TERCENTENARY COMMISSION OF THE STATE OF CONNECTICUT

COMMITTEE ON HISTORICAL PUBLICATIONS

Settlement of Litchfield County

PUBLISHED FOR THE TERCENTENARY COMMISSION BY THE YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS I ' lilf::

m --'v TERCENTENARY COMMISSION OF THE STATE OF CONNECTICUT

COMMITTEE ON HISTORICAL PUBLICATIONS

Settlement of Litchfield County

DOROTHY DEMING IN 1719 Lieutenant Marsh of Hartford and Deacon John Buell of Lebanon, with many others, fifty- seven in number, petitioned the assembly for permission to settle a town, under committees appointed by the towns of Hartford and Windsor, at a place called Bantam in the western part of the colony. The assembly granted the petition and the town of Litchfield was begun, with the same powers and privileges that other towns in the colony enjoyed. This grant opened the question of the ownership of the whole area now included within the bounds of Litchfield County, commonly known as the "western lands," and the assem- bly took the territory into its own hands, prohibiting further settlement within its bounds. Rumors that sec- tions were being located without permission led to the appointment of a committee to investigate and report any evidences of occupation, with the threat that all occu- piers would be considered squatters and would be prose- cuted in legal form by the king's attorney. The committee found plans for settlement under way, but in so obscure and secret a manner as to defy exact information. 1 This report thoroughly aroused the assembly and brought the plans of the promoters into the open. Seven agents from Hartford and Windsor begged for a patent, claiming title by grant and Indian purchase, and express- ing the hope that the assembly would not make them "a peculiar instance of ptsH displeasure" but would re- scind its decision to prevent settlement, which was causing uneasiness among the inhabitants and arousing bad feelings against the government. They believed that the gentlemen of the assembly were their "political fathers" and would surely not be found wanting in their care for their children. In answer the assembly appointed committees from each house to meet the agents and to come, if possible, to an amicable settlement of the western land question. In 1724 the committees reached a compromise. Finding that a patent issued in 1687, at the time of the Andros administration, was still valid and gave to the towns a legal claim to all the land west of the Housatonic River, they made a division of the territory. They decided that the colony should dispose of all lands west of Litchfield and west of a line running north to the Massachusetts boundary from the northwest corner of Litchfield town- ship, and that Hartford and Windsor should dispose of all land east of that line. When it was found that this ar- rangement gave more than half the territory to the towns a new allotment was made. In 1726 the line running north was moved east to a point four miles west of the Naugatuck, where it is today. The bounds of Simsbury and New Milford were resurveyed and an exact chart made of the territory, which did not include either New Milford or Litchfield. From the petitions that were presented to the assembly before the division was made, and from the quick action 2 of Hartford and Windsor in arranging for the settlement, it would appear that there were many people in those towns who were eager to move into this western country. Therefore an immediate division was made of the eastern part between Hartford and Windsor. Joint committees and surveyors from these towns assigned each its share, giving to Hartford 70,662 acres and to Windsor 69,214 acres. Seven townships were planned; Hartford was to control New Hartford, Winchester, Hartland, and the eastern half of Harwinton; Windsor was to control Cole- brook, Barkhamsted, Torrington, and the western half of Harwinton. When this had been done and the plan was complete, the agents turned over the territory to the proprietors; that is, to all the inhabitants of Hartford and Windsor whose names appeared on the tax lists of 1720— 405 for Hartford, and 377 for Windsor. These proprietors were then given permission by the assembly to meet and to arrange whereby each taxpayer should become the owner of an undivided share in one of the new townships, in proportion to his rateable estate, approximately three acres to the pound. Harwinton was the first town to be started. There were three reasons for this: its proximity to Hartford and Windsor; the existence of a cleared road running through it from the river towns to Litchfield; and the fact that both towns had a share in its development. One early settler, David Messenger, was soon followed in 1734- 1736, by many others, most of whom were proprie- tors—fifty-four from Hartford and forty-one from Wind- sor. Later a few settlers came from Simsbury, Guilford, Wallingford, Branford, and Southold. In 1736 Harwinton —the name is a composite from parts of the names Hartford, Windsor, and Farmington—was incorporated with full town privileges. 3 New Hartford was settled contemporaneously with Harwinton. Settlers came in 1734 and the town was incorporated in 1738. At least thirty of those who founded the town were either proprietors or the younger sons of proprietors. The land labelled Torrington in the plans possessed several advantages, which brought settlers early into the territory. It had the protection of New Hartford, Litchfield, and Goshen on three sides, included the Naugatuck River which divided within its boundaries, and contained a valuable pine swamp which lay between the forks.The road from Hartford or Windsor to Litchfield could be used as far as the Naugatuck, where the valley led directly into the heart of the township. The original list of proprietors numbered 136, with a rateable estate of £6431, but not all took up their lands. Sixty deeds were recorded in Windsor before any settlers had arrived. Settlement was finally effected in 1735-1736; by 1739 twenty-eight families were in residence, and the following year town privileges were allowed. Supplies came in part from Windsor, but in larger part, particularly of small necessities, from Litchfield. The four remaining towns, Barkhamsted, Hartland, Winchester, and Colebrook, were much slower in getting under way, owing partly to their remoteness and partly to the fact that most of the restless inhabitants of the river towns had already had their land needs satisfied. A meeting of the Barkhamsted proprietors was held in 1732, but settlement was not begun until 1746. The region had been used for supplying timber, which was floated down the Farmington River, and so had been fairly stripped of its forest growth, its one form of wealth, before the settlers arrived. For this reason the population increased very slowly. 4 While thus Hartford and Windsor were disposing of the seven towns east and northeast of Litchfield, the colony was struggling with the problem of organizing the great tract of country extending westward to the New York line. Just as soon as the agreement was reached with Hartford and Windsor, petitions began to pour in from all over the colony asking for land in the new area. Practically all of these petitions came from groups of people in the various towns. Between 1723 and 1743 sixteen requests for the erection of new townships were recorded, representing the activities of 775 men, and as each township usually accommodated fifty families in its first division, it will be readily seen that the assembly was justified in starting new towns as soon as it could, for good land was growing scarce in the colony. The peti- tioners offered their aid in defense, pledged themselves to build up a Christian community, and to conform to reasonable conditions of settlement. Some of them prom- ised to improve ten acres, to put up a tenantable house, to settle within two or four years, to reserve lots for the ministry and for a school, and to pay .£25-30 for a right. They offered to lay out a town in fifty shares and to carry out, if possible, an orderly settlement by Connecti- cut inhabitants. Such settlement, they believed, would extend trade and commerce, increase staple products, and protect the colony. Some of them expressed their inten- tion, should their petitions be rejected, of leaving the colony and going elsewhere, though greatly regretting the necessity of doing so, as such a course would be hard for those of long standing in the older communities. In a few cases the prices offered went as high as £40 a share, a striking testimony to the land situation in Connecticut toward the middle of the eighteenth century. So eager were the petitioners to obtain allotments that all, with- 5 out exception, promised to agree to whatever regulations the assembly might see fit to impose. The desire for new land was widespread. Many of the petitioners expressly state that the need of fresh land was their object in moving, and their petitions disclose the presence in the older communities of many young and energetic men who were ready to face the hardships of frontier life. These petitions represented nineteen towns, as well as a special delegation from Windham County, the towns including such widely scattered localities as Fairfield, New Haven, New London, Windham, and Windsor. The most popular territory sought was just north and west of Litchfield. Eleven petitions relate to that region, with one for Sharon, one for Kent, and three for Canaan. In addition to these requests from groups of people who wished to settle a whole town, there were others from individuals, who asked for grants west of the Housatonic River, to the number of at least twelve in the years from 1728 to 1738. Thus encouraged by the popular demand and spurred on by the necessities of the landed situation in the colony, the assembly set about the organization of the new frontier to the west. According to the report made by a committee of the assembly in 1731, there was room for five towns east of the Housatonic River and two west, allowing about seven miles square to a township. As the land west of the river was less abundant and rougher in surface than that on the eastern side, a special committee was appointed to report on the possibilities of this arrangement. The re- port was favorable, though it called attention to the fact that Kent, through which the Housatonic River flowed, would be scanter in dimension than the rest. The towns eventually laid out were Salisbury, Canaan, Norfolk, Goshen, Cornwall, Kent, and Sharon. 6 The plans evolved for the disposal of the land show the influence of the assembly's earlier experience with such towns as Bolton and Litchfield. In every township 300 acres, at a convenient distance from the central town plot, were to be reserved for the use of Yale College; money obtained from the sale of lots was to be used for schools in the older and more settled towns of the colony according to the list of rateable estate in each town; and three shares were always to be set apart in the town itself for the use of the minister and the school forever. A com- mittee was appointed in each county to take the names of subscribers and after each name was placed the sum offered for a right. Fifty shares in each town were put up for sale and each county committee was assigned a special township, two of them receiving one extra, as there were but five counties at that time in the col- ony. This plan did not work out well in execution, as it proved to be confusing and unfair. The fifty shares offered were in each case heavily oversubscribed, in three townships the bids for 150 shares reaching as high as 392 and prices ranging from £10 to £68. Consequently in May, 1733, another method was suggested. This was to divide each township into sixty-three shares, three for Yale, school, and ministry, and the remaining sixty to be distributed by lot among the settled towns of the colony, according to their respective lists. Such shares were to be confirmed by the assembly to any one of the inhabitants who might, by vote of the rest, sell, exchange, or convey his right or rights to any other person, provided the product of the sale should go to the maintenance of the schools or, if the schools were already provided for, to the upkeep of the ministry. This plan did not work any better than the other, so a committee was appointed to 7 draw up a third scheme, which in the end proved to be the one finally adopted. According to this arrangement 300 acres in each town- ship were reserved for the use of Yale College. The rest, exclusive of grants to individuals, was divided into fifty- two shares, two for the school and ministry and the re- maining fifty to be sold at public auction at a stated time in each of the county towns by special committees ap- pointed for the purpose. The shares were to go to the highest bidders, who were to be "his Majesty's Eng- lish subjects inhabitants of this Colony." The purchasers were to settle, themselves or others, on their shares within three years, but should any man have a son sixteen years old, who desired to go to one of the new towns, he could purchase a right for him, provided he gave bond that all duties would be performed and rates paid within three years, at the end of which time he could turn his share over to his son. In any case he was to clear six acres and build a house eighteen feet square by seven feet be- tween the floor and ceiling or forfeit his right. Norfolk was to be sold at Hartford in April, 1738, the bidding to start at£50 a right; Goshen at New Haven, December, 1737 at £6o\ Canaan at New London, January, 1738, at £60; Cornwall at Fairfield at £50; Kent at Windham, March, 1738, at £5°; Salisbury at Hartford, May, I73$> at £30; Sharon at New Haven, October, 1738, at £30. Bonds might be given in payment, with surety at double the value of the bid and death was not to involve for- feiture. Settlement was to begin two years after the purchase and was to continue for three years. If the money received was not needed for the schools, it might be turned over to the ministry. This plan was debated in the assembly at considerable length, but in May, 1737, it was adopted with some 8 amendment. The most important of the amendments was to limit Salisbury to twenty-five rights, because much land there had already been taken up and a good deal of what remained was unfit for cultivation. The proprietors were given permission to come together and arrange for settlement, as soon as they had given the customary ten days' notice and had obtained from a justice of the peace the proper warrant. A tract of land known as the Wara- maug Reserve, consisting of 22,214 acres, now the town of Warren, was divided equally between Hartford, Windsor, and the colony. Its lands were sold later and the town was incorporated in 1786. Goshen was the first town to be sold and the first to be settled. Though a few shares had been disposed of to speculators before the proprietors' meeting was called, its occupiers were largely the original purchasers. The latter held their first meeting at Litchfield in 1738 and by 1739 were on the ground, having received their town privileges in the same year. A tax on lands already laid out enabled them to erect a meetinghouse in 1740. The settlement of Canaan followed soon after the sale of rights had been completed in 1738, and so rapid was the influx of population that the assembly incorporated it in 1739. As most of the settlers came from New London—a long distance off"—the town asked the assembly commit- tee that was supervising the undertaking to be particu- larly watchful to see that non-resident proprietors did not send any settlers there who would be likely to become a burden on the town. Although the Cornwall proprietors were at first more energetic than the others in forwarding settlement—so that several families were building their houses there during the summer following the sale of the township— the right of incorporation was not granted until 1740. 9 The town suffered even more than the others from the evils of non-resident proprietorship, for in 1759 the record shows that out of the 23,500 acres that made up the township 11,500 were owned and unoccupied by sixty-three people living elsewhere, in twenty-four towns of the colony and in New York and Boston. The average holding of these proprietors was about 180 acres, with 821 acres the largest amount owned by a single indi- vidual. Kent was settled in 1738 and incorporated in 1739. Some of the proprietors made an attempt to obtain an abatement of the purchase price, claiming that the land was not worth the money, but the assembly refused to grant their request. Norfolk was offered for sale in April, 1738, but this had to be repeated in September as there were no pur- chasers. At the second sale only one man made a success- ful bid, although many said they would purchase, but refused to give bond and take their deeds. Then the assembly postponed all sales until further notice. At length in 1743 forty-six people from Windsor and Sims- bury offered to buy the whole township for £7125, but the request was refused. Four years later the assembly decided to try another auction, to take place at Hartford, starting at £200 a share. But again the attempt was a failure. Finally in 1754 forty-nine shares at £200 were sold at Middletown and in 1755 twenty-four families were reported as settled. In 1758 the town was incorpo- rated with forty-three families in residence. Salisbury or Weatogue had been occupied by Indians and Dutchmen long before Connecticut started to lay out and sell the township. The first grant there was made by the assembly to William Gaylord and Stephen Noble of New Milford, who in turn sold their lands to three New Yorkers, William White, Abraham Van Deusen, and 10 Roeloff Dutcher, in 1720. At this time it was not abso- lutely certain that Salisbury fell within Connecticut's bounds. These Dutchmen, joined by another, John Knickerbocker, settled soon after the purchase, and there, too, Thomas Lamb of Springfield came some time before the sale began. Andrew Hinman and Thomas Knowles of Woodbury made extensive purchases there from the Indians in 1729, covering as they supposed all the available land in the township. They claimed in 1731 to have laid out 2,900 acres at Weatogue and were ready to establish forty "Christian inhabitants" if the assembly would grant them the right to be a town. But the assem- bly would not agree. In 1736 they petitioned again saying that twenty-five people were already there and had no means of carrying on worship, bat the assembly made no answer to this petition. Meanwhile the assembly made several small grants of land in the locality to several men of distinction in the colony—Jared Eliot of Killing- worth, Elisha Williams, rector of Yale College, Martin Kellogg of Wethersfield, Robert Walker of Stratford—and to Philip Livingstone of Albany, New York. But Hinman and Knowles would not give up. They had offered in 1729 to quitclaim their Indian purchase to the colony on condition that 550 acres be set out for their own use, but the assembly had paid no attention to their letters. Now in 1736 they wrote again, saying that they had had an offer from "men of considerable estate," who would pay well for the land. They were willing, before closing with that offer, to give the colony one last chance, because they were eager for Connecticut's welfare and had no sinister designs. If the assembly would grant them 100 acres apiece, that was all they would ask for. The assem- bly accepted the terms. Thomas Lamb reported about the same time that the settlement had a gristmill, a 11 sawmill, an ironwork under way, and sixteen families, ten of whom were Dutch. He felt that the time had come for the award of town privileges. The assembly was not yet ready to take this final step, but went ahead with its plans for the sale of the remaining Salisbury lands. It appointed a committee to settle all claims and to drive off trespassers, and succeeded in disposing of all the shares—only twenty-five in number— some of them to purchasers already resident. The pro- prietors met in Salisbury, on their own ground, an un- usual event, and renewed the demand for town incorpo- ration. This was finally granted in 1741. Of the fifty-three rights allotted to Sharon forty-nine were sold at auction in 1738. Each right represented 700 acres, with the starting price of £2.00. Only sixteen of the original proprietors became settlers, but although few in number they were prompt in settlement, so that by 1739 twenty-eight families were reported on the ground and the town was duly incorporated. The inhabitants came from Lebanon, Colchester, Norwalk, and Stamford. This good beginning met with a serious check in 1740- 1741, when the town suffered extremely from the excep- tionally severe winter of that year. "So heavy were the stroaks of the Almighty and so dark is the Countenance of our Present State," wrote the town agent to the as- sembly, that the purchasers were forced to ask for an extension of time for the payment of their bonds. They had been wracked by a nervous fever, 120 people had been sick for from forty to a hundred days, their crops had been ruined, their cattle had died, and twenty of their number had been taken from them by death. A second petition, even more plaintive than the first, was sent in the following October: starvation was at hand; they had only enough food for one more week; if they 12 were required to pay on their bonds they would be forced to rent their lands to their neighbors and to others— rich merchants—who were "seeking the land but at their own price," and live as tenants of the property owners. Sharon, they said, had become "a withering branch of the commonwealth," which ought to be relieved of taxes of all kinds and be granted a loan without interest. They would offer their lands to the government as securi- ty, and if there was not enough money in the treasury to make such a loan possible, they begged the colony to have more printed. This appeal received a gener- ous reply from the assembly in the form of a loan of £200. Sharon was not the only one among the new and strug- gling frontier towns of the west to apply for relief as the result of this devastating winter. Agents from Canaan, Goshen, Kent, and Cornwall wrote the assembly that they were facing greater difficulties than they had ever known before. They had had to buy many extra pro- visions, their cattle had died, and all of them were in serious financial straits. They complained bitterly of the first purchasers who had made "merchandize" of their rights, to their own great advantage and the distress of the resident inhabitants, because of the large tracts of unimproved land, from which no adequate revenue was returned. They asked of the assembly the right to impose a double tax upon the lands of non-residents, a town stock of powder for defense against the French and Indians, and a copy of the laws of the colony. Strangely enough, the assembly negatived this petition completely. A second petition was sent in to the next session of the assembly, in which Salisbury joined with the others. The petition informed the assembly that an epidemic of measles had come to swell the list of disasters and that r3 many of the older towns had refused to wait any longer for their school money; that is, for the money due from rights in the towns, and were threatening action. As it would be very difficult for the inhabitants to hold their lands and pay lawful interest, they wanted the assembly to lend them the money at a low rate or else to loan the money directly to the towns that were demanding the interest from their town shares. They promised to pay all and more in time, and offered all they possessed as security. Again the assembly negatived the petition. It was not willing to bear the responsibility for the failure of the towns to pay their debts, but it was willing to do something in the way of offering relief. In 1742 it ap- pointed a committee to consider ways and means, and after several false starts worked out a satisfactory plan. The committee was to draw up a list of needy inhabitants, who were to have their bonds renewed at a moderate rate of interest. Those among them who possibly could were to pay their debts and those of the older towns that were insisting on immediate payment of their school money were to receive in equal proportions such as had already been paid, and where payment had not been made they were to receive the interest at the old rate. Cases of dire need were to be relieved by the committee at the expense of the colony. Thus aided the new towns succeeded in weathering the crisis. Had the assembly not granted this extension of payment on the bonds and a tax on the lands of non-residents there is good reason to believe that the seven townships would have received a serious, if not a permanent setback. With the settlement of the western frontier, all avail- able land in the colony was at last laid out in townships and all future towns, which were destined to be nearly one hundred in number, were to be formed by processes 14 of subdivision and conjunction within the areas of the parent communities. Four stages are to be noted in the settlement of the Connecticut towns. The first includes the coast towns and those which were located on the principal river, the Connecticut. These towns fall within the first twenty years of the colony's history. The second stage, covering the next fifty years, marks the beginning of the opening of the back country, when towns were started at some distance from the older towns, generally on the smaller rivers and sometimes twenty or thirty miles from the coast. The third stage is characterized by a filling-in process of the real background of the colony, effected partly by migration of groups as in the earlier stages, but more often by the artificial method of land purchase and land promotion. In this stage the group was losing its identity as a homogeneous body of neighbors or as a covenanted company of church members and was be- coming a fortuitous collection of purchasers, sometimes from the same quarter and sometimes from widely scat- tered quarters, of rights and shares. Though dates have no special significance in this connection, this stage covers approximately the first thirty years of the eight- eenth century. The fourth stage, during which the last of the lands of the colony were assigned, concerns what may be called the frontier wilderness of the colony, when lands were dealt with in speculative fashion and whole townships were auctioned off to the highest bid- ders. With the disposal of the "western lands" the spirit of speculation reached its height in the colony and the original conditions of settlement, such as appear in the coast and river towns of the last three-quarters of the seventeenth century, had entirely disappeared. From this time forward purchasers of new and unoccupied i5 lands had to look outside the colony, to Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont and even central New York and the further West, for the acquirement of virgin soil. The steady push of the Connecticut settlers up from the coast and out from the rivers had come to an end, the boundaries had been reached and the frontier of the colony had ceased to exist.

16 Printed at the Printing-Office of the Yale University Press