Читать книгу The History of Fairfield, Fairfield County, Connecticut: From the Settlement of the Town in 1639 to 1818: Volume 1 - Elizabeth Hubbell Schenck - Страница 4

The Centennial commemoration of the burning of the town of Fairfield on the 8th of July, 1879, revived many recollections of interest in the minds of the oldest inhabitants of the town, and awakened a desire among the younger descendants of our colonial forefathers to learn more of its early history. It was for this reason that the author ventured to offer her Centennial Reminiscences of Fairfield to the public. These reminiscences had been published in the Republican Standard, of Bridgeport, Connecticut, about three months, when, at the annual gathering of " The Library Association of Fairfield," in January, 1880, the author was invited to continue and write the history of the town. About six weeks afterwards she received the following letter:

Fairfield, February 16th, 1880.

Mrs. E. H. Schenck, Southport, Conn.:

Dear Madam: — The undersigned, having read with interest your articles in the Bridgeport Standard, entitled "Centennial Reminiscences of Fairfield," and regarding them as a valuable contribution to our local history, respectfully tender to you this expression of their desire that you will continue the labor in which you are engaged, and when completed, that you will place its results in permanent and accessible form.

Jas. K. Lombard, Dwight Morris, Samuel Osgood, N. S. Richardson, Morris W. Lyon, Eaton W. Maxcy, Samuel Morehouse, A. N. Lewis, Isaac Jennings, John Williams, O. B. Jennings, Joseph Sheffield, John. H. Glover, John D. Candee, Samuel Glover, A. B. Hull.

To this letter the following reply was made:

Southport, Conn., February 17, 1880.

To Messrs. J. K. Lombard, Dwight Morris and others:

GENTLEMEN: — Your complimentary letter of the 16th, inviting me to continue the labor in which I have been engaged, and when completed to place its results in permanent and accessible form, has been duly received. The reception of so gratifying a testimonial from such a source is most encouraging, and I beg you, one and all, to accept my grateful acknowledgment of this kindness.

I accept your invitation with pleasure, and if I do not accomplish all that maybe expected of the historian of one of the most interesting towns in Connecticut, rest assured it will not be from any lack of diligence or research on my part.

Again thanking you all for your encouragement and good will, believe me,

Very respectfully yours,

E. H. Schenck.

In accepting the task of compiling the history of a town, rich with historic lore, the author was fully sensible of the labor connected with it; but she resolved to go bravely on and accomplish all that health, perseverance, research and industry, would eventually achieve. Fairfield is her native town, and in Southport, which is a part of it, she was born. For over two hundred years her ancestors have lived and died within the limits of the township. On the hill which summoned the inhabitants of Green's Farms, by the beating of a drum, to the meeting-house on the Lord's day, her honored father, the late Jonathan Godfrey, was born. Her great grandfather, Lieutenant Nathan Godfrey, of Colonel Whiting's company, fought the battles of Ticonderoga and Crown Point. On her mother's side, she is a direct descendant of Richard Hubbell and of Joshua Jennings, and on both sides of the house of the Couch family. The blood which nerved some of the bravest men and women of Fairfield to deeds of courage, endurance, and military and political achievements, runs in her veins. It therefore, has proved no reluctant task for her to write the history of the men and women who took part in the settlement of New England, and more particularly of Fairfield.

It is at all times interesting to study the history of our New England ancestry, which, like the seed of Abraham, has become throughout the vast domain of the United States, in numbers like unto the sands upon the sea-shore: and for their intelligence, sound religious principles, thrift, ingenuity, indomitable perseverance and industry, they are honored by all the nations of the earth. Therefore, to write of their political and military prowess, their religious views, their manners and customs, will prove interesting to all who love old Fairfield.

The opinion which many have entertained that the colonists of Connecticut were of an inferior stock, Judge Hollister, our late lamented Connecticut historian, most happily dispels. He says of them:

"The early planters of Connecticut were neither serfs nor the sons of serfs. So far from this were many of them, that they could trace their descent back through the line of knights and gentlemen of England by means of heralds' visitations, parish records, and county genealogies, to say nothing of those family pedigrees that were often transmitted, as heirlooms, from generation to generation, particularly in the line of the oldest son, to a remote day, and some of them to that wavering horizon where history loses itself in fable."

Fleeing, as our forefathers fled, from the religious intolerance of the mother country, they found but little time to think of the heraldic devices of their sires. Labor, and the honor of labor, with the freedom of worshiping the Great Jehovah according to their peculiar views, were the thoughts uppermost in their minds. Idleness alone was disgrace. Anticipating the hardships to be encountered in their venture to a new country, many of them, before they left England and Holland, made themselves familiar with the useful occupations of life. The plow, the anvil, the harrow, and the spinning wheel were to be found in almost every home of the New England planters; and every father made it a matter of conscience to teach his sons some one of the useful trades, which were indispensable to the founders of a colonial settlement.

Many of the colonists brought servants and slaves with them, yet such was the scarcity of laborers that, " with the exception of the clergy, nearly all the original proprietors toiled earnestly upon their plantations, and frequently in the same field with their servants." Even the pastor sometimes, when the harvest was plentiful and the laborers few, did not think it beneath his dignity to work in his own fields, and to lend a helping hand to his neighbors.

Brave women, many of whom were of gentle blood, who had known nothing of the hardships of life before leaving England, sang sweet songs to the low music of the spinning-wheel. " To labor," with them, " was to pray." And while the men worked in the field, and the women marked the moments of time as they passed by each turn of the spinning wheel, we can in imagination picture the pleasure with which they labored in the following beautiful lines:

" Labor is health! Lo, the husbandman reaping,

How through his veins goes the life current leaping!

How his strong arm in its stalwart pride sweeping,

True as a sunbeam the swift sickle guides.

Labor is wealth — in the sea the pearl groweth;

Rich the queen's robe from the cocoon floweth;

From the acorn the oak of the strong forest bloweth;

Temple and statue the marble block hides.

Labor! all labor is noble and holy;

Let thy great deed be thy prayer to thy God."

And the one great prayer of our Puritan forefathers, for which they cheerfully endured the severance of home-ties, the perils of the great ocean, and the still greater perils of a new and unsettled country, where the subtle Indian, and the wild beasts of the forest were ever on the alert for a new prey, was independence of political and religious thought — the struggle for which commenced in England in the days of Wickliff, and ended only when the Declaration of the Independence of the United States secured to all men the rights of " life, liberty and happiness."

It was no wonder therefore that " all labor," with them, " was noble and holy." In the grand forests, the fine meadow-lands, the granite quarries, and the clear blue rivers of New England, they foresaw fortunes which labor could not fail, in the passage of time, to give into their possession. And if for the moment they laid aside their titles, and, in a measure all social distinction, they, nevertheless, in many instances were careful to preserve their family genealogy and coat of arms. In the published genealogical works of Hinman, Savage, and other writers of New England, are to be seen the names and birth-places of some of the first planters of Fairfield, many of them accompanied with descriptions of their family coat of arms.

Hanging upon the walls of some of the inhabitants of the town, carefully preserved, are family heraldic devices, showing the titled ancestry of several of the early settlers of Fairfield. Family seals have been preserved in the Probate Office, some of which are very curious.

But the pioneers of Connecticut were among the bravest of men and women, of whom we, who bear their names, have cause to be proud, without even a trace of aught else to excite that natural family pride, which is inborn in every loyal heart, for while our forefathers labored with cheerful hearts, each man's rifle was by his side, the jealous eye of the red man of the forest being ever upon them, eager for plunder and murder. It has been estimated that when the first settlements were formed upon the banks of the Connecticut river, there were from twelve to fifteen thousand Indians within the present limits of our state. There were certainly many hundreds within the bounds of Fairfield. The dense forests gave a shelter and a hiding place to the bear, the weasel and the wildcat. Wolves and foxes in thousands glared from the thickets, and upon every favorable opportunity sallied forth to prey upon the cattle and sheep.

But fear seems to have been unknown to those brave men. The protecting love of God, to whom they alone looked for guidance, shielded them in a most extraordinary manner from the Indians, as well as from the wild beasts of the forest. Where the hand of the Great Jehovah guides He giveth courage for the undertaking.

The founders of New England were Englishmen. As a people they have remained remarkably pure in those physical and mental characteristics which mark them the world over, as a branch of the Anglo-Saxon race. It is a happy fact that in England to-day, an educated New Englander is received with the respect and heartfelt welcome which acknowledges him as a brother. Particularly has this been the case since the Southern rebellion, when New England proved to the world, as she did in the days of the Revolution, that she possessed not only a race of men of superior physical endurance and military capability to send into the field, but men of intellectual cultivation and mental vigor to carry out the aim of our Puritan forefathers, to establish a government which should give the privileges of a freeman even to the humblest sons of Africa. Another fact which distinguishes the educated New Englanders of to-day in England, is the pure manner among the refined classes of speaking the English language, which it is acknowledged they speak more clearly and correctly than the representatives of any other part of the United States. Their firm religious character, as representative of Puritan principles and education, gives them a distinct individuality not only in England, but throughout all Europe.

The first settlers of Fairfield were of English birth. In the colonial and town records they are called " Englishmen." In the Indian deeds, the Indian lands, and the Inglish or English lands are mentioned. As time passed they were joined by representatives of other nations; in fact, individuals of almost every nationality found their way to the fair fields of Uncaway. For many years, however, the planters of Fairfield, as well as those throughout New England, remained a remarkably pure and unmixed race. After the Battle of Dunbar and Worcester, Cromwell sent four or five hundred Scotch prisoners to Boston, some of whom remained in America, while others in time returned to their native country. The Scotch name of Dougal or Douglas Mac Kensey for whom Kensey's, Point was named, was for many years a representative of a well-known name of that nation in Fairfield.

In 1685, at which time the revocation of the Edict of Nantes was declared, about one hundred and fifty families of French Huguenots settled in Massachusetts, and scattered throughout the various settlements of New England. Again in 1719 one hundred and twenty Scotch-Irish families came over and settled in New Hampshire and elsewhere.

The barren soil of Massachusetts led many of her planters to settle in the river towns on the Connecticut, and at Fairfield, Stratford, and New Haven. In Connecticut they found all that their fondest anticipations had pictured. But the place of all other places to form a settlement, in the eyes of our forefathers, was at Uncaway and Pequonnock, the discovery and settlement of which, and the history of the men and women who took an active part in the colonial history of one of the oldest towns in the state, will always be dear to every Fairfielder.

The author has endeavored to give an accurate account of the historical events which for many years made Fairfield the shire-town of the county, and one of the prominent settlements of New England.

To state facts, not individual opinions, has been her aim. If she has in any way failed in carrying out this idea, she will at least have the consciousness of having made an honest effort in that direction, and fulfilled the promise to those who entrusted her with writing this history.

Happily, the author has neither been destitute of encouragement nor of liberal support, in the way of books and papers of value, from many kind-friends, among the most helpful of whom have been the honored state librarian of Connecticut, C. C. Hoadley, Brewster Hackley of Black Rock, the late Hon. Joseph Sheffield, of New Haven, the Rev. J. K. Lombard, of Fairfield, and the late lamented Rev. Dr. Samuel Osgood.

It has been by special request that the first volume of this work has been offered to the public, that the eyes of those who have nearly reached the age of fourscore years may read of the heroic deeds of their forefathers, in their earnest efforts to establish this great republic of the United States upon a basis of firm religious and political freedom.

Elizabeth Hubbell Schenck.