to make it oily.

"Mrs. Ashbel Landon."

During the hot part of the summer, when there
was increasing difliculty in getting butter "to come,"
the housewife utilized the milk supply for making

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

cheese. Every farm was a small cheese factory. The
milk was brought in at night, strained and set. Very
frequently the cream was taken off in the morning and
used either for making a small churning of butter or in
cooking.

If the cream was not taken off it was thoroughly
stirred in and the milk was then brought to a lukewarm
heat. The morning's milk was strained and left until
the animal heat escaped, then the two were mixed and
as much rennet added as would turn it to a curd. I find
no definite measure for the amount of rennet. The ex-
perienced cheese makers must have known subcon-
sciously when they had enough for the amount of milk.
The curd was supposed to set in one-half to three-quar-
ters of an hour; then the smooth white mass was cut
into cubes with a broad-bladed wooden knife. After
cutting, the curd was left for half an hour or so to let
the whey separate, and then the whey was dipped off
and the curd again cut, this time usually into cubes
about an inch in size. After a good deal of the whey had
been dipped off the curd was ladled into a cheese basket
to drain. The draining was quite complete. Then the
curd was returned to the tub and thoroughly scalded
with hot whey "until it squeaked," when it was ready
for the final draining, the salting and the press. The
rule for salt varies from "salt to taste" to "a teacupful
of Liverpool salt to ten pounds."

[76]

CATTLE AND THE DAIRY

The presses were usually of the lever type and the
weight at the end of the lever varied with the size of
the cheese. The hoop of wood was placed on the
grooved board, then filled with curd, the "runner" put
on top, then the board, hoop, and cheese were slipped
under the press. The cheese remained in press from
twenty-four to forty-eight hours. After coming from the
press it was oiled all over with melted butter, a cheese-
cloth band put around it and folded neatly on the cheese-
cloth at the top and the bottom. The cheese was then
ready to set away to ripen in a cool, dark room— but it
must be "turned" every day and rubbed with melted
butter— a considerable task when the cheeses were
many and weighed, as they often did, from twenty-five
to thirty pounds.

One of the earliest ventures in the marketing of
cheese was made from Goshen— that hill town which
afterwards became so noted for the amount and quality
of its cheese. In the fall of the year 1792 Alexander
Norton, being sent south on account of his health, pur-
chased, to sell again in the southern markets, several
thousand pounds of cheese. The venture was so suc-
cessful that he continued in the business. The matter
of suitable packages for the cheese gave considerable
trouble. Up to this time, there being only a small local
market, no package had been required. At first he used
sets of shelves, but these not being satisfactory, he had

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

timber carved into the proper shape and cheese casks
made. These later came into quite general use, but
were not as satisfactory as the round boxes afterwards
made for the carrying of twin cheeses, and now very
common. This demand for a suitable carrying package
for the cheese gave rise to a new industry, and small
shops were built for the express purpose of making
cheese boxes. We find that in 1839 Winchester reports
the manufacture of 4000 cheese boxes valued at $600.
Norfolk the same year reports the value of cheese
boxes made as $9500, or over 60,000 boxes if they
were rated the same as those made in Winchester.

Annatto was first used for coloring cheese in Goshen.
It was used in the manufacture of cheese in the home of
this same Alexander Norton who established the south-
ern cheese trade. At first it was used by rubbing it
through a fine cloth into the milk, the present method
of dissolving it not being known. The more highly
colored cheese resulting from the use of annatto was
much sought after, always bringing several cents more
per pound than the uncolored cheese. The cheese in-
dustry grew from 1807, and for many years amounted
to 270,000 pounds a year, thus bringing to the farmers
a considerable income.

In 1808 a pineapple cheese from Holland being
brought to Goshen from New York by a member of the
Norton family, Lewis N. Norton began to make experi-

[78]

CATTLE AND THE DAIRY

ments In producing a similar cheese. With appliances
of his own invention he commenced the manufacture of
pineapple cheese in 1809, and It was continued from
father to son on the same spot for nearly one hundred
years. The pineapple cheese Industry has now gone
from Litchfield County but Is still carried on In New
York State by members of the Norton family.

The method of manufacture in brief Is as follows:
The milk Is heated and rennet added; the curd Is put In
small hoops and the hoops are put into a frame thirty
to forty feet long and are lightly pressed by end pres-
sure. When pressed and still mellow they are given
their peculiar shape by the curd being put In a small net
and hung up. The net gives both the shape and the
pineapple markings. After being thoroughly dried
they are covered with a peculiar varnish which renders
them impervious to the air and insures their keeping In
any climate.

The manufacture of cheese was by no means confined
to Goshen, although it stands as pioneer in that espe-
cial branch of farming. In 1839 Winchester reports to
the Secretary of State 285,000 pounds of cheese, Bark-
hamsted 70,000, and Norfolk 283,735. The trans-
portation of so bulky a product from the hill towns was
quite a problem and for years could be solved only by
team cartage. A report has come to me of a man, now
deceased, who. In his youth, drove a mule team from

[79]

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

Winchester to New Haven, thus getting to the coast-
wise ships part of Winchester's output of cheese.

It would hardly be fitting to close this discussion on
dairy products without some reference to the enor-
mous industry of condensed milk which had its ori-
gin in Litchfield County, although the data to draw
from, in spite of inquiry and research, are meager. The
first condensed milk was prepared in a very small way
in a building still standing near the railway station in
Winsted. The Borden Condensed Milk Company was
organized in 1 863 and continued doing business in Win-
sted until 1866. Afterward A. M. Gale established a
condensary at what is now known as Burrville, in the
town of Torrington. The old accounts note that he
came to this particular place because of the abundance
of pure cold water. Mr. Gale put up milk under the
first patent for condensing milk and employing sugar in
the process. The business was soon after removed to
Dutchess County, N. Y.

[So]

CHAPTER VII

SHEEP AND WOOL

ILTHOUGH the records of livestock
brought by the first settler to Litch-
field County are very meager, it is
no doubt true that sheep formed part of
the early possessions of every farmer.
To a people living in a frontier land, where winters
were long and tedious and the distance from centers of
trade was great, the matter of warm clothing was sec-
ond only to the question of food. As the sheep would
furnish material for both food and clothing, attention
was soon turned to increasing the flocks.

Notwithstanding the value of the sheep to the
farmer and his family, the flocks were so slowly in-
creased that in 1660 they were freed from taxes and
ground was ordered cleared for their pasturage. Ten

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

years afterwards, "for the encouragement of rayseing
sheepe," the general courts of the Colony ordered that
every male person in the several plantations, fourteen
years old and upwards, that was not a public officer,
should work one day in June of each year in cutting
down and clearing the underwood "so that there may
be pasture," and the townsmen in the respective towns
were "to appoint the places where they should worke,
in the highways or commons or other places agreed
upon." Heavy fines were threatened upon those who
failed to comply with this ruling.

Naturally the land was full of wild beasts which
found mutton very much to their taste, and to rid the
forests of these pests liberal bounties were offered by
the various towns for the killing of wolves and bears.
As late as 1766 it is recorded that a bear appeared in
the city of Hartford and was killed in the south
meadow. If bears boldly walked into the streets of the
largest towns, what must have been their boldness in
the more remote districts! After several years of set-
tlement, the nuisance of wild animals being somewhat
abated, the General Assembly frugally repealed the
public bounty law, with the result that the ardor of the
hunt subsided. Naturally the wolves increased, and in
1776 we find the following bill passed by the General
Assembly:

"Upon the memorial of Jacob Beach, of Goshen,

SHEEP AND WOOL

showing to this Assembly that since the repeal of the
late law granting a premium for destroying wolves,
they have increased and done much damage by killing
sheep in said Goshen, and consequently, he having ex-
pended considerable time and money for that purpose,
hath since the first day of May, last, taken, killed and
destroyed three grown wolves in said Goshen; praying
for such a sum of money to be paid him out of the pub-
lic treasury of this State as he would have been entitled
to receive had said act never been repealed: as per
memorial on file : Resolved by this Assembly, that the
memorialist have liberty to receive the sum of twelve
pounds lawful money and the Treasurer of this State
is hereby ordered and directed to pay the same accord-
Ingly."

In 1786 a pack of four wolves descended on the set-
tlement of Norfolk and eighty men went out to hunt
them, fearing their depredations on the flocks. These
two incidents indicate something of the natural draw-
backs to the sheep industry from its beginning.

That dogs were a menace to flocks even in those early
days is evident in the ruling that in 1736 gave to the
"sheep selectman" authority to kill dogs. In one town,
at the town meeting held April 26, 1742, it was "Voted
that there shall be three pounds drawn out of the town
treasury for every grown wolf that shall be killed within
the limits of this town, and for every wolf whelp thirty

[83]

RURAL LIFE LN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

shillings. And it is also voted that whosoever shall kill
any ratel snak or snaks within the town and bring
rattles shall have one shilling for every such snak."

A possible reason for the lack of importation of a
better breed of sheep or new blood to improve the old
stock is hinted at in an essay by Dr. Jared Eliot, grand-
son of the Apostle to the Indians. He says: "A better
breed of sheep is what we want. The English breed of
Cotswold sheep cannot be obtained, at least not without
great difficulty, for wool and live sheep are contraband
goods which all strangers are prohibited from carrying
out on pain of having their right hand cut off."

Following the act of 1660, which made sheep exempt
from taxation, were other public acts, such as the pay-
ing of a bounty for woolen cloth and the exempting of
sheep from seizure for debt, which were designed to
favor the growth of the sheep industry.

Many stories both inspiring and pathetic are told in
connection with the making of homespun in the early
times. Although not a Litchfield County incident, the
following will illustrate the straits and the enterprise
which served to go toward the making of men who
made history. "A dozen sheep and one cow comprised
the stock, and to her yield of milk the latter added her
service to the plow. Corn bread, milk and bean por-
ridge were the staples of diet. The father being in-
capacitated by illness, the mother did the work in the

[84:

SHEEP AND WOOL

house and helped the boys in the fields. Once, In mid-
winter, one of the boys needed a new suit, and there
was neither money nor wool In the house. The mother
sheared the half-grown fleece from a sheep and in a
week it was made Into clothing. The shorn sheep, so
generous in such need, was protected by a wrapping
made of braided straw. They lived four miles from
the meeting house, to which the mother and her two
boys walked every Sunday. The boys became Samuel
and Eliphalet Nott, one a famous preacher, one the
president of Union College."

The same way out of a similar difficulty Is related of
one of the Litchfield County towns, with the difference
that the shorn sheep was provided with a dress fash-
ioned from an old blanket.

In the special report on the "Sheep Industry of the
United States" It Is stated: "It Is probable that the first
sheep brought to this country were of the kind common
to England at the time and were the Wiltshire and
Romney Marsh, the Herefordshire, the Norfolk and
the old Southdown or Sussex sheep; at least all the
characteristics of these breeds could be seen in the dif-
ferent flocks In the eastern States at the beginning of
the present century [1801]." The late T. S. Gold
characterizes the sheep of the early part of the century
in Litchfield County as being "long-legged, scraggy ani-
mals, with thin, coarse wool," and adds: "It naturally

C85]

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUiNTY

follows that the choice, fine-wooled sheep became im-
mensely popular."

To Colonel David Humphreys, of New Haven, is
due the credit of bringing to Connecticut the first
Merino sheep, the introduction of which did so much
for the wool industry of the State. So great a benefit
was this considered that the fact is recorded upon his
tombstone in an eloquent Latin epitaph, which states
that he was a man of great learning, member of various
distinguished societies, a friend of Washington and
ambassador to the courts of Portugal and Spain. The
Latin runs : "Iheria reversus natale solum vellere vere
aiireo ditav'it" ; translated, "On his return from Spain
he enriched his native land with the true golden fleece."

The Merino, an especially fine-wooled sheep, is
thought to have come from Asia Minor, following the
line of civilization along the shores of the Mediter-
ranean into Spain. For years the breed was cherished
in Spain as one of its choicest treasures, and as long as
Spain retained her power as a nation the exportation of
the sheep was forbidden. A few were smuggled out of
the borders, and some were given as kingly favors to va-
rious countries. A detailed account of the importation
of the Merinos into this country, however interesting it
might be, would be too long for these pages. Sufl^ce it
to say that the introduction of this breed into the farm-
ing regions of northwestern Connecticut stimulated,

[86]

SHEEP AND WOOL

more than anything else, the wool industry. Colonel
Humphreys, himself a woolen manufacturer, realized
more keenly than the average farmer the necessity of
producing a finer grade of wool. The first importation,
in 1803, was about seventy head and these were leased
or rented out to farmers. They were used mainly in
trying to improve the native sheep, but owing to our
cold, rugged climate and the poor shelter afforded, the
pure-bred animals did not prosper at first, and for some
reason failed to impress their good qualities on the
native stock, when crossed with them. Larger importa-
tions were made between 1808 and 18 10, and some of
these laid the foundation of valuable strains of Ameri-
can Merinos, especially the Delaine Merinos that later
became famous in Ohio.

The strain of this famous breed that gained the
greatest fame was the so-called Vermont Merinos,
which became renowned In that State nearly fifty years
after their first introduction into Connecticut. This
strain of Merinos a Litchfield County man holds the
credit for preserving and developing in their full purity.
Thomas Atwood of Woodbury, recognizing the possi-
bilities of the breed, bought several head from Colonel
Humphreys's first importation and continued to breed
and develop them as a pure strain for over thirty years.

About 1835 Mr. Hammond of Middlebury, Ver-
mont, came to Connecticut in search of a pure strain of

[87]

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

Merino blood and decided that what Mr. Atwood had
developed most nearly represented his ideal, and he
took several head with him to northern Vermont.
Within the next twenty years this Hammond strain of
Merinos became world-renowned and brought almost
fabulous prices for those times. For instance, for one
famous ram of the Atwood strain Mr. Hammond re-
fused five thousand dollars, saying that he "could not
afford to sell his best until he was ready to go out of the
business of breeding."

Beginning with the peace of Ghent in 1815, at the
close of the second war with England, the tariff on wool
having been removed, there was a decline in the fine
wool industry until about 1825. This will account in
part for the failure to develop more generally the
Merino breed in New England during the first twenty
years following their introduction. Their impress,
however, was fixed on a few flocks, and when conditions
again became favorable for the development of woolen
manufactures, the Merino type of sheep was easily re-
established. Beginning about 1825, there was a period
of some twenty years when the fine wool industry of
western Connecticut attained a high degree of develop-
ment. Dairying had not been introduced beyond the
needs of the farmer's family, as there were very few
cities to demand dairy products; but for a good grade
of wool, both for household manufacture and for the

SHEEP AND WOOL

rapidly increasing wool factories, there was an ever in-
creasing demand. In towns along the southern edge of
the county were kept several flocks of Merinos that
were developed from the earlier importations, made at
the instigation of Colonel Humphrey, while many im-
portations of Saxony Merinos were made between
1820 and 1840.

In 1824 the Saxony Merinos were introduced into
the State and most of the flocks crossed with them. Mr.
Samuel Scoville of Salisbury commenced a Saxony flock
that year and maintained it for many years. Mr.
Hurlburt of Winchester, in connection with Henry
Watson of East Windsor, purchased some of the best
Saxons of the first importations; and Charles B. Smith,
of Walcottville, at a later day, made importations from
the best Saxony flocks. In 1846 John Ward of Salis-
bury had a flock of seven hundred Saxons, with fleeces
averaging two and one-half pounds. R. G. Camp of
Litchfield had one hundred and seventy Saxons, derived
mostly from the flock of Charles B. Smith. The wool
was very fine, averaging about three pounds to the
sheep, and sold for sixty-six or sixty-eight cents per
pound.

About 1850, during the time when the wool industry
was at its height, wool buyers went everywhere through
the country. Among these was John Brown of Har-
per's Ferry fame. He and his partner, Tom Swift of

C89]

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

Amenia, who was known to his associates as Saxony
Swift, went through this and neighboring counties, buy-
ing and trading both wool and sheep.

The home manufacture of wool is as follows: When
the shad bush was in blossom, the sheep should be
sheared. This was done by the men, the boys attending
to the preliminary washing and having great larks
dragging the reluctant sheep into the water and giving
it a good scrubbing— often getting wetter than the
sheep. On the clean barn floor the shearer took his
seat and skilfully held the struggling victim with his
feet and legs while he clipped the fleece with the spring
shears, which, by the by, have altered in pattern scarcely
a whit in two hundred years. When the flock was
sheared, the wool was scoured with lye to remove the
yelk; then, before carding, was slightly oiled to aid in
straightening the fibers. In the early days the wool was
dyed in the fleece, but after the establishment of the
carding mills the dyeing process was deferred until after
the yarn was spun. There is a tradition that the wool
of black sheep was especially in vogue with the Quakers
because it required none of the embellishment of the
dye-pot.

The process of dyeing was sometimes a complicated
one, requiring manipulation of dye-pots and no end of
mordants. Blue was a favorite color, and the indigo
dye-pot was a part of the equipment of every kitchen.

Z90-2

SHEEP AND WOOL

I have been told that the deep purple paper In which the
old-time cone-shaped sugar loaves were wrapped was
always carefully saved and used for dyeing, especially
fine lamb's wool, which was designed for making gar-
ments for the baby.

Early experiments were made in growing various
European plants for dyestuffs, especially in the South.
There is little on record of such attempts in Litchfield
County, ^it in the history of Goshen mention is made
of the fact that Lewis Mills Norton, one of the fore-
most men of his time, raised teasels for fulling cloth,
and "woad, a fermentative addition to indigo in the
pastel vat. Woad was raised to the amount of $1000
annually during part of the years between 18 19 and

1844."

It is quite possible that from this attempt to raise the
teasels for the fulling of the cloth came the wild
teasels which are occasionally found throughout the
county.

In connection with dyestuffs it might not be amiss to
suggest that the occasional plants of the wild mignon-
ette (Resida liitola) may be the persisting descendants
sprung from some early attempt to cultivate the plant
for the sake of the good yellow which was obtained
from an infusion of this plant. One common name,
dyer's weed, alludes to its coloring properties.

After cleaning thoroughly and dyeing, the wool was

1:91]

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

ready for carding— a constant evening occupation. The
hand cards were simply light, handled boards, of conve-
nient size, on which was firmly fixed a piece of leather
stuck full of fine wire teeth. These cards were usually
the product of the farmer's leisure hours in the long
winter evenings.

The manipulator of the cards would hold one in her
left hand resting on her knee with the handle from her.
With her right hand she would detach from the fleece
enough of the uncombed wool to make a roll, catch it
lightly back and forth on the card, then seize the other
card in her right hand and deftly comb it until the
tangled fibers were straightened; then by a dexterous
movement she would coax it into a light, fluffy roll ready
for the wheel. It was fascinating work to watch,
though monotonous to do, and the finished product was
always a joy to the children, who had often to be re-
proved for slyly pinching or fondling the fleecy rolls.

The establishment of carding mills was about the
first step toward lightening the labor of the home.
For many years the more conservative of the women
refused to send out the wool to be carded, claiming that
the rolls were more uneven and harder to run into a
firm, even yarn than the hand-made rolls, yet by 1870
hand-carding was almost a lost art.

This date may seem a very recent one, and some
may wonder if the home manufacture of woolen prod-

[92]

SHEEP AND WOOL

ucts did indeed come down to such recent times. Un-
doubtedly most of the manufacture of woolen goods,
especially of all kinds of woolen cloth, had been taken
from the homes into small factories, as we shall pres-
ently see, but during and after the Civil War many
farms produced their own wool, and it was spun at
home into yarn for the stout, home-knit stockings, tip-
pets, wristers, and mittens.

An old lady, who died many years ago, told me in my
childhood as we stood by a great thorn tree near her
home, that when she was a girl, about 1830, after the
sheep were sheared the fleeces were put in a great linen
sheet and were firmly pinned into a bundle to send to the
carding mill. "And because pins were scarce in those
days we girls always used to come down to this thorn
bush and cut off the long, slender thorns to fasten the
bundle. Father never cut this bush when he trimmed
the roadsides."

The wool, when back from the carding mill, was
deftly spun by the women of the household on the great
wheel — and a more graceful occupation never engaged
the attention of woman. Back and forth the spinner
would walk, holding the roll lightly in her left hand,
while with her right she kept the wheel in motion; and
the whir of the wheel and the hum of the spindle, as it
wound upon itself the just made yarn, made a pleasant
accompaniment to the song of the spinner. There

1:933

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

seemed to be something in this creative work, this mak-
ing of a new thing out of the raw material, which
inspired the song— at least I never knew a spinner
working in her home by herself who didn't sing as she
wrought.

After the yarn was spun and skeined it was ready
to be wound, and for this purpose the skein was put
upon the swifts, whence It could be wound into balls
or on shuttles for weaving. Usually the cloth for men's
use was the plain homespun of whose durability an old
man, who was one of a large family, said: "Mother'd
weave a web for the oldest boy's suit; when he outgrew
it, it was handed down to the next, and so all the six had
a chance at it. When the youngest boy had outgrown
it and the suit was still as good as ever, the Lord
created the moth to eat it up."

In the very earliest times the cloth was worn as it
came from the loom, there being no means of dressing
it. In later days fulling mills were erected In various
parts of the country and the fabric was given a crude
dressing.

The old process of fulling is thus described: "The
fulling of cloth is commenced by scouring the fabric in
water holding in suspension an aluminous clay called
fuller's earth, or other detergent, to absorb the grease.
It is then washed and beaten by heavy wooden mallets
in a trough, soap and hot water being copiously used In

1:94:

SHEEP AND WOOL

the operation, whereby the doth acquires body and
thickness by a shrinking or condensing of the web close
and compact, and increases its beauty and firmness.
The teasels were used to 'pick up the nap.' "

Aside from cloth for family wear, the mother and sis-
ters wove the heavy coverlet of intricate design which
is now regarded as such a treasure, lighter rose
blankets, soft flannel and various stuffs of mixed wool
and linen. They were great knitters, too, and many are
the stories of the mittens knit before breakfast to take
the place of those lost the day before.

The washing, preparatory to the animals' clipping,
was a task that always interested the boys. Wool in
those days was sold washed and sometimes scoured,
and particularly if the wool was wanted for home use
the scouring was necessary. The washing removed
most of the winter's accumulation of hay seed, chaff and
dirt, while the scouring was designed for removing the
grease or yelk. The loss by the removal of these mate-
rials was known as the shrinkage. This is a variable
factor with wool in general, but with the Merino sheep,
whose wool is always very oily, the shrinkage was never
less than one-half. The rapid development of woolen
factories, all over New England, provided a ready sale
for all the wool the farmer wished to sell. As late as
1840, homespun was the common clothing worn by the
members of nearly every family in the rural towns.

1:953

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

With the opening up of the great central West, and
later with the development of ranching in the far West,
the price of wool dropped and the Eastern farmer
found himself unable to compete with the wool grown
on these vast areas of cheap land, and so, in many sec-
tions, he began to turn his attention to dairy farming.

The passing of the animal with the "golden hoof"
had its drawbacks. Sheep, by browsing, kept the brush
in check, and t'his, together with the fineness and the
high fertilizing value of their droppings, made them
the best class of livestock to improve pastures. The
Goshen hardback {PotentiUa fruticosa) ^ a hardy and
persistent shrub that is now filling up many pastures to
the exclusion of grasses and clovers, was not known in
Litchfield County until after the sheep industry waned.
To-day it is the greatest pasture pest on many acres of
land.

Much of the land in this county is better suited to
sheep than to any other livestock. One drawback to
keeping sheep is the poor fences; the stone walls which
were once efficient barriers have now become dilapi-
dated and the wooden fences also are often in a state of
decay. Where modern, woven-wire fencing is adopted
there is yet a valuable place for this class of livestock.

As a means of furnishing the home with a source of
meat, sheep will again have a useful place on many
farms, and with the growing influx of summer residents

1:96]

SHEEP AND WOOL

a fine quality of lamb is already in demand. It should
be realized that the fine-wooled type of sheep no longer
has a place here, because the chief demand is for a fine
quality of lamb and mutton. Several of the so-called
Down breeds are noted for their early lambs and their
wool is of fair quality and quantity.

By buying up and fencing some of the rougher areas
of Litchfield County and stocking the same with a good
grade of mutton sheep, a large business could be devel-
oped with such cities as New Haven, Bridgeport and
Waterbury, with a prospect of good returns on the in-
vestment.

[9?:

CHAPTER VIII

THE MODERN FARM

ARMING has so changed in the past fifty
years that one almost needs a new vocabu-
lary to express the operations of the farm
as now conducted. Diversity is still the
rule in Litchfield County, but is modified
on most farms by having a leading specialty. In the
majority of cases this specialty is dairying, which in
general means the production of market milk, either
for local markets or for shipment to New York. This
leading specialty is commonly supplemented by the pro-
duction of potatoes and other garden truck, by the
production of small and large fruits for market, or, in
the Housatonic valley, by the growing of tobacco. On
many farms poultry forms an important part of the
cash income of the farmer, and wherever dairy by-prod-

C98:

THE MODERN FARM

ucts are available as poultry feed, this branch of farm-
ing proves especially profitable.

On account of the ready access by rail to the New
York markets, the shipping of milk early became an
important branch of farming. A New York milk com-
pany established shipping stations along the Housatonic
Railway as early as 1870, and since then this county has
been an important source of supply for that city. The
milk shipping industry and the cooperative creamery
proved a great boon to the farmers of Litchfield
County, as well as to the rest of New England. It re-
moved from the household the laborious task of caring
for the milk and of manufacturing it into butter
or cheese. No more important improvement has come
to our farm life than this, for with the manufacture of
the dairy products added to the ordinary duties of the
household, the engrossing labor and cares of our early
farm mothers were certainly burdensome. It is within
the memory of some of the older mothers, too, that all
of the cooking had to be done in the open fireplace and
all of the baking in the big oven, which had to have its
walls thoroughly heated by burning hardwood in It,
after which it must be cleaned out preparatory to bak-
ing the pies and cakes.

To-day many farm homes are as well equipped as the
city flat. Not a few farm houses have hot and cold
water throughout, while furnace or steam heat and a

[99]

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

well equipped bathroom are common, and sometimes, if
power lines pass the farm, electric lighting is installed.
The rural mail system, which provides for daily deliv-
ery, has made general the taking of daily papers, while
magazines and other forms of wholesome circulating
literature are found in nearly every country home. The
advent of good roads, accompanied by the automobile,
is providing means for freer social intercourse between
families in the country and between the country folk
and their city cousins.

On the farm proper the sulky plow, the wheel har-
row, the grain seeder, the horse corn-planter, the potato
planter, the mowing machine, the horse rake, the hay
loader, the reaper, the corn harvester and the potato
digger have greatly reduced the hand labor required in
performing the various operations of fitting the land, of
planting, of cultivating and of harvesting. In fact, so
general is the use of machine power that the farmer of
to-day needs to be a good mechanic to handle his farm-
ing operations to the best advantage.

As has already been pointed out, the chief branch of
farming throughout the county to-day is dairying. Con-
necticut has long been known as a dairy State. Her
many thriving towns and cities provide a home market
for milk, butter and cheese, while on account of her
location, midway between New York and Boston, her
surplus milk quickly reaches these large centers. Up to
[lOo;]

THE MODERN FARM

about 1880 the making of cheese in factories and the
home production of butter and cheese were the chief
branches of dairying. Even ten or fifteen years later,
with the exception of farms near the railroads, cheese
was an important dairy product in our State and
county. Cooperative creameries were started about
1880, and these, within a few years, almost entirely
supplanted the cheese factories and the home manufac-
ture of cheese and butter. From 1880 to 1895, co-
operative creameries increased in the State from less
than half a dozen to over sixty. Since about 1900,
however, there has been a steady decline in butter-mak-
ing, with a constant increase in the shipping of milk.

Coincident with the changes in the leading branches
of farming practised within the county came changes in
the class of cattle kept. As soon as the growing of beef
and of sheep, on the cheaper but more fertile lands of the
West, made the production of these meats of doubtful
profit in New England, our farmers were led to see the
advantages of the purely dairy type of cattle. A com-
bination of the beef type and the dairy type of cattle
might have been valuable up to the days of cheap West-
ern beef, but not after that. Prior to about 1870 the
Shorthorn and the Devon breeds of cattle held a promi-
nent place in Litchfield County, but with the lack of
profit in beef and with cheaper horse labor, these breeds
no longer filled the requirements of our farmers.

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUxNTY

Connecticut early became the American home of
some of the best of the old-world dairy breeds. While
the Jersey was introduced into the State as early as
1851, it was not until between 1865 and 1870 that this
breed and her sister type, the Guernsey, began to be no-
ticed in the dairy annals of the State, particularly in
Hartford County. Noted herds of Jerseys were estab-
lished in the early seventies at Echo Farm in Litchfield
and by the Eldridges of Norfolk, while others became
more or less interested in a small way. Following the
introduction of creameries, there was a diffusion of
Jersey blood throughout the herds supplying these fac-
tories. This was due to the fact that quality rather
than quantity of milk was the basis of profit in selling
through the creamery.

In the milk-shipping sections, however, a different
condition prevailed. Milk shipped to New York was,
for many years, ungraded, as far as richness in fat was
concerned. This naturally led to the keeping of such
cattle as would produce quantity of milk rather than
quality, as the two characteristics are rarely found in
a single type of cattle. Holsteins had for many years
been bred for high milk production on the rich low-
lands of Holland, and early in the days of milk-shipping
they became prominent in the Hudson and the Harlem
valleys and soon after were introduced into Litchfield
County. To-day no breed is more popular among

1102-2

THE MODERN FARM

those who are shipping milk to New York than the
"black and white" cattle. The Ayrshire breed is one
that, in the cheese days, held a high place in the estima-
tion of dairymen, but as to quantity of milk alone she
cannot compete with the Holstein, and the quality of
her milk will not place her in the same class as the
Jerseys and the Guernseys. However, with an increas-
ing tendency to buy milk according to a standard of
four per cent fat, the Ayrshire is now gaining in popu-
larity. No breed furnishes a better grade of milk for
infants, and to-day certified milk farms are searching
the country for cows of this breed.

One other breed of cattle that has, within the past
twenty years, become popular in the county is the
Guernsey. This is sometimes known as the "rich man's
cow." No breed has become more popular on country
estates where beauty of form and quality of product are
the chief requisites. As a business farmer's cow, where
high testing milk is wanted, there is little difference
between the Guernsey and the Jersey. The rich yellow
milk of the Guernsey, however, makes her a special
favorite among those who want a choice family prod-
uct. Several farms in the county have choice specimens
of this breed, and one farm at least has attained some-
what of a national reputation as the home of noted
Guernseys.

The modern dairy barn is as much of an evolution as

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

the dairy breeds. In the early days of the dairy indus-
try it was supposed that it must be almost entirely a
summer business — that if the cow produced a liberal
flow of milk from April to December, she must of ne-
cessity "rest from her labors" the balance of the year.
Yet we know that modern conditions of stabling and of
feeding have changed all this, so that now milk is pro-
duced as readily in winter as in summer. This has been
brought about, in a great measure, by improved meth-
ods of housing. The barn, that let in the first rays of
the morning sun through its many cracks, and that, in
the same way, let in the northern blasts and the drifting
snows, is a thing of the past. Closely constructed and
yet well ventilated barns are the homes of our modern
breeds of livestock. Water flowing into inside troughs
has been generally substituted for the hole in the ice at
a near-by pond or brook; while modern facilities for
reducing labor are a part of the equipment of every
well arranged dairy barn. The introduction of the silo
has increased the profit in the winter production of
milk, as it supplies the cheapest form of succulent feed
for use in the winter season. While the cheap labor
available on some of the European dairy farms may
make the growing and use of root crops profitable,
under our labor conditions well grown and well pre-
served silage is more economical.

The statement is often made in Litchfield County, as
[104]

THE MODERN FARM

elsewhere, that there is no profit in producing market
milk at present wholesale prices, and yet the fact re-
mains that many farmers are not only providing a good
livelihood for their families, but at the same time are
educating their children and paying off mortgages that
earlier conditions made necessary, or that came as a
heritage. There is no question, to-day, but that dairy
farming provides a ready market for a large amount
of directly non-salable farm products that can be con-
verted into readily salable animal products and thus be
made to return a good profit. From a business view-
point, the conditions that are essential in establishing
this profit are a converting machine— the dairy cow —
well adapted to the work expected of her, and a well
organized system of farm management for making this
converting machine do its work efl'iciently.

Those farming sections of Litchfield County that lie
within easy reach of good markets, generally show the
highest prosperity. This is due to the fact that a va-
riety of farming projects can be undertaken, so that
there will be several sources of revenue, and, further-
more, to the fact that near-by markets provide the
smallest cost of handling between producer and con-
sumer. It is a well established fact that in our large
cities about two-thirds of the cost price, to the consumer,
of food products used is represented in the cost of
transportation and handling, and in the profits of those

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

doing this work, thus leaving approximately one-third
of what the consumer pays as the producer's portion.
Where a large part of the cost of transportation and
handling can be eliminated, as is the case with near-by
markets, the producer's share of the retail price is
greatly increased. In some cases, too, the farmer may
become the retailer and so reap all of the outlay for the
farm products that the consumer buys.

Our home markets are a great source of revenue in
the sale of cash crops that can be grown to supplement
the income of the dairy. Narrow specialization is sel-
dom the most profitable type of farming, because under
such a system the labor of the farm is not well utilized.
Then again, seasonal conditions may seriously reduce
the profits from one crop or product and not from an-
other. Dairy farming will allow for the growing of
such supplementary market crops as garden truck, pota-
toes, cabbage, fruit, and even hay. The nearness to
market, the demands of the market and the type of soil
will indicate which of these is likely to prove most
profitable on a particular farm. On the hill lands, at
considerable distance from the markets, many farmers
to-day are growing, at good profit, apples of the finest
quality, while hay always finds a ready sale, either loose
or baled, in our manufacturing towns and cities. Pota-
toes, cabbage and turnips are crops that can be handled
at a considerable distance from markets, and such
[1063

THE MODERN FARM

manufacturing centers as Winsted, Torrington, Water-
bury and Danbury afford a ready market for these
products. Poultry products, too, are in demand far
beyond the local supply, and the cheap, rough lands of
the county are as well suited to the keeping of poultry
as are the highest priced lands of the valleys. Our
working classes to-day, in city and town, are receiving
such good wages that they are demanding the best
grade of fruits and vegetables, put up in an attractive
form. Thriving manufacturing towns like Winsted,
Torrington, Waterbury and Danbury are being sup-
plied from near-by farms with small fruits and vege-
tables. On account of their freshness and high quality
these products command the highest prices, and the
producers are reaping the rewards of their skill.

In general, to-day, those farmers who are guided by
the demands of the markets for a high class of food
products, and who are striving to meet these demands
in accordance with the nature of their soils and their
location, are prospering in the business of farming in
Litchfield County, as elsewhere in the East.

[■07]

CHAPTER IX

COUNTRY LIFE, OLD AND NEW

HE fact that there has been a decline In
the population of most of the strictly rural
towns of New England has led many to
assume that there has been general deca-
dence in agriculture. That a decline has
taken place in towns far from the centers of trade is
true, but this does not mean that agriculture as a whole
is on the decline. In fact, agriculture is more pros-
perous than ever in sections near good markets. In
order to understand the decline that did take place, half
a century or more ago, in many of the rural towns of
this county, we need to consider the general evolution in
industrial life that was going on everywhere in our
country, Litchfield County passed through the same
industrial evolution between 1840 and 1870 that mani-

COUNTRY LIFE, OLD AND NEW

fested itself generally in the East. The concentrating
into large central plants of the small manufacturing in-
dustries that had grown up throughout the rural towns
went on rapidly during these years. This soon devel-
oped strong industrial centers along the waterways,
where good power was available. The railroads that
were being built through the river valleys favored this
concentration by affording ready means of transporta-
tion. The hat business, that had been a household trade,
was centered in Danbury. The tanneries that were
general over the county, and the scythe factories of
Salisbury, were centered in Winsted. Small silk and
wool industries, that were at one time found in nearly
every town, went to Winsted and Waterbury. The
small industries that formerly helped to make the rural
towns prosperous, thus went to build up big central
plants. These industrial changes were the means of
draining away much of the life and wealth of the coun-
try towns. During this same period, too, the vast,
cheap, fertile areas of the great Central West were
opened for settlement. A rocky hill farm in Connecti-
cut could be sold for a few dollars an acre and the pro-
ceeds would establish the owner on a new, free farm of
1 60 acres in Illinois or Iowa, every foot of which was
tillable land. More often, the sons were attracted by
the opportunities presented in these new fields, and
when the old folks passed on no one was left to care for

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

the ancestral acres. This resulted in the return of
many acres to a condition of forest growth, which al-
ways follows a period of cessation in active farming.

Thus the pressure of new and uncontrollable condi-
tions forced many of the inhabitants of our rural towns
to seek new fields of enterprise. The soil had not lost
all its fertility, but competition from newer, more fertile
and more workable fields, together with the new form
of industrial life represented in the large towns and
cities, had so changed the opportunities for reasonable
returns from labor that the migration of a considerable
portion of the inhabitants became an economic neces-
sity. The causes, therefore, of whatever decline was
seen in our rural towns must be looked for in the great
industrial changes that were going on in our country as
a whole, and in the development of new fields of com-
petitive agriculture, rather than in the decline of our
agriculture or the decadence of our country life.

That the churches and schools should feel the force
of this general decline was to be expected, but that it
should be ascribed to a decadence in religious life would
be as unsound as to say that the world has lost its sense
of religious responsibility because the great powers of
Europe are now at war. The best life of many of the
rural towns was drained away, and has, in a measure,
been replaced by those who have not the same sense of
responsibility toward the church, the school and the

COUNTRY LIFE, OLD AND NEW

town as had their predecessors. The church and the
school must readjust themselves to the new conditions.
Agriculture readjusts itself to new economic conditions
more quickly than do other rural forces. The church
and the schools must follow its example and so plan
their work as to fit the new environment. The social
life of our rural towns is being developed through other
agencies than the church. The mistake that the church
has commonly made is in holding herself aloof from
the life of the community, instead of being a part of it.
In those communities where the church is the center of
the social and the literary life of the farm folk, as is
conspicuously the case in a few rural towns of this
county, the hold on the religious life of the people con-
tinues strong. The ministry must be in sympathy with
farm life and the natural advantages of life in the open
country in order to have the church retain its hold on
the farm people. A special class of pastors, who know
from experience the real problems of the farm, will be
the logical outgrowth of any effective movement for a
better religious life in our country towns.

Organization is the key-note of modern farm life.
In fact, farm life as a business and a social force is now
being organized as never before. There was a time
when the life of the farmer was individualistic in the
extreme, but that time has passed. Through the va-
rious organizations, whose function is to foster a

Cm:

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

deeper insight into the advantages of special branches
of farming, the farmer is gradually seeing the benefits
of organized effort. Thus the Grange, the Pomologi-
cal Society, the Dairymen's Association, the Poultry
Association, and many other organizations are devel-
oping a tendency, among those who are interested in
certain specialties, to work together, as well as to learn
from each other's experiences.

The farm families of Litchfield County have been
especially fortunate in the opportunities afforded for
education. While the public schools, probably, have
averaged no better than in other rural sections of Con-
necticut, secondary schools under private management
have been more general. In the early days the rural
academy was an educational center in nearly every town,
and later such schools as the Gunnery, Robbins, Taft,
Kent and Hotchkiss have offered educational advan-
tages within the financial reach of the farmer's family.
The movement to consolidate our public schools has
been slow, due often to long distances and bad roads
for transporting the children; but the general good
roads movement is paving the way for this. The work
of our schools, too, is slowly but surely shaping itself to
conform to the life of the rural towns. What such
towns as Salisbury and Washington and Winsted are
doing to introduce nature study, practical mechanics
and the household arts into their work, is but an index

C"2]

COUNTRY LIFE, OLD AND NEW

of a new type of rural school work that will tend to
fit the masses for real country life rather than be a step
toward a classical education, to which only the few will
ever attain.

There are two types of country homes, more or less
common throughout the county. One is represented by
country estates owned by city men of wealth, who use
the country mainly as a playground, and whose interest
in country life and country affairs is generally tempo-
rary. The other is represented by those farms that
have come down in the family line through many gener-
ations and whose owners are trying to perpetuate a
form of country life that seeks to gain a comfortable
living from the land, and at the same time to rear and
educate well a family under wholesome rural conditions.

The country estates, owned and used as summer
homes by business men from the cities, may be divided
into two classes: those occupying large areas whose
owners are farming on an extensive scale, and those
occupying limited areas whose owners are interested
mainly in having a beautiful and restful summer home,
with land enough to provide a playground and choice
farm products sufficient to meet the needs of the family.

Men of wealth in this country are developing a ten-
dency toward the establishment of a landed aristocracy,
but at the same time are not adopting the business pol-
icy in land management that our English cousins are

[:"3:

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

using. Most of the large farms owned by city men of
wealth are not managed on a strictly business basis.
The equipment and the methods employed are not in
keeping with the farm receipts. The wealthy manu-
facturer, for example, does not use the same kind of
business methods on his farm that he does In his shops.
He does not expect the same degree of efficiency In his
farm help as he does In his factory help. He often
looks on the farm as a plaything, as a place to spend
money, and not to make It. We would not imply that
there is no place In business farming for the man of
wealth. He might well show that there is good profit
on a considerable investment of capital In farming oper-
ations, but he must adopt the same rigid business meth-
ods that other lines of business follow. In fact, there
are now several large farms in the county that are
being managed on a sound business basis and are
showing good profit from the investment of consider-
able capital.

The other class of country homes, owned by men
whose business is mainly In the city, is represented by
those estates that control only limited areas and are
located In spots chosen for their natural beauty and
developed with a view to making a pleasant, restful
country home with land enough to afford the family all
of the choice farm products that can readily be supplied.
Such places can make use of nature's abundance to de-

COUNTRY LIFE, OLD AND NEW

velop home surroundings of the most charming kind.
The true lover of nature may surround his home with
the shrubs and plants, rarer and choicer than any com-
mercial florist can supply, taken from the wild, and
often from his own lands. Norfolk affords several such
homes with houses of simple lines, banked with laurel
and native rhododendron and with grounds dotted here
and there with mountain ash, birch and other native
trees, the whole having a background of native conifers.
Such homes, nestled among the hills, provide a quiet
and restful retreat not found on the broad, fertile
acres of the flat country.

In general the owners of the second type of country
homes are descendants of the original settlers. They
feel an ancestral pride in seeing the farm improve, with
the idea that it will remain in the family for generations
to come. In building, they build not alone for the im-
mediate present but also for future generations. If
they set out an orchard they do not always expect to
reap the full rewards of the fruits thereof themselves,
but live in the hope that future generations will enjoy
the fruits of their labors. If they make permanent and
lasting improvements on a piece of land, they do it with
the feeling that the next generation will profit from
their labors fully as much as the one who does the work.
They are not like the famous politician who, when told
that he ought to have consideration for the rights of

C"53

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

posterity, remarked, "What has posterity ever done for
me? Let posterity look out for its own rights !" Many,
however, are like the old farmer whose farm had a
beautiful setting on the shores of a sparkling lake. He
was interviewed one day by a millionaire who was flying
through in his limousine. Pleased with the beauty of
the place, the millionaire stopped and asked the farmer
to set a price on his farm. He was promptly told that
the farm was not for sale. Then, with an impatient
gesture, the millionaire remarked, "My friend, con-
sider a minute. A few thousand dollars one way or the
other makes no difi^erence to me; set your price." But
the farmer coolly replied, "The farm is not for sale,
sir !" With a feeling of contempt the lordly millionaire
tried once more. "But you would not refuse to ex-
change shining gold for these rough acres and these
humble dwellings?" "My friend," said the farmer,
pointing to the weatherbeaten house, "I was born in
that southwest room from which you can look down
over that beautiful lake, and there I expect to die.
Other generations will own this property when I am
gone. You will have to look elsewhere for your farm."
And the millionaire sped on in disgust.

The owners of these ancestral farms are striving not
only to perpetuate their homes in the family but to keep
up the standard of the country school and the country
church. They realize that these institutions are assets

COUNTRY LIFE, OLD AND NEW

in country life tiiat not only influence the moral tone of
the community but also affect land values. They do not
hesitate, when the time comes, to spend a few hundred
dollars on the higher education that will help their chil-
dren the better to enjoy life in the country and equip
them better to cope with the complex farm problems
that an advanced type of civilization always brings.

History shows that land ownership by the many
tends to develop a more general interest in national life
and public affairs than does the concentration of land
ownership in the hands of the few. This fact has been
manifested in our own country in the general response
from our farm homes for recruits to defend our na-
tional life in time of war. The farmer is keen to grasp
the fact that great moral and economic issues in public
life influence his business as quickly as any business in
the country. The fact, too, that farming is an industry
that requires skill and intellectual acumen along many
lines tends to broaden the farmer, while the division of
labor required of the workman in many other industries
tends to narrowness. No class of men to-day is more in-
dependent in thought and action, on great public ques-
tions, than farmers of advanced type. This has shown
itself more strikingly in political hfe in the past decade
or two than ever before. Local, State and national issues
are being studied from the broad viewpoint of public
good rather than from the narrow one of partisan

C"73

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

choice. The farmers have become a reading people,
and the extension of the parcel post, good roads, village
and circulating libraries is making this condition more
and more possible. The general introduction of metro-
politan daily newspapers into country homes has done
more to broaden the life of the farmer and to put him
in touch with great world questions than any other thing
that has entered into his life.

C'lS]

CHAPTER X

COUNTRY COMMUNITY PROGRESS

HILE it is generally admitted that life in
the open country tends to develop a phys-
ically and morally strong people, yet the
disadvantages of life remote from the
large centers must not be overlooked.
Whatever can be done to make country life broader
and better by making the social and educational advan-
tages enjoyed by the city more available to the country,
will tend to a higher civilization. We need a country
life developed out of its ovt^n resources rather than one
having the unnatural life of the cities engrafted upon it.
Many country people are making the mistake to-day of
trying to engraft city customs upon the life of the coun-
try, while some country people are assuming the role of
the city "dude," instead of developing a healthy com-

C"9]

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

munity life and a rugged and normal individual life that
should be the outgrowth of their environment.

There is a growing tendency, too, among city people
of liberal means and good intentions to want to do some-
thing for the betterment of life in the country. Such en-
deavor, when rightly directed, is to be commended. It
cannot be done, however, by transferring the city to
the country. Whatever can be done to make the coun-
try people see and enjoy the advantages of the country,
is to be commended. The one thing that country people
lack is a full realization of what they have to enjoy.
Country children especially need to be taught how to
enjoy life in the country and how to see and appreciate
Nature in her many and varied phases. The boys' and
girls' club contests in the growing of poultry, vege-
tables, fruits and flowers will tend to develop a healthy
rivalry that cannot fail to arouse Interest in growing
things. The Boy Scouts and the Camp Fire Girls are
forms of wholesome endeavor and recreation that are
tending to arouse a spirit of self-reliance and an Inter-
est In one's community, as well as to develop a vigorous
physical life. The country fair, In Its rural simplicity,
such as Norfolk has so well illustrated, is to be com-
mended and has wholesome recreational and educa-
tional advantages well worth while. But when the
cheap side-show and the "midway" are engrafted on the
country fair, it is likely to be perverted from Its

[;i2o;]

COUNTRY COMMUNITY PROGRESS

real function and become an unwholesome, If not a dan-
gerous, institution.

This county is rich in historical lore that should be
perpetuated in the lives of our people. The drama and
the historical pageant, built on these historic events,
would do more for the social and educational uplift of
our towns than all the "movies" ever projected. An
historical room in each town for preserving, and for
exhibiting to the rising generation, samples of the
household arts and treasures of the past, together
with the crude and cumbersome farming tools with
which our fathers labored, would do much to develop
local pride and interest in local history.

The circulating library, rightly directed from good
library centers, has possibilities for good in our rural
homes, not fully realized. One lack in many rural
homes is good literature for the children. Every
school-house might well be made a community center
for the distribution of wholesome books for young peo-
ple. If rightly chosen, these books could be utilized by
the teacher to arouse an interest in nature and in coun-
try life that the prevailing fiction often tends to deaden.

The visiting nurse has come into a few of our rural
towns as a result of the generous interest in community
welfare manifested by those who have the means and
the inclination to help their fellow-citizens to help them-
selves. This spirit of prompting self-help, through

[;i2i]

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

sympathetic encouragement and through suggestions
for utilizing agencies directly at hand, is the modern
form of benevolence that is to-day very wisely replacing
the old form of giving. What is given outright is rarely
appreciated as much as the opportunity to do for one's
self, which can be made use of without lessening the
self-respect of the recipient. If country people can only
be led to appreciate the value of fresh air, pure water,
simple, wholesome food and effective sewage disposal,
through the suggestive teachings of the district nurse,
it will do more for country welfare than all the direct
gifts that charity can offer to the country.

The public school is an institution that is fundamental
in the life of any free people. A public school system
that is free to all, at the expense of every one in the
community, lies at the foundation of our educational
system. While the public school is a community insti-
tution, unfortunately it often does not lie within the
power of the community to shape the policy of the
school. Our educational system is the outgrowth of an
age when only the children of the wealthy were sup-
posed to profit by its advantages. It is based on the
principle of culture, and this was at first its real function.
To-day, instead of the few profiting by the schools, they
are used by the many. Our rural schools must shape
their work to fit the needs of the rural people. When
we reflect that less than ten per cent of those who pass

[122]

COUNTRY COMMUNITY PROGRESS

the grades ever enter the high school, or have any fur-
ther school privileges, we can begin to appreciate the
importance of a school system that will shape itself to
the needs of the masses.

Interest in country life and country affairs can be
developed best during the formative period of the
child's life, or between six and fifteen years of age.
Why should there not be an endeavor made at this age
to develop interest in the type of life and environment
that the larger number of country children are sure to
experience through life? Fortunately, we are begin-
ning to see our responsibilities and duties in this direc-
tion and are so modifying our plan of instruction in
rural schools as to make it fit the life of the people.
Problems in arithmetic are now drawn more from farm
life and less from commercial city life. More problems
are being drawn from the daily business of the farm
and fewer from the banking house, based on stocks and
bonds that the child will probably never deal with.
More historical incidents are drawn from local life and
the work of our ancestors and less from the succession of
kings. More interest is being developed in what grows
under our feet, and less in the products of India or
Australia. We rejoice to see the community endeavor
to interest the children of our public schools In garden
and shop work, In fruits and in flowers, such as has been
developed in Salisbury and Washington. One value of

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

all such endeavor is that it helps the child to find his
bent in life; and when interest in some one subject is
aroused, the child begins to become more interested in
all other school subjects.

There is probably no one agency that has done more
for rural betterment in this county, as well as in the
State as a whole, than the Grange or Patrons of Hus-
bandry. While this organization is nearly fifty years
old, its influence was not widely felt in this State until
about thirty years ago. The Grange was at first urged
for its financial advantages in cooperative buying and
selling, but it was soon seen that it would never be a
marked success in this line. Later, its educational and
social features were urged upon the attention of farm-
ers. As a means of getting the rural people together in
a social way, it has been well worth the efforts of its
most loyal supporters. The fact that it has brought
both sexes into its work has tended to strengthen family
ties. It brings the farm families together in one big
community family. In its educational work it has made
possible the consideration of questions relating to the
home as well as to the farm. It has afforded opportu-
nities, to a greater degree than any other agency, for
the development of men and women from our farms
who have become useful in public life.

We are just entering a period of extension work in
agriculture and home economics that bids fair to do

Cm:

COUNTRY COMMUNITY PROGRESS

more for country people than anything that has come
into play heretofore. The Smith-Lever Act, recently
passed by Congress, makes available a fund that is to
increase year by year, based on the proportion of the
rural population to the total population. This fund is
to be used by the State college of agriculture in each
State, in giving instruction away from the college, and
is designed to benefit those who are not in position to
take a course at the college. It is based, however, on
the cooperative idea; for example, no State can profit
by the fund, available year by year, unless it matches it
by a similar appropriation to be used for the same pur-
poses.

The Farm Bureau work, now organized in nearly all
the States, while it antedates the Smith-Lever Act, is
now operated through the fund provided by that act.
This movement carries the cooperative idea one step
further because it requires the people of each county
that benefits by its privileges to form a part of the co-
operative plan. The plan is to unite the Federal gov-
ernment, the State and the county in a joint program
for the improvement of rural conditions. The move-
ment contemplates the development in each county of an
organization to be known as "The Farm Bureau Asso-
ciation," whose duty it is to foster the workof the Farm
Bureau by assisting the local manager to deal with the
rural problems of the county. The local manager or

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

county agent can do little as an individual, on account
of the magnitude of the work before him. With the
support and cooperation of a local organization, how-
ever, he will become acquainted with the needs of the
people in different sections of the county and can deal
with groups rather than with individuals.

One important function of the county agent is to act
as a clearing house between the people of the county and
the other cooperating agencies. He is in position to
make available expert knowledge from the Federal
Department of Agriculture, the State Department of
Agriculture, the State Library and the State College. It
is a part of the general plan to make this work as avail-
able to the home as it is to the farm proper. Ultimately
this will be accomplished by placing a woman agent in
each county, who will assist in solving problems of the
farm home. Community cooperation will make this
work available by organizing a small local club to meet
at the homes of its members, or at the district school-
house, or some other public building. There is every
reason why the school buildings, which are built by
public funds, should become community centers for the
benefit of all of the people in a community. In this way,
the schools can be more closely linked with the life of
the community, and, on the other hand, a greater inter-
est in the work of the schools will be developed among
the people.

[126]

COUNTRY COMMUNITY PROGRESS

There is one line of cooperation in which the country
and the city might get together more fully than has thus
far been done. The country should be a big play-
ground for the city. This, however, should be brought
about without having the city people feel that they have
the freedom of fields, orchards and groves without re-
gard to the rights of the owners. Public parks, public
lakes and public forest areas will make this possible
without trespassing on private rights. With the sea-
shore borders now mainly taken up by private owners,
the general public must look to the lake and hill country
for a place of recreation. It is as much a function of
public welfare to provide healthy recreation for our
people as it is to provide sanitary conditions. Those
who are deprived of the privileges of play do not know
how to work. Our larger lake areas, with a strip of
shore, should be brought under the control of the State
and be thrown open for public camps, under proper reg-
ulations, just as are the State forest reserves of the
Adirondacks. These beauty spots could be developed
into healthful resorts, at small expense, and be made
available for those who cannot rent cottages or af-
ford to go to the summer hotels.

Litchfield County has available an area of non-agri-
cultural land that should be developed as a vast public
playground and forest reserve. In the northwest cor-
ner of the county, what is known as Mount Riga com-

[127]

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

prises an area, some ten miles long and six miles wide,
that is admirably adapted for park and forest pur-
poses. This area includes some of the wildest swamps,
the most picturesque ravines and the most beautiful
lakes to be found in New England.

During the period of high prices for pig iron, be-
tween 1870 and 1880, most of this area was "coaled
off," the wood being burned for making charcoal. Since
that time a good growth of timber has resulted, but sev-
eral large areas have been devastated by forest fires.
This whole area might, under proper State manage-
ment, be made a source of public wealth, as well as a
public playground. Under proper forest management,
with lookout posts and fire paths, it would be possible
to check the damage by fires and keep the forest growth
in steady progress. By proper thinning, many sections
could be made to pay the cost of the thinning by the sale
of wood removed, and the portions left would improve
rapidly under the better opportunities for sunlight and
soil fertility. Certain sections already thinned by the
owner are showing the possibility of a more rapid
growth, in contrast with other areas not thinned.

This area is not only available for affording a good
lesson in forestry, but also for showing the possibility
of game and fish control under State supervision. No
area is better situated for breeding both fish and game
on a large scale, as it affords naturally wild, forest

COUNTRY COMMUNITY PROGRESS

seclusion, and several lakes and brooks where a variety
of fish can be allowed to develop in their natural en-
vironment.

If we could only develop the large vision that a few
progressive and public-spirited men are already show-
ing, we might not only look forward to a vast park
area in our own county, but hope to see it a part of a
larger area which would include a section of Massa-
chusetts and New York, adjoining the Connecticut area.
Thus might be developed a tri-State park and forest
reserve unsurpassed in picturesqueness and beauty by
anything south of the White Mountains.

l'^9l

CHAPTER XI

A PIONEER IN AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION

ONNECTICUT was among the first of
the States to promote agricultural edu-
cation. Jared Eliot of Killingworth,
preacher, physician and farmer, wrote
the first American book on agriculture,
"Essays upon Field Husbandry," published in 1747.
Though not the first in the field among the institutions
of higher education, instruction in agricultural science
was given continuously at Yale College from 1848,
when the first Professor of Agricultural Chemistry was
appointed, down to the early nineties, when the State
Agricultural College was established at Storrs.

So in the line of agricultural schools Connecticut was
a pioneer, as probably the earliest successful farm
school in this country was the one established by Dr.

PIONEER IN AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION

S. W. Gold and his son Theodore. Connecticut, too,
established the first Agricultural Experiment Station
in America in 1875. The movement for the establish-
ment of this institution was promoted by T. S. Gold
from the first, and when established he was for more
than twenty years a member of its board of control.

The Gold estate in Cornwall has now passed into the
seventh generation in the direct family line, and this fact
of itself, together with the increasing value of the prop-
erty, makes the former owner and the farm of more
than passing interest. The property has been trans-
mitted in the family line from the Douglas ancestors
who cleared the land from the forest. In the Gold
ancestry may be found such names as Talcott, Ruggles,
Sedgwick, Wadsworth and Cleveland, representing
strong lines tracing back to colonial days.

Theodore Sedgwick Gold, the son of a Connecticut
physician and farmer, was born March 2, 1818, in
Madison, New York. While yet in his infancy, his
parents moved to Goshen in Litchfield County, where
Theodore spent most of his boyhood. In 1842 his
father gave up the practice of medicine and removed
to the ancestral home on Cream Hill, West Cornwall,
where he and Theodore began illustrious careers as
agricultural leaders and teachers.

Graduating from Yale College in 1838, young
Gold spent the next four years in teaching and study.

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

Part of the time he taught in Eagle Academy, Goshen,
and part of the time was spent in scientific studies at
Yale. In 1845 he and his father opened an agricultural
school on the home farm in West Cornwall. This
school was continued for twenty-four years and num-
bered among its scholars some of the notable men of the
country. Mr. Gold was always interested in the natural
sciences and took up special studies in these subjects at
college, and what he learned from his father, coupled
with a wide love of nature, fitted him especially as an
instructor in subjects that had a particular bearing on
agriculture. His house, throughout his life, contained
an interesting collection of specimens of minerals and
plants of his own collecting. There was hardly a plant
growing on his large estate with which he was not fa-
miliar. His garden, too, was always a testing ground
for new fruits, herbs and vegetables that might be of
interest or of value.

The school was not managed simply as a training
school for the farm, but provided that all-round train-
ing sure to be useful in any walk of life. Many of
the students went to college and later became men of
prominence in business and professional life. Manual
labor was not a requirement, but Mr. Gold always
spent a part of each day working on the farm, and the
boys delighted to accompany him and to listen to his
wise counsel and his practical explanations.

PIONEER IN AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION

Perhaps without an exception, those who knew Mr.
Gold best will agree that his greatest achievement was
as secretary and official executive of the Connecticut
State Board of Agriculture. Though not the first board
of its kind in New England, it has had an almost con-
tinuous and a very useful career for a period of fifty
years. From the time of its establishment in 1866 for
more than thirty years, Mr. Gold was its secretary and
the guiding force that shaped its policies. The reports
of this board were, for many years, sought by students
of agriculture in all parts of the country, as a source of
many of the latest teachings in the science of agricul-
ture. The speakers at the board meetings, whose ad-
dresses were published in full, stood forth as exponents
of the new science of agriculture. Mr. Gold's work, as
secretary of this board, was the chief factor in leading
farmers of the State to accept the new teachings in rela-
tion to agriculture, which at first were regarded with
suspicion or indifference, but which are now accepted
and used by nearly all farmers.

The winter meeting of the board was for many years
the chief agricultural event of the year in the State.
The program, thoughtfully and logically arranged,
gave the audience the best knowledge and thought on
scientific and practical farming and home-making. It
was characteristic of these meetings that, each year, one
leading theme ran through the whole program. One

1:133:]

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

year it was soil fertility, another dairying, again dairy-
farm crops, and again animal or plant diseases.
Enough other interesting and useful material was in-
corporated to hold the attention of those not interested
in the chief line of discussion, but at the same time the
concentration was on one chief theme. One feature,
which was new to early agricultural conventions, was
always incorporated and adhered to by Mr. Gold in his
programs. That was to have at least one address by a
lady speaker of state or national reputation, and to do
everything possible to interest the women from the
farms in the meetings of the board.

One who knew Mr. Gold and his work for the Board
of Agriculture intimately for many years, says of his
work as secretary: "With all credit to the speakers and
to the wisdom of Mr. Gold's associates, I believe the
chief credit for all the work of the board belongs to
him. He was the executive of the board and he had all
the qualities which a secretary needed: thorough educa-
tion, intimate farm knowledge, success as a farmer,
wide personal acquaintance and great self-control and
tact."

Mr. Gold was always interested in forestry. The
exhibit of natural woods — sections of tree trunks with
the top cut so as to show a sloping section, a vertical
section and a transverse section— collected and pre-
pared at his instigation for the Columbian Exposition

C'34]

PIONEER IN AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION

in 1893, was one of the most complete shown at Chi-
cago. Many of the specimens came from his own farm.
Mr. Gold knew every variety of tree that was native to
the State, and so knew where to direct the collecting if
he did not have the tree on his own farm. He was in-
strumental in getting the present forest laws of Con-
necticut passed, and was interested in promoting the
forestry work of the State Forestry Association and
the forestry investigations of the State Experiment Sta-
tion.

During his life of over four-score years he was al-
ways interested in developing a farm that would pay a
profit and at the same time leave, for the use of the suc-
ceeding generations, a soil that was not depleted in
fertility. All of his improvements were made with a
view to permanency. More than fifty years ago many
stone drains were laid that are still doing good work.

Mr. Gold did not hesitate to diverge from the usual
system of farming if he felt he had a plan that better
fitted his farm. I well remember the incredulity shown
by some of the audience when he stated at one of the
Board of Agriculture meetings that he had fields on his
farm that had not been plowed for over one hundred
years, but had been mowed annually during that entire
time. On visiting his farm and observing the con-
ditions and the methods used, I was at once struck with
the wisdom of the system. The fields in question were

RURAL LIFE IN LITCHFIELD COUNTY

naturally well supplied with moisture, and consisted of
a hard clay loam soil rather difficult to plow but well
adapted to grass and clover. In keeping these meadows
productive Mr. Gold adopted the plan of liberal top-
dressing with stable manure and the sowing of clover
seed, either every year or every second year early in the
spring, when it would get a start without being incor-
porated with the soil. While the yields of hay obtained
under this system were not especially heavy, they were
always good and the labor economy of the system made
the cost of hay less than on many farms that produced
much more to the acre, but at the same time required
reseeding every few years.

While Mr. Gold was interested in diversified farm-
ing, his most prominent work was in fruit culture,
mainly apple orcharding. From the earliest days of
the introduction of new fruits, he was interested in
testing and growing whatever would add to the comfort
and health of the family. In fact, this was true of all
lines of products. I never visited a farm home where
more of the food products of the table were supplied
from the farm, and always in great variety. For exam-
ple, one would not look for hot-house grapes of the
European varieties in Connecticut except on a few pri-
vate estates of men of considerable wealth, and yet,
more than sixty years ago, Mr. Gold grew these for
home consumption. So with pears, peaches, plums,

PIONEER IN AGRICULTURAL EDUCATION

gooseberries and strawberries, the needs of the family
were always considered and supplied as far as climatic
conditions for the culture of the fruits would permit.

At the present time (191 7) there are commercial
orchards on the Gold farm, ranging in age from forty
to less than six years. Not more than ten years prior to
Mr. Gold's death he was interested with his son in
planting an orchard of the latest commercial varieties.

Mr. Gold, no doubt, inherited a great love for fruits.
Nearly one hundred and fifty years before his death his
ancestors planted an orchard on Cream Hill, the story
of which he tells in his "Reminiscences," published in
1901 :

"As for fruits, there were few grafted or budded
trees at the beginning of the century. I have a single
tree, a Seekno further, grafted near the ground, the last
survivor of an orchard which, according to tradition,
was planted by my great-grandmother, Sarah (Doug-
las) Wadsworth, in her early married life, about 1760.

"It has battled with the storms of more than a cen-
tury, but in its decadence shows much vigor and bears
choice fruit, which the sixth generation enjoys.

"Who would not plant a tree with such possibilities?"

D373

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