Stamford, Connecticut

“ An old pastor of the First Church of Hartford writes to claim that that church was organized in 1633, and that the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary was celebrated in 1883. Stamford does not deny that the Hartford Church may have been organized in 1633, but says it was not in Connecticut at that time.
Hartford, Conn., has a public library of thirty-six thousand volumes, but it costs anybody five dollars a year to get books out of it, and there are only six hundred people in the whole city who care to pay that price for its privileges. ”

“ From Oundle I walked the next day to Stamford, a good, solid, old English town, sitting on the corners of three counties, and on three layers of history, Saxon, Dane and Norman. The first object of interest was a stone bridge over the Nen at Oundle. It is a grand structure to span such a little river. It must have cost three times as much as “The Great Bridge” over the Connecticut at Hartford; and yet the stream it crosses is a mere rivulet compared with our New England river. “The bridge with wooden piers” is a fabric of fancy to most English people. ”

“ A very different situation developed in Connecticut. The yearning for the strengthening of church government in the interests of a general improvement of religion was if anything stronger in that commonwealth; and a propitious hour for the inauguration of such a movement came when, in 1707, the most influential minister of the colony, Gurdon [Pg 52] Saltonstall, of New London, was raised to the governor’s chair. The following May the General Court issued the call for the famous Saybrook Synod. ”

“ Of the picturesque and interesting old towns in which the county of Lincoln is so rich, it may be questioned whether any can excel, or even equal, Stamford. Though unable to claim a life-long acquaintance with this delightful, old-world borough, the present writer confesses to have quickly fallen a victim to her charm, a feeling which time has only served to increase. ”

“ Everything in this street bears the marks of a town still in its infancy, but which, even in its infancy, enjoys a great prosperity.... Boston is just rising from the devastations of war, and its commerce is flourishing; its manufactures, productions, arts, and sciences, offer a number of curious and interesting observations.” (Brissot De Warville, New Travels in the United States of America, pp. 70–82.) Equally laudatory comment respecting the state of society in Connecticut is made by Brissot (pp. 108, 109) . ”

“ Hartford, substantial, well-bridged, many—steepled city,—every conical spire an extinguisher of some nineteenth-century heresy; so onward, by and across the broad, shallow Connecticut,—dull red road and dark river woven in like warp and woof by the shuttle of the darting engine; then Springfield, the wide-meadowed, well-feeding, horse-loving, hot-summered, giant-treed town,—city among villages, village among cities; Worcester, with its Daedalian labyrinth of crossing railroad-bars, where the snorting Minotaurs, breathing fire and smoke and hot vapors, are stabled in their dens ”

“ Our heroes must be taken from that which above all others was our heroic age. Should we thus commemorate the impetuous gallantry of Putnam, the noble death of Hale, the courtly eloquence of Johnson, the judicial power of Ellsworth? All these were sons of Connecticut, born upon her soil. No. She chose one born and bred to manhood in another State; not trained at her college, nor at her schools; not at any schools. She sought to put the form and features of Roger Sherman into marble, to show to all time what qualities and achievements the people of Connecticut hold in most honor. ”

“ It was almost dark when we October 2, 1848 reached Hartford, upon the Connecticut River, thirty-six miles northward of New Haven; where, sick and weary from the effects of exposure and fatigue during the morning, a glowing grate and an "old arm-chair" in a snug room at the "United States" were, under the circumstances, comforts which a prince might covet. Let us close the shutters against the impotent gusts, and pass the evening with the chroniclers of Hartford and its vicinage.
Hartford (Suckiag) , and Wethersfield, four miles distant, were the earliest settlements in Connecticut. ”

“ Connecticut, which was steadily rising above 20,000 in population in Saltonstall’s time,—though estimates vary,—was growing more rigorous in observance and creed in contrast to the strengthening of liberalism in Massachusetts. ”

“ Again, the committal of the political government to a particular type of religious polity and worship aroused antagonisms in the minds of men who hated the palest shadow of the principle that the religion of a prince or government must be the religion of the people. However tolerant toward non-conformity such a state may show itself to be—and none will deny that Connecticut rose to comparatively high levels of justice in this regard [4] —the favoritism of government puts dissent at a disadvantage ”

“ Apart from the tradition preserved by Henry of Huntingdon that the Saxons here defeated the Picts and Scots in 449, Stamford (Staunford) is a place of great antiquity. The Danes built a fort here on the north bank of the Welland, round which a town existed when in 922 King Edward fortified the opposite side of the stream. It passed again into Danish hands and was one of the five boroughs recaptured by Edmund Ætheling in 941. ”

“ No braver regiment ever went out from our city or State. Made up mostly of Hartford men, born and cradled under the very branches of the Charter Oak, we knew well what would be your history, and we watched with pride your firm and steady ranks, as you filed along these streets. As we followed with anxious eye the steamer winding down the Connecticut, bearing its precious freight, with the Stars and Stripes streaming in the wind, we felt a security and an indebtedness, which we now have all come to acknowledge. ”

“ I cannot but think, also, that those who have found, or think that they have found, an inimical design in any pleasantries in which I may have indulged while describing the customs and manners of by-gone days—have betrayed a thin-skinnedness, and an ignorance of the true glory of Connecticut history, when they imagine that her fair fame can be seriously tarnished by the fly-specks of certain customs—at no time without their vigorous opponents—and long since rendered obsolete by the march of improvement. ”

“ The Hazardville Powder Works, one of the greatest gunpowder factories in the world, are beyond, and also Thompsonville, a prodigious maker of carpets, and then the boundary is crossed into Massachusetts. Just north of the line, the Connecticut River sweeps grandly around in approaching Springfield, built on the eastern bank, and spreading for a long distance up the slopes of the adjacent hills. It is a busy manufacturing city, with sixty thousand population and an important railway junction, where the roads along the river cross the route from Boston to Albany and the West. ”

“ The comment of Backus touches the pith of the matter, as dissenters saw it: " Thus the civil authority in the uppermost religious party in their State, was to judge the consciences of all men who dissented from their worship." (History of New England, vol. ii, p. 345.) 2 Acts and Laws of the State of Connecticut, p. 418. 3 In September, 1818, by the adoption of the new state constitution, the long wearisome struggle was brought to an end, and State and Church in Connecticut were separated completely. ”

“ In October of 1635 a colony of sixty persons from Boston settled at Hartford, Windsor, and Wethersfield. Earlier [Pg 107] in the same year the younger Winthrop, son of the governor of Massachusetts, arrived in New England. Under his direction a fort was built at the mouth of the Connecticut. Such was the founding of Saybrook, named in honor of Lord Say-and-Seal and Lord Brooke.
3. To the early annals of Connecticut belongs the sad story of the Pequod War. The country west of the Thames was more thickly peopled with savages than any other portion of New England. ”

“ Sampson Occom, by the Charity of England, have joined in the same work.—To the General Assembly, and the Consociation of Connecticut, Dr. Wheelock and his associates are much beholden for their success in converting the poor benighted savages in the howling wilderness. ”

“ Governor Wolcott says, “was the first house erected in Connecticut.” The Dutch about the same time erected a trading-house at Hartford, which they called the “Hirse of Good Hope.”
It was with great difficulty that Holmes and his company erected and fortified their house, and kept it afterward. The Indians were offended at their bringing home the original proprietors and lords of the country, and the Dutch that they had settled there, and were about to rival them in trade and in possession of these excellent lands upon the river. ”

“ Their experiences stimulated their intellectual life into full activity, and they bore their full share in the wonderful work which Connecticut has done in the world. In all critical times in both State and nation, the sons of New Milford, both native and adopted, have been very active and influential, and one of them, Roger Sherman, performed a work which will last as long as this nation shall continue to be free and independent, or as long as the Constitution of the United States shall endure.
“We know that the past two hundred years are but the beginning of a long history of this town. ”

“ Thus has Connecticut, by contention and folly, impoverished and kept in obscurity the most fruitful colony in America, to support the fame and grandeur of Boston and New-York among the trading nations of Europe. When I view the less fertile soil of Boston, the conscience of merchants, the pride of the pretended Gospel ministers, the blindness of bigotry, and the mercantile ignorance of farmers, I forgive Boston, New-York, and Rhode-Island, but condemn Connecticut. ”

“ For many years, Connecticut was shrewd enough to steer clear of the disastrous inflation of paper currency which overtook her sister colonies. Many strangers were attracted by her prosperity, so that, notwithstanding frequent emigrations of her people, she trebled her population about once in twenty years all through the first century of her existence. [i] With this increasing population came, in the latter part of the seventeenth century, members of the Church of England, who settled in Stratford and in the towns adjacent to New York. ”

“ Cobb, The Rise of Religious Liberty in America, p. 243. but more largely to the degree of oversight of the religious life of the people, unusual even for Puritan New England, which the General Court of Connecticut exercised from the first. 1 In this connection it is to be observed that the impulses that lay back of the oppression of dissenters in Connecticut were not the same as those that shaped the situation in Massachusetts. The founders of Connecticut were out of sympathy with the theocratic ideal that prevailed in the mother colony ”

“ The Dutch settlers on New-York Island, Hudson’s [Pg 100] river, and the west end of Long Island, being subdued by Colonel Nichols in September, 1664, the royal Commissioners, after hearing the Deputies from Connecticut in support of the charter granted to that province against the Duke of York’s patent, ordered, in December following, that Long-Island should be annexed to the government of New-York, and that the West boundary of Connecticut should be a line drawn from the mouth of Mamaroneck river north-north-west to the line of the Massachusets. ”

“ Winthrop the
Younger, son of Governor Winthrop, of Massachusetts, commissioned by
these last, built a fort at Saybrook. Till the expiration of his
commission the towns immediately upon the Connecticut were under the
government of Massachusetts. Their population in 1643 was three
thousand. A convention of these towns met at Hartford, January 14, 1639,
and formed a constitution, like that of Massachusetts Bay, thoroughly
republican in nature. Connecticut breathed a freer spirit than either
Massachusetts or New Haven, being in this respect the peer of Plymouth. ”

“ Then we have a day’s drive, perhaps, of unsurpassed beauty, which no wire fence can enclose, as along the Connecticut River valley on the Vermont side with an unbroken view of New Hampshire hills, Moosilauke in full view, and the tip of Lafayette in the distance, the silvery, leisurely Connecticut dividing the two states and the green and yellow fields in the foreground completing the picture. No State Reservation or Park System can compete with it. ”

“ George Whitefield, in one of his sermons, gave them the following character: “I have found,” said he, “the people of Connecticut the wisest of any upon the continent; they are the best friends and the worst enemies; they are hair-brained bigots on all sides, and they may be compared to the horse and mule, without bit and bridle. ”

“ In Connecticut the legislature was in session at Hartford. It was like night in the streets of this city and candles were burning in the windows of all the houses. Men grew anxious and uneasy. As the darkness became deeper, the House of Representatives adjourned, finding it impossible to transact any business. ”

“ The tombs of the first settlers are held sacred, and travellers seldom pass them without the compliment of a sigh or tear. On one mossy stone is written,
“Here pride is calm’d, and death is life.”
In 1709, this town was honoured by a convention of contending independent divines, who were pleased with no constitution in church or state.—This multitude of sectarians, after long debates, published a book, called The Saybrook Platform, containing the doctrines and rules of the churches in Connecticut. ”

“ In all this, they gave evidence of the very noblest patriotism, and they have set for us an example which we have followed for two hundred years—an example which must continue to guide us in our government, if this grand development of Connecticut is to go forward to its highest possibilities. We must keep our foundations solid and build for the future. We must grow better as we grow older. Our lawmakers must be sincere and serious men. ”