Haddam Since the Revolution

By Eveline Warner Brainerd

What is known to-day as " the old meeting house," built soon after the Revolution, was so truly for the succeeding fifty years the centre of the town life, that it seems a fitting point from which to begin an account of Haddam's second century. It was planned before the division of the original society into the three of Haddam, Higganum and Haddam Neck. Boatloads of parishioners then came across the river and tramped through the meadows. Ox teams brought families from Johnson's Lane near Durham and from Turkey Hill near Killing-worth. In the sketch of the First Congregational Church, written by the present pastor, Mr. Lewis, there is a charming description of the structure. It stood at the head of Haddam street, crowning a hill ; surrounded by buttonballs ; " a stately building," of the dignified style of the time. Three stone steps, leading to the green on which it stood are all that now remain. Nothing of the building has this generation seen, save a few bits of the decorations, the " cookies," as the children called the mouldings that softened the terrors of the sounding board. It isan increasing regret that with the changes in the church body, it was deemed wisest to leave the old building.

The present church, finished in 1847, is pleasant and convenient, and it may be but the glamour of the past that makes the departed structure seem the more precious. In the old church it was that Watt's Psalms and Spiritual Songs were lined off, and the tuning fork held its final sway. There sounded the clarionet, the bass viol and the fiddle. To the old church, on the death of Mr. May in 1803, came David Dudley Field, whose descendants figure in every history of American jurisprudence, literature or enterprise. Dr. Field held three pastorates in the town, two to the original church, from 1804 to 1818 and from 1836 to 1844, when he became the pastor of the church then newly formed at Higganum. During all these twenty-seven years Dr. Field's efforts for the town were enthusiastic and effective, and his interest in the place and the people to which his earliest and his latest labors were given is evinced not alone in the faithfulness of his pastoral work, but in his three volumes concerning the region ; " History of Middlesex County," " History of the Towns of Haddam and East Haddam," and the "Brainerd Genealogy." Among those of his children born in Haddam, were David Dudley, the eminent jurist ; Stephen, long senior justice of the Supreme Court ; Matthew, who bore an important share in the successful laying of the first cable ; and Emilia, whose son, Mr. Justice Brewer, sat with his uncle, on the Supreme bench at Washington.

CONGRGATIONAL CHURCH, HADDAM.

The unpainted walls of the dwelling which the Fields first occupied, and in which David Dudley Field, Jr., was born, stood until five years ago, opposite the present schoolhouse. Further up the street was the second home, a square white house, built by Dr. Field, the site of which is yet made beautiful by the elms set out by the preacher. On Dr. Field's return for his second pastorate, he went to the new parsonage, beside the meeting house, the building noted in village an-nals as the result of the " cold water raisin'." In those days, neighbors gathered to put up the frames of buildings. The labor was made the occasion for merrymaking and New England rum figured in the entertainment. The parsonage was built for Dr. John Marsh, the clergyman between the two pastorates of Dr. Field. Dr. Marsh was famous as a pioneer in the temperance movement that later swept over the country. No rum could be expected at the "raisin' " of his parsonage, and many were the prophesies that the timbers would never be in place on such terms. The staunch minister won however and no stouter building faces the street to-day, than that of the " Ma'sh place."

Some twenty years ago, the four sons of Dr. and Mrs. Field, proposed a memorial for their parents. A park was contemplated on the site of the church where their father had preached, and below the parsonage, but the space was small and finally, not only that was bought, but also a larger tract opening in the centre of the village and running behind the "Brainerd Academy," in the founding and success of which, Dr. Field was deeply interested. Drives wind through the grounds. Young trees and shrubs mingle with the veteran growth that stood in the pasture lots before the park was planned. Frowning on the village, Isinglass Hill rises from the midst of the lawns. Toward the street, great boulders make its end a cliff. Behind the Academy, its steep side rises, clothed in dark undergrowth and slender trees that reach upward for the sunlight. On its summit two ragged pines keep watch. Every child of the town has gathered mica from the loose stones of its steep pathway and has crept to the edge to peer venturesomely over the ledges. Each, when older grown, has returned to look on the serene sweep of the river, the low, velvety island, and the distant hills as this height shows them ; to pick out from the mass of tree tops, the peaks of familiar houses and recognize by the grey stone hall, the ancient elms, the three graces of Haddam.

REV. DR. AND MRS. DAVID DUDLEY FIELD.

It was on one of the brightest of late October days that the famous brothers came back to the home of their boyhood, to give to the town the two beautified stretches of ground " to be kept as pleasure grounds for the people of Haddam in all time to come." David Dudley Field had delivered great speeches before great audiences, but never words more eloquent than were the few spoken on this seventy-fifth anniversary of his parents' marriage, "to those and the descendants of those whom they loved and among whom they dwelt."

From the one of early times the church organizations in the town have increased to nine with Swedish services at intervals. The New Lights, or Separatists, as they were first termed, formed the Baptist church of Shailerville. The Methodist church of Haddam centre originated in the " class " at Chapman's ferry, Shailerville, in 1815. The services have been many years discontinued, its last pastor, Rev. Henry Burton, being the grandfather of Connecticut's true poet, Richard Burton. At Haddam Neck, Ponset and Higganum, the denomination has buildings and is well represented. Started as a Sunday School in the home of Mr. Wm. C. Knowles, the present rector, the Episcopal church in eastern Ponset is now housed in a pleasant little structure and forms a needed center for the scattered households of the region. A Roman church building has been erected at the entrance of Higganum street. The Congregational church of Higganum, a plain white edifice, crowns Big Hill, whence the surrounding slopes of lawn and pasture and forest spread in a wide picture, and from the crest of which upper Higganum seems tumbled, willy nilly, into the hollow at its feet. The little white church of Haddam Neck turns its back on the world across the river in order to face its village street. There is not a point whence the Neck can be seen that does not show the tiny spire facing unsociably to the east, with no sign of excuse, for the Neck, from the west, looks one steep hillside with here and there a farm house set in woods. The longest of recent pastorates, however, have been in the original society and no account of the town is complete that does not mention these. Mr. Cook, known in theologic circles for his " Theory of the Moral System " and " Origin of Evil," served some few years after the division of the society. Later came Mr. James L. Wright, the beloved pastor, in memory of whose sixteen years of beautiful service, the present communion table was given. In 1871, on the death of Mr. Wright, succeeded Mr. Everett E. Lewis, whose earnest endeavor for the welfare of the town has been through all these eight and twenty years as unflagging as it has been broad minded, thoughtful and devoted.

Efforts for a town library were made as early as 1791, when a library society was formed. This was short lived but twenty-five years later a literary society owned eighty volumes. Other attempts to collect books have left traces in odd volumes bearing the marks of the different clubs, remnants of these small gatherings being now included in the twelve hundred books of the present free library. Originally the Association having the care of the library charged a fee of one dollar a year for its use. Since this fee was dropped, the circulation of the books has increased
tenfold, but all support must now come from gifts, and the funds are at present nearly exhausted. Aside from the amount needed yearly (one hundred dollars)
the collection has outgrown its present quarters and a building for its accommodation, making possible also a reading room, is the dream of those interested.

THE OLD FIELD PLACE.

(Birthplace of David Dudley Field, Jr.)

In ripping an old needle case, recently, the stiffening was found to be ancient ball invitations. One card decorated at the top by an olive branch and the word " Peace " reads : " Miss Zeruiah Brainerd is requested to honor the company with her attendance at the Ball at N. & J. Brainerd's Hall on Wednesday the 1st March, 1815, at three o'clock, afternoon." The windows of " N. & J. Brainerd's Hall " still look down on the village street from between the heavy hemlock boughs. The house, now that of Mr. G. A. Dickinson, is a fine specimen of the hip roof looking to-day as staunch
and comfortable as on that March afternoon when its walls echoed to the figure calls of Hull's Victory and the Virginia Reel. Another of the cards has this more elegant legend
" Anniversary Ball.

"The compliments of the Managers are respectfully proffered to Miss Zeruiah Brainerd, Soliciting her attendance at the Ballroom of Daniel Smith on Tuesday the 4th of July at 5 o'clock P. M. "Haddam, 28, June 1815."

THE MARSH PLACE.

Probably what is known as the old Smith house, below the school of the centre district, was the tavern of Daniel Smith, though no signs of such use remain ; but, two doors further down the street, stands a plain, peaked roofed dwelling, where in Revolutionary days, was a tavern, and here is still to be seen the bar window, such as is often still in use in English inns. At the upper end of the street, close upon the turnpike in its days of prosperity, but now, by the laying of the new road over Walkley Hill, left stranded in the fields, is the last of these hotels. Its front is weather worn, its roof and cornice show their age, but dreariest of all, from the upper story of the long ell, the four windows of the assembly room, show melancholy, never opened shutters to the passers by. With the coming of the railroad went the stage lines, and with them most of the call for such houses of entertainment, while within the last decade, enactment has taken from the town, the last encouragement to the business.

REV. DR. JOHN MARSH.

Half the suits for Middlesex County before the Superior Court were tried at Middletown, half at Haddam, the halfshire-town. With the growth of the city of Middletown, this arrangement has grown more and more irksome to lawyers and judges, till it has at length been done away. The upper story of the stone building.
standing where the turnpike bends sharply westward, held the room of the Superior Court. On the ground floor still beats that heart of the Republic, the town meeting, and here, with honesty or with dishonor with wisdom or with thoughtlessness, men settle the details of government and in them, unwittingly, its most far reaching measures.. But the courtroom above, where have spoken the greatest of Connecticut's jurists, is deserted. Here, full of pranks and raillery, remembered by his hostess half in admiration, half wrathfully, came Brainard, the young poet, calling the law his profession. Here came John Trumbull whose " McFingal " was to touch the nation's sense of humor, and here Zephaniah Swift, compiler of the first American law treatise, sat as judge. Senator Roger S. Baldwin who so magnificently defended his State against the attack of Senator Mason of Virginia tried causes in this room, and one who was then a little girl tells how she used to run to the window as he passed for a glimpse of his fine, white features and stately carriage ; Daggett, last of the top boot and knee breeches gentry, Wait, Hosmer and Storrs, Chief Justices of the State, were familiar figures. Roger M. Sherman, Leman Church, and more of recent date, McCurdy and LaFayette Foster are among the well known names on the records of these sessions.

ENTRANCE OF FIELD PARK.

A memento of the one execution that has shadowed the fair place exists in a time browned pamphlet which, one must confess, bespeaks as much of curiosity as horror. It is entitled,

A SERMON
Preached at Haddam, June 14, 1797
On the day of the
Execution of
THOMAS STARR
Condemned for the murder of his
Kinsman
Samuel Cornwall
By...

and here follows a vivid description of the manner of the deed.

Quarrying, which to the present time has been the principal business carried on in Haddam centre was begun on the west side of the river in 1792 by the brothers Nehemiah and General John Brainerd. The stone is like that of the Neck and
largely used for curbing, paving and foundations. In the village the house built by some of Mr. Nehemiah Brainerd's family, the town hall, the county jail, jailer's house and the academy are of the finely colored material and prove that it would be a satisfactory building stone.

In 1839 it was, that these brothers who had given business to the place gave it also its most valued possession, the Academy. With the dark side of Isinglass Hill behind, the steep, sunny slope to the street before, its grey stones were the pride of the place.

We peer through the foliage of heavy trees for a glimpse of its bare windows. Its halls resound to the footfalls of the chance visitor and the green desks stand in melancholy order awaiting occupants who never come. We turn away regretfully, feeling robbed of some good thing that our fathers enjoyed. The ca talogue of 184r shows the school in its days of prosperity. One hundred and eighty-five pupils are on the roll, from Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania and Mississippi, as well as from its own state. Its days were numbered however, and no faithfulness of teaching could save it. The high school was taking the place of all such simple private schools. To carry it on as is the preparatory school of recent years, called for more money than its endowment furnished, so a fine building stands unused and the triumphs and the pranks of the students are but stories for the reminiscent fireside.

CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH, HIGGANUM.

With the coming of the freight train the stone cutters moved to the sand by the Shailerville stations, and " General's Wharf" lies deserted. Tall elms grow from the carpet of stone chips and bits of flagging, and the sound of the water lapping the timbers is no longer mingled with the ringing of the hammers. Among the hills bluffs of broken stone peer out from the young woods and the wanderer comes suddenly on old quarries, like amphitheaters, where saplings cling to the roughly-hewn seats and steps. Arnold's, on the Connecticut Valley Railroad, opened for the convenience of the quarries on the west of the river, marks the passing of the original proprietors. During the ownership of Mr. Samuel Arnold, the business was carried on most successfully, giving large employment in the town. Mr. Arnold was a man of force and energy. For four terms he represented the town in the legislature and was a member of the thirty-fifth congress, serving on the committee on claims. Even a recent change of roof line, necessary to modern living, cannot rob the Arnold homestead, standing to the west of the Town Hall, of its position as the quaintest specimen of the old time structure to be found in the region.

Feldspar has been quarried in several parts of the town. Lately, in Mr. Gillet's quarry on the Neck, have been found what jewelers judge the finest of the tourmaline in greens, reds, pinks, blues, lilacs, lemons, yellows and colorless. The brown, green and black tourmaline had been found in other districts and not far from a feldspar bed on the west side of the river are these minerals in fine doubly terminated crystals. The town is known to scientists for its deposit of the rare chrysoberyl ; but many other uncommon stones and more usual minerals in abundance make it a Mecca to the mineralogist, and specimens from its hills are to be found in all the leading museums of the world.

FROM ISINGLASS HILL, FIELD PARK.

Near the opening of this century, in a shop beside the Ponset road three miles back from the main street, an apprentice was learning his trade of blacksmithing, with the finer work required for the forging of sword blades, and judging from the after skill of the apprentice, Hezekiah Scovil, whatever work was done in the little establishment was well done, well taught and well learned. When a young man Mr. Scovil went to New Haven, and there, from Eli Whitney, then a gun manufacturer for the United States Government, learned the welding of gun barrels. To the north of Cocaponset Brook runs another stream and, in the heart of its valley rises the round wooded hill, from which the hollow takes its name, Candle-wood. The steep hillsides now bear elms, maples, oaks and tulips, but when the first dwellers beside the brook built their rude homes, pitch pine clothed the slopes, and gave torches and flaring house lamps to the new corners. At the head of this tiny valley Mr. Scovil built his factory and here,
for many years, the principal business was the supplying of gun barrels to the various government arsenals. By the side of this first shop stands the wide brick house of the master. The woods are closing in on the home, the shop is gone, but the business, brought to its present prosperity by the sons who here learned every detail of the trade, has stretched further and further down the stream till the latest of its series of buildings looks on the main street. Some time before 1840, Mr. Daniel Scovil, travelling in the South was struck with the inferiority of the hoes then in use there. He proposed to his brother, Mr. Hezekiah Scovil, the manufacture of a hoe especially for the Southern market. It seems a commonplace scheme, yet, as one drives by the buildings, the oldest worn and blackened ; the next, beside a pretty pond, the hills rising steeply behind its low red walls and white cupola
the third group, neat offices and packing rooms ; the fourth and largest, with the well known look of the busy factory ; all linked by wooded stream, smiling pond and foaming dam, all bearing the marks of slow growth, thrift and precise neatness, it is easy to read into manufacture the charm of true romance. It was thirty years ago that the gentle seeming water grew through a long storm to a growling flood. The saw-mill dam, far up the stream, gave way, and the water tore through the valley taking down the lesser buildings in its path and carrying away one life with a frail old structure.

Since the death in 1881 of Mr. Daniel Scovil, the work has been carried on entirely by Mr. Hezekiah Scovil, the firmname remaining. The hoe without those methods of introduction and advertising now deemed necessary, supplanted the poor tools in use at the south and the Scovil name on a hoe is a guarantee of its worth. An old negro, criticising the tool on which he leaned, said to a Haddam man, then living at the south, " I wish I could git 'nother hoe such ez I hed befo' de war. It cum frum de Norf. I dunno whar, but it wuz a Scovil an' it was the best hoe ever I see." Lately another gratuitous compliment has strayed northward. This comes from the negroes on a fruit farm. The owner, tried in vain to introduce another hoe. "They were using the Scovil," he remarked in telling of the failure, " I could not get them to change."

N. & J. BRAINERD'S HALL.

Such a manufactory as this of Mr. Scovil's, prosaic though its output be, should have been the delight of William Morris. It bears in every department the stamp of personality, to which, in such establishments, we are unaccustomed. Every part of the work is known accurately to the chief. In every process he is the master workman. His men are trained under his eye. He, himself has worked out the machinery from its conception to its finish. Each autumn Mr. Scovil has been wont to spend a day in the woods, selecting trees from which to make trip hammer handles. Whenever fitting trees were found they were bought, the handles made and stored till six years should have seasoned them to their best estate. Little wonder, under management at once so detailed and so broad, that the hoe works have succeeded.

Higganum holds another large manufacturing plant ; that for the making of
farm machines, and now, principally of the "cut-away" harrow. The business has been carried on with many fluctuations of success for thirty years, in its most prosperous days, employing one hundred and fifty men. High among the hills, a short distance back of Higganum Hollow, lies the reservoir of this company, a pretty sheet of water, shut in so naturally by the soft slopes, that it would never be thought an artificial lake.

Of lessers attempts at manufacturing, there is early menrion of tanneries, cotton gins, carding machines ; while in lateyears, a button factory on Well's brook, cotton and hardware shops in Higganum, hardware and steam heater manufactories in Shailerville have had shorter or longer periods of activity.

In Haddam as everywhere in Connecticut the War of 1812 met with cool response. There was one Sunday morning of excitement when word was brought that the British, whose vessels were gathering in the Sound, preparatory to the blocade of New London, were about to attack Essex, fifteen miles down the river. General John Brainerd, hearing the news on his way to church, galloped down the turnpike, in his haste forgetting regimentals and arms. A company of Haddam men set bravely forth, but before the militia could gather, the ships on the Essex stocks were burnt, and the English soldiers had returned to their vessel. That was the only fighting in this section and the spot manned at Saybrook now bears the not complimentary name, Fort Nonsense.

THE TOWN HALL.

For fifteen years before the outbreak of the Civil war, its signs could be seen, mingled intricately in the dissensions over matters of church, school, temperance and local politics. When the final test came, nobly did the little town respond. Many Haddam men joined the army at New Haven or Middletown, but ninety-four enlisted directly from the town, fifteen of these not living to see peace. One Haddam boy, born in the house beside which the Revolutionary troops rested, achieved special distinction in the four years of contest. Alexander Shailer was to lead the First Brigade of the Sixth Corps that saved the day at Marye's Heights ; made the famous march to Gettysburg and gave men to every battle of the Army of the Potomac. General Shailer had served eleven years as an officer in the Seventh N. Y. and in '6r he was appointed Major and stationed at Washington. Soon he was made Lieutenant-Colonel of the 65th N. Y., and after the Battle of Marye's Heights was promoted to the rank of Brigadier-General. With the elevation in 1865 to the rank of Major-General came the commendation "for faithful and meritorious service through the war and especially for gallantry in the assualt upon Marye's eights, Fredericsbu rg, the battles of Gettysburg and the Wilderness." General Shailer has lived much of the time since, in New York, where he has held two important offices, that of fire commissioner and president of the board of health.

BRAINERD ACADEMY

The historical outline of one New England town must needs be very like that of its neighbors. Its personaliry is shown by its less prominent incidents and by its distinctive features, natural or as moulded by man's occupancy. Starting near where " Deacon Haule and Nathan White found an oak tree by the river side," two hundred years ago, one may drive on the bluff, close above the river, where it spreads like a wide lake after pushing past the narrow bend at East Haddam. By the pleasant homes of Tylerville, known to the railroad on account of the terminus of the East Haddam ferry, as Goodspeeds, one comes into Shailerville street. Across the fields and the water, between the Connecticut and the Salmon, spreads the low "Cove Meadow," set in a frame of gently sloping hills. Above Arnold's Station, the bright faced children of the County

GENERAL JOHN BRAINERD.

Home play in their grove of oak and chestnut or work in their tiny garden spots. Best loved of all the glimpses of river and hill that make Haddam's street a series of pictures, are those that show the Island. It has varied from a mile in length to its present size, the tides having added to or stolen from either end as suited their pleasure. But its charm never wanes and

its fringe of low bending elms and willows does not alter save as the seasons change it from youth to age and back to youth once more. After one glorious view of the river spreading northward till shut in by the Narrows below Middletown,

Higganum swings behind a hill, out of sight of the water and tries to make good the loss by showing the prettiest modern places in the town. As the square stone marking the Haddam and Middletown bound is reached, there rises, to the east, across the valley of one of New England's " white brooks '' "Shop-board Rock." It earned its name by an incident, which, whether true or legendary is worth believing. One of Connecticut's governors, living in the lower part of the State, being in need of clothes, set forth on horseback in search of the dilatory Hartford tailor. Between Higganum and Middletown, the man of State and the man of cloth met, and climbing to the top of the great rock, the suit was fitted.

Out from Tylerville, by four miles of climbing under interlaced trees by tangled undergrowth, between mossed rails and broken stone walls, one reaches Turkey ill. The scattered houses seem strangely isolated. Far in the distance Haddam Neck gives now and

SAMUEL ARNOLD	THE ARNOLD HOMESTEAD

then, a touch of color to the green landscape. Its little church, facing the unseen street, backs itself against the world with insistent independence. Where one fancies a parting between the lines of hill tops, suddenly appear, faintly showing against the distant background, tips of masts telling that at the instant, five miles away, a vessel is slipping past the village. Back to Haddam one may go down hill all the way, beneath another shelter of saplings and forest veterans. Mr. David Dudley Field used to tell how on the sandy brow of a hill a mile north of Beaver Brook, he, a barefooted boy, driving cows, met another barefooted youngster who called out in excitement, "Honey's licked." The news of Waterloo had come.

Choosing one of many drives, one may follow the woods to Ponset where the meadow land makes a level floor beneath the hills. By the hamlet of Burr District one reaches Johnson's Lane, and, looking from the point beyond the last house, gains a grey blue glimpse of the distant Sound. But, better than this, one may turn from the Ponset Meadow to the right up the steep and narrow road that leads over Gunger. Stony fields with now and then a tiny house where a few flowers blossom, make the landscape. The steepest tug of all, lands one on the plateau at the summit. Below, on either hand, lie the vales of Ponset and of Candlewood. Miles to the front, the unseen river parts closely ranging hills. Here and there,the white of some building, strikes against the dark foliage assuring that it is not primeval forest stretching on all sides to the sky line. By choosing one of Dame Fortune's good natured days, the height may be gained as the red sun sinks behind Candlewood's round top sending a fiery glow through the grove of small maples that bounds the plateau to the west. Hurrying down the opposite slope of Gouger, straight into the flaming sunset, then on through the night of the dark wood road, one comes forth at the valley's entrance inro the softened, many tinted lights of the long mid-summer twilight. It will linger lovingly while one loiters by the narrow meadows 'under Candlewood, till as the street is reached the fading brightness gives reluctant place to the early moonlight.

BIRTHPLACE OF HEZEKIAH SCOVIL.

The "forties" drew many Haddam men to the Pacific. Others later went to try the farming of the western lands that make these meadows seem but pigmy. The cities take the young men to-day. So the old roads, here and elsewhere in New England, show silent houses and tilled ground fast growing wild. The Swedes have taken many of the farms, by thorough, steady labor bringing to mind the simple lives of the earlier owners. These new corners, perhaps are to bring to the township a future of honest, homely toil and plain living like to its past or perhaps the beauty of the country shall crown the hills with summer homes. However this shall prove, the past of the township is honorable and its present, little known though it be, is charming and full of possibility.

The Connecticut Magazine December, 1899 Vol.V. No.12