F G286 Farmington Two Hundred Years Ago A PAPER READ AT A (WicctinQ OP THE Colonial Dames of Connecticut AT THE Home of Miss, Theodate Pope MAY TWENTY-NINTH NINETEEN HUNDRED AND SIX By JULIUS GAY IbartforD press The Case, Lockwood & Brainard Company 1906 Qass '■ ' -' jj, . Book , FaU2 ^^U> Farmington Two Hundred Years Ago A PAPER READ AT A eeting OF THE Colonial Dames of Connecticut AT THE Home of Miss Theodate Pope MAY TWENTY-NINTH NINETEEN HUNDRED AND SIX By JULIUS GAY IbartforD press The Case, Lockwood & Brainard Company 1906 Gift Author (Ptrson) 24 OCT 1908 ADDRESS. Madame President and members of the Society of Colonial Dames : The jBrst formal visit of your society to this old colonial village seems to demand not only words of hearty vv^elcome but some introduction to the town as it was in colonial days. I will not weary you with any formal history, but, during the short time available, will try to give you a few passing glimpses of Farmington as it was on the 29th day of May, 1706. Farmington Village two hundred years ago had just passed through a season of upheaval. Its internal econ- omy suggested a calm after a storm at sea, when the waves are subsiding and the sun begins to shine through the clouds. The Rev. Samuel Hooker had been eight and a half years dead, and through all these years, his flock without a shepherd, had striven in vain to choose his successor. Some desired " the worthy Mr. John Buck- ley," some " the much esteemed Mr. Jabez Fitch," and some the much esteemed " Mr, Eliphalet Adams," and numerous other candidates divided the preferences of the worshipers. As time went on the struggle waxed fiercer. Partisan orators in church meetings, and in town meetings, expressed opinions of each other that filled the county court with suits of libel. Town meetings were broken up and anarchy prevailed. A fast day proposed was voted down, the orator of the day quoting the prophets of old, " Behold ye fast for strife and debate and to smite with the fist of wickedness." Finally the General Assembly of the colony appointed " the reverend min- isters of the towns of Hartford, Windsor, and Wethers- field to procure a minister for Farmington, who are hereby orderec^ to receive him and pay him as formerly until this Court do order otherwise or themselves agree." The choice fell upon the Rev. Samuel Whit- man, a divine of another colony, free from all local entanglements, and with sufficient power of will to hold his own until the storm abated. At the same time a large number of the contestants withdrew and founded a new church at the Great Swamp. So peace reigned, and Sergeant John Wadsworth and Samuel Newell were ap- pointed a committee to make a journey through the wilder- ness to Nantasket in the latter days of November to nego- tiate with the chosen divine. The treasury was empty, but so urgent seemed the expedition that the town voted to borrow money for the outfit at the rate of 200 per cent, per annum. The embassy was successful. The salary agreed upon was one hundred pounds per annum, but as gold and silver were well nigh unknown, the town subse- quently voted to pay in wheat, rye, Indian corn, pease, and pork at a fixed price per bushel and pound, an arrange- ment suggestive of the donation party of sixty years ago. In addition to all these commodities the town voted " as a voluntary action " that, upon some set day appointed by the deacons, " the inhabitants, improving themselves and teams that way, will draw him his annual supply of fire- wood." Imagine all the farmers and all their oxen and ox- leds driving in one after another and piling the minister- ial door-yard high with logs. What was the good man to do with all these logs? The late Commander Hooker, U. S. N., wrote me how the matter was managed in the house of his ancestors, a few rods higher up the hill, which he remembered as the " Old Red College " of his father. Deacon Edward Hooker. He says, " The kitchen was floored with smooth, flat, mountain stones, and had a big door at the eastern end, and originally at each end, and my father used to say that when his father was a boy, they used to drive a yoke of oxen with a sled load of wood into one door and up to the big fireplace, then unload the wood upon the fire and drive the team out of the other door." 5 If the arrangements for heating were somewhat primi- tive, so were those for hghting. The fierce blaze of fire- place logs gave sufficient light for the good dame's spin- ning wheel, and for many household labors. Oil was unknown, and tallow candles were so great a luxury, that a cheaper substitute was much employed. In 1696 the town voted that no inhabitant should be prohibited from felling pine-trees in our sequestered lands for candle wood. The same right was granted in 1704. The Rev. Francis Higginson, in his " New England Plantation," written in the year 1629, says, " yea, our pine-trees that are the most plentiful of all wood, doth allow us plenty of candles which are very useful in a house ; and they are such candles as the Indians use, having no other, and they are nothing else but the wood of the pine-tree cloven into little slices, something thin, which are so fu.ll of the moisture of tur- pentine and pitch, that they burn as clear as a torch." The houses of the village, thus warmed and lighted, were with the year 1700 beginning to take on an architectural elegance unknown to the barn-like homes of the first set- tlers. They were two stories high, the upper story much projecting in front, and ornamented vvith a row of con- spicuous pendants. Of this style but one house remains, the central of the original three on High Street. The ■ ground on which we stand today was then the pasture land of William Judd, but by the potency of modern magic a colonial house, true to the highest aspirations of the builders of 1706, has arisen on its most commanding site. The forests for miles around have yielded their choicest trees to shade its lawns, and, as Tennyson tells us in the days of old Amphion : " The gouty oak began to move, And flounder into hornpipes. The mountain stirred its busy crown, And, as tradition teaches, Young ashes pirouetted down, Coquetting with young beeches, And from the valleys underneath Came little copses climbing. Old elms came breaking from the vine, The vine streamed out to follow. And, sweating rosin, plumped the pine From many a cloudy hollow." The first meeting-house, the first of three, stood on the main street midway between mountain and river, and equally distant from the North and South meadow gates. The worshipers were then, and for the next quarter of a century, summoned to attend by beat of drum. The deacons still lined out the psalm, and musical instruments and dissensions in the choir were unknown. Of the style of architecture in this old building we know little. There were doors on the east and south, and probably on the west. Negroes sat upon a bench at the north end, and, as the capacity of the house became less and less sufficient, individuals were allowed to build themselves seats any- where in the gallery, " on condition that they do not damnify the other seats in the meeting-house." The allot- ment of seats below was termed dignifying the house, and the seating committee was ordered to " have respect to age, office, and estate, so far as it tendeth to make a man respectable." The youths and the unmarried were forced up-stairs where they gave the tithingman sufficient occupa- tion. There was one exception in favor of certain sedate young women. " The town by vote gave liberty to Lieu- tenant Judd's two daughters, and the Widow Judd's two daughters, and the two eldest daughters of John Steele to erect, or cause to be erected, a seat for their proper use at the south end of the meeting-house at the left hand as they go in at the door, provided it be not prejudicial to the passage and doors." Seats too were reserved for the guard of eight men who marched in with muskets at shoulder. The Indian atrocities at Deerfield and vicinity were but recent, and the meeting-house itself had long been a fort as well as a house of prayer. In 1674 Deacon Bull makes a charge for a joist for the fort gate of the church, and in 1675 for the irons of the fort gate, and again in 1676. In 1704, two years before the date of which we write, the town ordered seven houses fortified in which were to be lodged the town's stock of powder, lead, bullets, flints, and half-pikes. The dreaded storm passed by, and only those men were lost who marched to the help of their neighbors in the north. The Tunxis tribe was always peaceably disposed. They had been so badly bullied by the Mohawks from the west, and the Pocumtucks from the north that they were only too glad to live at peace with the whites. Schools were early es- tablished for their children and numerous adults joined the church. Their fort had been where the Country Club now plays golf, but at the urgent request of the farmers had been removed to the site of their graveyard, just east of the present railroad station. According to Deacon Elijah Porter, just before removing, they had their last battle with the Stockbridge tribe. They were having the worst of it, and were being driven back on their wig- wams, when their squaws formed a battalion, and falling on the Stockbridge flank saved the day. So long as the danger continued the town trained-band was frequently drilled. Absence cost two and sixpence, as the account- book of Deacon Bull the town treasurer abundantly shows. He was also the principal armorer of the village. For John North, Senior, he made a new sword costing seven shillings and sixpence. Other swords he repaired. For .Robert Porter he made a halberd at an expense of three shillings. The halberd was the distinguishing arm of the sergeant, and consisted of three parts; the spear to thrust or charge in battle, the hatchet for cutting, and the hook for pulling down fascines. They are still used in the orna- mental display of the Swiss Papal Guards. Pike heads he made for Goodman Lanckton, John Steele, James Bird, and Sergeant Stanley, at three shillings each. The pike ^ was still an important weapon. In Markham's " Soldier's Accidence " we are instructed that the pikemen shall have strong, straight, yet nimble pikes of ash-wood, well headed with steel . . . and the full size of every pike shall be fifteen foot besides the head." The pikemen were de- scribed " as a bewtiful sight in the Battell and a great ter- rour to the enemies." But enough of the pomp and circumstance of war. Next to the church, and contributory to its welfare, the school had a prominent place in the hearts of the people, not so much for its own sake as because it was so contribu- tory. It being, says the colonial code of 1650, "one chiefe project of that old deluder Sathan to keepe men from the knowledge of the Scriptures, as in former times, keeping them in an vnknown tongue. . . . and that Learning may not bee buried in the grave of o'' Fore- fathers It is therefore ordered that .... that euery Townshipp after the Lord hath increased them to the number of fifty householders, shall then forthwith ap- point one wjthin theire Towne to teach all such children as shall resorte to him, to write and read." A grammar school for instruction in Latin and Greek was required when the town had increased to one hundred families. In 1688 this town voted "that they would have a town house to keep school in, built this year, of eighteen foot square, besides the chimney space, with a suitable height for that service." Five years later they desired " a man that is in a capacity to teach both Latin and English, and, in time of exigency, to be helpful to Mr. Hooker in the ministry." For a man combining the requisite literary and ministerial attainments, they chose the Rev. John James. He was about twenty-seven years of age, having recently come from England, where he had been under the instruction of a Mr. Veal, a dissenting minister. He re- mained for at most one or two years when he had a call to preach in Haddam. Dr. David Dudley Field, in his "Statistical Account of the Town of Haddam," says "Some ludicrous anecdotes are transmitted respecting him." The Rev. Gurdon Saltonstall, writing to John Winthrop of an attack on New London by French priva- teers on the morning of July 17, 1690, says "My wife and family were posted at your Honor's a considerable while, it being thought the most convenient place for the feminine rendevouz. Mr. James (who commands in chief among them), upon the coast alarm given, faceth to the mill, gathers like a snowball as he goes, makes a gen- eral muster at your Honor's, and so posts away with the greatest speed, to take the advantage of the neighboring rocky hills and craggy inaccessible mountains, so that whatever else is lost, Mr. James and the women are safe." Luke Hayes succeeded him as teacher of our school, and was in office at the date of which we write. All we know of his classical learning is that on his death, one Latin book was found among his possessions. Besides the pubhc school on the meeting-house green, there were doubtless private schools known as dames' schools, most excellent specimens of which have flourished within the memory of many of us. In 1676 Deacon Bull, the varied lore of whose account-book has made him a familiar personage, paid Ro bert Porter five shillings for schooling his son, John Bull. Whether Robert Porter, ancestor of the late president of Yale, himself taught school, or some member of his family taught a dame's school does not appear. The public school was mostly a winter school for boys who could then best be spared from the labors of the farm. The proper education in this town for females was settled by a judicial decision in 1656. Thomas Thomson in his will had ordered "that my wife shall well educate and bring up my children in Learning." The court in Hart- ford being asked to define what this education and learn- ing should be, decided " that the sons shall have learning to write plainly, and read distinctly in the Bible, and the 10 daughters to read, and sew sufficiently for the making of their ordinary linen." A most regrettable decision. Had the ladies of that day kept such diaries as their great granddaughters kept, what a glorious history of the times might be possible. Reading and writing seem to have been the only studies. Every free-born Englishman claimed the right to spell as he pleased. Samuel Johnson had not published his famous dictionary, and the great lexicographer of West Hartford had not even been born or his father before him. King James' bible allowed great freedom for individual choice. Give all words a sufficient length, or, if in doubt, add a final vowel would have been a safe rule. No one shirked the labor of writ- ing such words as catalogue at full length. Deacon Bull always spelled iron e-y-r-o-n, liquor 1-i-c-k-q-u-o-r, sugar s-h-u-g-a-r, salt s-a-u-1-t, not once but always. Would the Colonial Dames of today care to know of the housekeeping and daily life here two hundred years ago? I can give you just about as definite a picture of it as you could get of a village from which all the in- habitants had taken a temporary departure. I can show you all the contents of the house of Samuel Gridley, a well-to-do citizen, down to the most minute item the ap- praisers affixed a value to, when the good man had set his house in order for his departure to a better world. Let us enter, if you will, the porch in front where you may be surprised to find hung around such articles of out-of-door use as harnesses, saddles, the pillion and pillion-cloth on which the good dame rode to church behind the good man, a chest of tools, a cart rope, and many other things the Colonial Dame of today would order put somewhere else. Entering the great hall we shall find disposed around a chest, a great chair, four lesser ones, three cushions, and a pillow. Around the walls ready for instant use are a gun, pike, bayonet, rapier, backsword, and cutlass. Near by must have been a fireplace, for here we find trammels and hooks, pots and kettles, large and small, and a goodly II array of shining pewter, tankards, plates, basins, beakers, porringers, cups with handles, barrel cups, pewter meas- ures, and pewter bottles. There is much wooden ware, china ware, and bottles of family medicines with formid- able names. Here too is the family library of goodly vol- umes which we will not stop to read at present. From the hall we pass to the kitchen, where we find In the big fireplace a pair of cast-iron dogs weighing sixty-four pounds, two pairs of tongs, a peel, tv\^o trammels, and a jack. The main features of the kitchen are the loom, the great wheel, two linen wheels, a hand reel, and great piles of linen sheets, table cloths, towels, napkins, and other products of the loom and wheels. Returning through the hall we enter the parlor and are confronted with a tall bedstead with its calico curtains and calico vallance to match, the feather bed and all man- ner of blankets and coverlids. Three chests, a round table, a great chair, three lesser ones, and a cupboard complete the furniture. The cupboard has a carpet, by which is meant an elaborately embroidered covering dis- playing the skill of its owner. There now remains down- stairs only the leanto, which will not detain us long, though it probably detained Mrs. Gridley many a weary hour, for here are the cheese-press and churn, the butter tubs and all the machinery of the dairy, and last of all the hour glass by which all this weary work was timed. If you will now have the kindness to walk up-stairs you will find in the parlor chamber a bed with a silk grass pillow and a great supply of all manner of bedding. In a chest are twenty-one pounds of yarn, the work no doubt of the good dame. Mr. Gridley has also taken the liberty to store here fifty bushels of wheat and eighty of rye. In the hall chamber we find another bed and belongings, and bags of all manner of grain. The porch chamber Is wholly given up to malt, oats, and peas. In the garret are one hundred bushels of Indian corn. All this supply of grain was thus under the protection of the household cat, who in 12 those days killed the rat that ate the malt that lay In the house that Jack built. Life in this quiet village two hundred years ago had its comforts and even its pleasures. With ten or a dozen children in each household, and houses nearly contiguous, those big kitchen fireplaces with their blazing logs must have seen much robust merriment. The table was well supplied with all that healthy appetites demanded. The river abounded with shad, and a whole salmon cost but a shilling. The Indians taught them how to raise Indian corn and kept them well supplied with venison. Deacon Bull's ledger shows an account with Taphow, Shum, Arwous, Mintoo, Potocaw, Judas, and other hunters of the deer. He sold them hatchets for hunting, mended their guns, and made them hoes, the latter probably for the use of their squaws. A buckskin paid for a hoe and ten pounds of tallow for a hatchet. The Indians were useful in many ways. The woods still swarmed with wild animals. Many bounties of six and eight pence were paid for killing of wolves. Some animals supposed from their midnight roarings to be lions, gave the name of Lion's Hole or Lion's Hollow to sundry localities on the moun- tain. The animal was probably a catamount or wild cat. The manners and customs of this village, and its graver moralities seem to hav^e been most exemplary. Doubtless the gloomy ways of the Puritan drove some young men for relief into youthful indiscretions. Night-walking seems to have been the most common wandering from the straight and narrow way. Probably like Chllde Harold they " vexed with mirth the drowsy ear of night, Sore given to revel and ungodly glee." Night-walkers were not as a rule sentenced to pay money of which they were usually destitute, nor boarded idly in jail at the town's expense. On the meeting-house 13 green near the house of God stood the village stocks. The offender, so ran the law, was ordered " set on a few minutes before the Thursday afternoon lecture began, and kept on until a little after the close of the service." The Thursday sermon was none of the shortest. A similar fate awaited the youths who stole five watermelons from Richard Smith and bragged of their exploit, and those too who spoke " reproachfully of the Worshipful Thomas Wells, Esq., now at rest." To speak evil of dignitaries though long buried was a most serious offence. Of the books which our ancestors read by the light of the blazing logs and of the subjects which most interested them we have only a very limited knowledge. Only when a man died and the appraisers came to value his estate were his books named, and even then the entry was usually books, a certain number of pounds and shillings. Rarely did men so carefully describe such a library as belonged to Samuel Gridley, the blacksmith, who succeeded the oft- quoted Deacon Bull. From a somewhat intimate knowl- edge of the contents of these serious books, I presume their names alone will give you a sufficient knowledge of the literary taste of Farmlngton in 1706. They were an "Old Great Bible," next "KOMETOFPAOIA, Or a Dis- course Concerning Comets; wherein the Nature of Blaz- ing Stars is Enquired into," by Increase Mather, a scien- tific book written by a Puritan divine with a theological intent. A very entertaining book. The next was " Time and the End of Time," by John Fox, written on the sin of wasting time by a divine who had a grievance, having been invited to a dinner by a gentlewoman and kept wait- ing three hours while the fine lady was dressing. Next is " Sion in Distress or the Groans of the Protestant Church." A poem having reference to the Titus Oakes Plot, and to the peculiar sins in vogue at the court of Charles IL Then we find a " Spiritual Almanac," proba- bly the " Husbandry Spiritualized : Or the Heavenly Use of Earthly Things," by John Flavel, late minister of the Gospel." Next comes " The Unpardonable Sin," a fa- vorite subject. Next follows "The Doctrine of Divine Providence Opened and Applied," by Increase Mather, an attempt to justify the ways of God to man by stories from the Old Testament and from the Jewish Rabbis. Then we find "Man's Chief End to Glorify God," by Rev. John Bailey, a long lament more interesting to his dear friends than to us. Then comes " How to walk v/ith God, or Early Piety Exemplified." Of course the collection had " The Wonders of the Invisible Vv^orld," by Cotton Mather. Then follow "The Holy Life and Death of Mr. Henry Gearing," "The Great Concern; or A Seri- ous Warning," a copy of the New Testament, a book on numbers, a law book, and lastly " A short Catechism drawn out of the Word of God, by Samuel Stone, Minis- ter of the Word at Hartford on Connecticut, Boston in New England, Printed by Samuel Green for John Wads- worth of Farmington." But libraries and books and schools were matters pertaining to the quiet and seclusion of winter. Two hundred years ago today the winter was over and men were once more interested in the happenings around them. In Hartford the General i\ssembly had just closed its session. John Hooker was our representa- tive, and Capt. Thomas Hart, also from Farmington, was speaker of the house with a salary of thirty shillings. Their labors had been mostly confined to things now left to the courts. They had done two good things ; they repealed the laws against Quakers and the wretched tariff law for- bidding the free exportation of goods from the colony. They ended their labors with the proclamation of a day of fasting and prayer. And now that these worthy men have brought their meritorious public labors to an at least dignified conclusion and gone back to the daily labors of their farms, let us bid them adieu, happy to have been de- scended from the honest laborious men of yore. ^BRABVOFCONGBESS 014 110 432 9