F 104 .578 G7 1942 E FIRST CHURCH OF STAFFORD, CONNECTICUT KENDRICK GROBEL ~r ~~~~ ~ ' ~!{~ L~ DR. JOHN WILLARD'S DOORWAY Dr. Willard (pastor of the First Church 1757-1807) built this fine house about 1790 near the middle of the west side of Stafford Common. To-day it is the home of Mrs. Maude Smith. Photograph by Mrs. C. B. Pinney. HISTORY of the First Church of Stafford, Connecticut known as ''The Stafford Street Congregational Church" from its Birth, 1723, to its Death, 1892 -by- Kendrick Grobe!, Th. D. Pastor of the Congregational Church of Stafford Springs, Conn. Published by T he Women's Council of the Congregational Church, Stafford Springs STAFFORD SPRINGS 1942 Contents I Stafford Origins ....................................................... ···························- 5 II Two Pastors in Court ·················································-·······---········'········ 18 III Eli Colton ---------···························································-· ................................ 28 IV Divisions and Schisms ·----······--····················-------------··-··-···-·-················ 33 V John Willard, D. D.-----·-······------···--···-----············--·--·---··-·-·····-··········-····· 41 VI Low Ebb ----------·······-······--···-··········-································································- 49 VII Recuperation .. ·······-····················································-··-··············--·······-········ 56 VIII The Mills Bring Secession .. ·············-············································· 63 IX Retrospect 67 Appendix Pastors 76 Fragmentary List of Church Officers .................. 77 Members of the First Church, 1840 ........................ 78 Bibliography ........... ·····-································································ 81 Index ·············-········· ····-·····--········-········-··-···········································-·········-····- 84 CHAPTER I Stafford Origins In the eyes of the early settlers Stafford belonged to the back­ woods of Connecticut, because it could not be easily reached from either the sea or a large river. That is why eighty-three years elapsed between the first Connecticut settlements and the first official notice of Stafford. Thus neighboring Somers (then part of Enfield), being in the Connecticut Valley, received its first settlers about 1680. But the hills of northern Tolland County, (until 1785 within Hartford County), did not become desirable until after 1¥'00, when the lowlands were already pretty well settled. Ashford began to be settled about 1710, Tolland 1715, Stafford 1719, Ellington and Willington 1720, Union 1727. When this sec­ tion had been settled, the only large block of unsettled country in Connecticut was the still more rugged northwest corner, in the Litchfield Hills. Stafford's official history begins in October, 1718, but there were already settlers, or squatters, in Stafford before that, for the General Assembly provided for an investigation of their claims at the time the town was laid out *1. Several families appear to have lived here for some time before that. At least, the earliest vital records of Stafford record the birth of at least nine children before October, 1718, with no intimation that they were born elsewhere than in Stafford *2. Some, if not all, of these were among the families that Major James Fitch of Canterbury and Plainfield, "the Lord of the Mohegan Valley," had settled in Stafford before Feb­ ruary, 1716-1717 on his own initiative and without the approval of the government. Major Fitch and his father-in-law, Capt. John Mason, had in 1675 received a precarious title to a vast and vague territory in eastern Connecticut by the last will and testament of *1 Col Records IX 64 *2 Children were born to Richard Pomeroy 1709; David and Joanna Rood 1712, 14, 17; Daniel and Mary Col bourn 1715, 18; Israel and Rachel Fulsom 1716,18; Richard and Hepzibah ·Coomes July 1718. This would indicate a population of at least 18 before official settlement began. LR I 446 ff. THE FIRST CHURCH OF Joshua, sachem of the Moheagans, and son of the famous Sachem Uncas. Fitch considered Stafford his personal property. After a bitter controversy with the governor, Fitch humbly surrendered most of his claim to Stafford. Seven colony officers to whom Fitch had sold part of his right each received a grant of 250 acres in the rugged southwest corner of the town, near Soapstone Mountain. Fitch's son, Ebenezer, received a grant of 800 acres in very rugged territory somewhere along the north line of the town, perhaps Rocky Dundee. That grant was known for many years as the Great Farm. October 1-3, 1718, Thomas Kimberley, Surveyor of Hartford County, to which Stafford originally belonged, in company with three of the committee mentioned below laid out boundaries of a "township east of Enfield." At a meeting on November 19 the committee admitted John Howard and Daniel Pease as settlers. On November 29, 1718, a "Committee *3 Authorized and 1m­ powered by the General Court ... for the Granting and managing the sd township of Stafford" met here, fixed the location of Stafford Street, and determined the following conditions of settlement: The conditions and regulations upon which the Setterers and Inhabitants admited by the Committee are to have two hundred acres of Land a peace in the Town of Stafford as Declaired by the com­ mittee at their meeting in said Town november 29, 1718 first that every such setteler shall pay unto the committee seven pounds in good bills of credit at on or before the fiveteenth Day of may next Insuing 2-ly that within two years next comeing every setteler ad­ mited in sd Town shall build a dweling house upon the lott assigned to him by the committee not less then sixteen foot square with a chimney space and not less then six foot between J oynts 3-ly That every such setteler shall continue in said Town as a seteled Inhabe­ tant three year from and after the Expiration of This sd Two years 4-ly That all and Every of the sd settleres within the sd Two years and aliso within the sd Three years Being In the whole five years from the above Date pay their Respective pearts and proportions of all Town School and ministereal Charges within sd Town shall be agreed upon by The Majger pearte of sd Settelers To Be paid for Either or any of the sd Ends or uses.*4 *3 Consisting of Capt. Hamilton of Middletown, Esq., ·Capt. James Wadsworth of Durham, Esq., Capt. John Hall of Wallingford, Esq., Mr. Hooker of Farmington. Mr. Hezekiah Brainard of Hadam, LR I 47, II 257. *4 LR II 255. STAFFORD, CONNECTICUT page seven Thus, before the town was, a church was provided for-natur­ ally a "church of the standing order," the state-church of the time, which so nearly had a monoply that no single denominational name for it had yet been established. Not until a century later was the term Congregational fairly uniformly adopted. But the organiza­ tion of the Stafford Church had to wait five years, until the town could support a minister. The committee engaged Kimberley to lay out the Town. He first laid out, November 1718, twenty-two 50-acre lots on the Broad Street, as it was usually called, or "King's Street" as at least one deed calls it: *5 then ten more on the south side of what is now the Buckley Highway, also twenty grants in other parts of the town, double-sized to compensate their owners for distance from the still­ to-be-built meeting house. By Ma)t 1721 there were sixty-three "proprietors" of Stafford. Seven of them were officials of the colony, who certainly did nat settle here; one was the holder of the Fitch Indian claim; one was purely theoretical, the share of the future minister. The remaining fifty-four presumably did settle, of necessity, to earn their title to the land. Of these, there is at present no clue to the former homes of twenty-eight of them. The rest came from the following places: Boston area 7, Western Massachusetts 4, Windsor, Conn. 4, neigh­ boring towns of Conn. 6, other Conn. towns 2, Great Britain 2. If the colony of Stafford may be classified as either Puritan or Pil­ grim, it was more nearly the former. The town patent of 1729 names ninety-two proprietors, but most of the added men appear to have been politicians and speculators; at any rate few of them 5ettled here. The future minister's home-farm of 50 acres was probably chosen at the time of the first survey in 1718: the lot numbered 21 on the original survey, the last lot on the east side of the Street at the south end, the farm that for about a century has been known as "the Foster place." That lot was undoubtedly chosen for the minister that he might live close to the meeting-house, which the committee originally "appointed to be erected at the south end of the broad street." *6 *5 LR I 122, Dec. 1723. *6 LR II 257 page eight THE FIRST CHURCH OF The first town meeting on record was a proprietors' meeting May 19, 1720 to apportion meadow-land. The drawing was by lot, June 29, and "the minister" was given the first draw-by proxy, of course, since there still was no minister. The same meet­ ing directed the inhabitants "to Brake up and Cros Plow and fit for sowing with winter Cor(n) ... four Acres of land upon the minister lot"-and the following year it was "Voted that Benjamin Howard shall have that three acres of land Broken up on the minis­ ters lot three years and sd Howard is obliged to till sd land and leave it with sofiscent fence about it at the three years End and if the town see cause to take the land for the minister Before the three years is out then the sd Howard is to Resine it up the town Paying Resonable Rent for the land." "At the same meeting Israel Fulsom amd Sam'! Doolittle and Sam'l Bloggit was made choice of to make a pick whare to lay the ministry lot." This must have been some other portion of the 200 acres that were to fall to the lot of the minister as to any other settler.