New London, Connecticut

“ He is a king to whom the people pay some respect,—because they made him so.
The people of this town have the credit of inventing tar and feathers as a proper punishment for heresy. They first inflicted it on quakers and anabaptists.
New-London has a printing press, much exercised in the business of pamphlets, sermons, and newspapers. It is employed by the Governor and Company, and is the oldest and best in the colony. Newhaven, Hertford, and Norwich, also, have each a printing press ”

“ Generally speaking, the New London descendants in the nineteenth century are a not uncompromising leaven, scattered far and wide among many people and congregations whose religious traditions and predilections are, unlike their own, of an ecclesiastical type. Every radical leaven of a truly Christian character is destined to have beneficial uses, for which reason it cannot so much be regretted that the fate of the New London community was to be broken up and widely disseminated. ”

“ Notwithstanding the fact that the town, by description of the tourists, is in a state of agitation and excitement, on account of rumors of war with Spain and the religious differences and public disputes occasioned by the presence and preaching of the New Light evangelists, the citizens vie with the Rogerenes in kindly and interested attentions to the strangers, who speak highly of the hospitality of the people and describe New London as “a fruitful garden of God.” ”

“ The river Thames, coming down out of the hills and receiving the Quinnebaug, flows into the Sound twenty miles east of the Connecticut, and here is the pleasant city of New London, with about fifteen thousand people. Thus the early settlers renewed in the New England colony the names of old London and Father Thames, replacing the original Indian titles of Pequot for the town and Mohegan for the river. New London is built on a hillside, famous for comfortable old mansions and noble trees on the hilly streets, running down the declivity to the harbor, in the upper part of which is a navy yard. ”

“ The people of Connecticut have long been sensible of the many great impositions and disadvantages which beset their commercial system; yet, though sufficient power is in their own hands, they have no inclination [Pg 194] or resolution to attempt a reformation of it. The reason is, the mutual animosities and rancour subsisting between the dominions of New-London, Hertford, and Newhaven, each of which prefers the general ruin of the province to a coalition upon any terms short of conquest. ”

“ He interested himself warmly in the young colony of Connecticut, and in 1648, was one of the band of forty citizens, who came with their families and commenced a settlement at New London. For many successive years he was chosen governor of the colony, and will always be numbered among its brightest ornaments. The mansion-house which he built at New London, is still one of the most elegant residences in the place. ”

“ The district of New London shall extend from the east line of the said state of Connecticut, to the west line of the town of Killingsworth, and north to the south line of the state of Massachusetts; and shall also include the several towns or landing places of Norwich, Stonington, Groton, Lyme, Saybrook, Haddam, East Haddam, Middletown, Chatham, Weathersfield, Glastonbury, Hartford, East Hartford, Windsor, East Windsor, and Killingsworth, as ports of delivery only; New London to be the sole port of entry; and a collector and surveyor for the district shall be appointed, to reside at New London ”

“ Here are the New London County Historical Society Library, public library, hospital, parks, Connecticut College for Women, and Naval School of Instruction, United States naval station, electric street railroads, electric lights, National and State banks, daily and weekly newspapers, and water-works. It has woolen mills, silk mills, iron foundry, sewing-silk mill, cotton-gins, lumber mills, hardware works, copper tube works, oil-engine works, and printing press works. ”

“ The American people believed in their authenticity, which belief was confirmed during the war by the distinct favor shown for a while to Massachusetts, and by the hope, openly entertained by England, of separating New England from New York and the southern states.
[l] Manufactures in Connecticut (abridged from the U. S. marshal's report in the autumn of 1810, cited in Niles' Register, vi, 323-333) were represented by 14 cotton mills, 15 woolen mills. (By 1815 New London county alone had 14 woolen mills and 10 cotton.) ”

“ As toleration was more freely extended, oppression quickly ceased. The smaller and weaker sects [af] that appeared in Connecticut after 1770 received no such persecution as their predecessors. Among them the Sandemanians [ag] appeared about 1766, and from the first created considerable interest. The Shakers were permitted to form a settlement at Enfield in 1780. The Universalists began making converts among the Separatist churches of Norwich as early as 1772. The year 1784 saw the organization of the New London Seventh-day Baptist church, the first of its kind in Connecticut. ”

“ The eight sons of John Bolles are among the wealthiest and most 282enterprising citizens of New London; several own valuable lands in the very heart of the town, as well as farms outside; they are business men as well as farmers. Ebenezer Bolles is one of the richest merchants in New London. The moral character of these sons of John Rogers and John Bolles is without reproach. They are professing Christians of the most evangelical stamp. Their sisters are wives of thrifty and upright men. ”

“ It is easier to telephone in London today than it was ten years ago—almost as easy as in some little provincial town in Connecticut. Various minor human conveniences have been improved. The electric lighting is better. Some of the elevators—I mean the "lifts"—almost remind one of New York. ”

“ No man in New London County was at one time more noted than he; no one suffered so heavily from the arm of the law, the tongue of rumor and the pens of contemporary writers.
John and James Rogers, Jr., in the course of trade, visited Newport, R.I., and there first embraced Sabbatarian principles and were baptized in 1674; Jonathan in 1675; James Rogers, senior, with his wife and daughter Bathsheba, in 1676, and these were received as members of the Seventh Day Church at Newport. ”

“ Those at Flushing, Long Island, collected news of converts from New York as far east as the Connecticut River, while the Yearly Meeting at Newport, Rhode Island, heard from all members east of that river. The custom of exchanging yearly letters, giving the gist of these three annual meetings, was soon instituted. After the establishment of the London Yearly Meeting, the frequent exchange of letters with the colonial Quakers, begun in 1662, was reinforced by the exchange of English and American preachers. By similar means, the whole Society the world over was bound closely together. ”

“ This refers to the pew built for the Governor near the pulpit. Miss Caulkins (“History New London”) mentions a similar contention between prominent members of this church, under a somewhat earlier date, in which the case was carried to court for final decision.
Two of the three sons of Governor Saltonstall, Nathaniel and Gurdon, remained in New London. Rosewell, the eldest, settled in Blanford and died in 1738. Of him Mr. Hempstead says in his Diary:—“he was an Incomparable, well Disposed Gentleman, a good Christian exaplaryexaplary in his Living orderly and good in every Relation. ”

“ After the Great Fire, when most of the city was in ruins, it was at first proposed to rebuild it in an altogether different way, and Sir Christopher Wren was asked to prepare a plan for New London. If it had been built according to his drawing, we should see a very different London now. It would be a regular city, with broad streets all more or less similar, running parallel to one another; rather like modern Paris or New York.”
“But it isn’t a bit like that, is it? There are lots of little curly streets and narrow lanes in the city in our own time,” said Betty. ”

“ London laughs and sneers at New York when she thinks of her at all, which is, on the whole, not very often. If London esteemed New York of greater importance than she does esteem her, the derisive laughter might be keener and hence more salutary. Imagine America separated by only a narrow channel from Europe, and imagine her to contain in her chief metropolis, as she does at present, the amazing contradictions and refutations of the democratic idea which are to be noted now. ”

“ In Sir Walter Besant's interesting pages may be read the story of the early settlers—Briton, Roman, Saxon, Norman—who successively founded their infant settlements on this marshy site, and had here their primitive wharves, quays, and trading ships for hides, cattle, and merchandise. It is the river, more than anything else, that recalls the past history of London. For London, ever increasing, ever rebuilt, has buried most of her eventful past in an oblivion far deeper than that of Herculaneum. Nothing destroys antiquity like energy; nothing blots out the old like the new. ”

“ It has been a great misfortune for London that, when its Wall ceased to be the true boundary of the town, and when the people began to spread in all directions outside the walls, no statesman arose with vision clear enough to perceive that the old system must be enlarged or abolished: that the City must cease to mean the City of the Edwards, and must include these new suburbs, from Richmond on the West to Poplar on the East, and from Hampstead on the North to Balham on the South. ”

“ That alone was sufficient to differentiate London from any American city. We rarely see our soldiers. They are too few. I think what I felt most of all was that I could not feel anything very definite about so great a city, and that there was no use trying.
The first thing that took my attention in the stores was the clerks, but I may say the stores and shops themselves, after New York, seemed small and old. New York is new; the space given to the more important shops is considerable. In London it struck me that the space was not much and that the woodwork and walls were dingy. ”

“ Ludgate Hill is truly a rise of ground, but Tower Hill is only such a bad eminence as may gloomily lift itself in history irrespective of the actual topography. Such an elevation as our own Murray Hill would be a noticeable height in London, and there are no such noble inequalities as in our up-town streets along the Hudson. All great modern cities love the plain surfaces, and London is not different from Chicago, or Philadelphia, or Paris, or Berlin, or Vienna, or St. Petersburg, or Milan in this; New York is much more mountainous, and Boston is a Sierra Nevada in comparison. ”

“ It is an emotion which supports the American visitor even against the immensity he shares, and he is able to reflect that New York would not look so relatively little, so comparatively thin, if New York were a capital on the same lines as London. If New York were, like London, a political as well as a commercial capital, she would have the national edifices of Washington added to the sky-scrapers in which she is now unrivalled, and her competition would be architecturally much more formidable than it is. ”

“ Even if you make-believe that Southwark bears some such relation to London as Jersey City bears to New York (but the image is very imperfect) still New York, you are aware, can never domesticate the Hudson as London has domesticated the Thames. Our river is too vast, too grand, if you will, ever to be redeemed from its primitive wildness, much less made an intimate part of the city's life. ”

“ Every smoky town you see is a busy work-shop. The problem of the Connecticut man is how to do the most work in the shortest time, whether by means of a sewing-machine, a Colt, or a mitrailleuse. If I should object to any thing in him, it would be the hurry and worry, the drive, which impels him through life—and in this I do not imagine he differs from the average American man of business—until, like one of his own engines that is always worked under a full pressure of steam, he stops running at last. That is why we see so many old men of thirty, and so many premature gray hairs in New England. ”

“ So far as the union in name is concerned, it is scarcely worth consideration, for in any comparison which our national or local pride may institute between this metropolis and the other great cities of the world, its environment, whether in Long Island, Staten Island, or New Jersey, will always be included. In considering the population of London, no one ever separates the city proper from the surrounding parts. They are properly regarded as one homogeneous aggregation of human beings. ”

“ Yet it is, on the whole, not so much ourselves, as foreigners and colonials, who are and have been the harshest critics of London stones. The colonists of Melbourne, accustomed to their own straight, wide streets, are shocked at our narrow, tortuous, and inconvenient city thoroughfares; the denizens of New York, fresh from their own system of regular "blocks," their town of parallelograms, are amazed at London's want of "plan." ”

“ That is a city of a legal loveliness, of a beauty obedient to a just municipal control, of a grandeur studied and authorized in proportion and relation to the design of a magnificent entirety; it is a capital nobly realized on lines nobly imagined. But New York and London may always be intelligibly compared because they are both the effect of an indefinite succession of anarchistic impulses, sometimes correcting and sometimes promoting, or at best sometimes annulling one another. ”