THE TWO HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY

 OF THE SETTLEMENT OF THE TOWN OF

 NEW MILFORD, CONN. 

 June 17th, 1907. 

 [Illustration]

 ADDRESS DELIVERED BY DANIEL DAVENPORT, Of Bridgeport, Conn. 

 Press of The Buckingham, Brewer & Platt Co. Bridgeport, Conn. 

 ADDRESS

 DELIVERED AT NEW MILFORD, CONN. , JUNE 17TH, 1907, BY DANIEL DAVENPORT OF BRIDGEPORT, CONN. , ON THE TWO HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE SETTLEMENT OF THE TOWN. 

The settlement of New Milford began in 1707, exactly a century afterthat of Jamestown, Va. At that time, although Milford and Stratford atthe mouth of the Housatonic had been settled almost seventy years, andthe river afforded a convenient highway into the interior, for much ofthe distance, this place, only thirty miles from the north shore of LongIsland Sound, was still beyond the extreme northwestern frontier of NewEngland, and indeed of English North America. 

The inhabitants of Connecticut then numbered about fifteen thousand, settled in thirty towns, mostly along the shore of Long Island Sound, and upon the banks of the Connecticut and Thames Rivers. During thethirty years next before, a few families from Norwalk had settled atDanbury, from Stratford at Woodbury, from Milford at Derby, and fromFarmington at Waterbury. With these exceptions, hardly more than pinpoints upon the map, and a few settlements about Albany, N. Y. , thewhole of western and northwestern Connecticut and of westernMassachusetts and northern New York was a savage wilderness, coveredwith dense forests, and affording almost perfect concealment for theoperations of savage warfare. 

Though the northwestern portion of Connecticut was then a mostformidable and inhospitable wilderness, strenuous efforts were alreadybeing put forth by the Colony to encourage its settlement. For, strangeas it seems to us now, at that time, owing to imperfect modes ofcultivation and the difficulty of subduing the wilderness, the settledportions of the Commonwealth had begun to feel overpopulated. Twenty-five years before, the Secretary of the Colony had reported tothe Home Government, that "in this mountainous, rocky and swampyprovince" most of the arable land was taken up, and the remainder washardly worth tillage. 

This need of more land, and the protection from invasion which thesettlement of this section would afford the communities near the coast, and the innate love of adventure and desire to subdue the wildernesswhich have characterized the American people from the beginning, werethe impelling causes which led to the planting of New Milford. 

So pressing did this movement become that, though what is now LitchfieldCounty was then as remote and inaccessible to the rest of the Colony, aswere Indiana and Illinois to our fathers in the middle of the lastcentury, within forty-five years after the first settler had built hislog cabin and lighted his fire here, twelve towns had been settled andthe county organized with a population of more than ten thousand. 

In order that we may appreciate, somewhat, the broader politicalconditions under which the first settlers took up their abode here, which largely engrossed their thoughts and vitally affected them andtheir children for two generations, it is necessary, before taking upthe narrative of their actual settlement here, to advert briefly to thestate of affairs at that time in England, and on the continent ofEurope, and in the English, French and Spanish Colonies of NorthAmerica. 

By 1707, it had become apparent to the people of Connecticut that, soonor late, they must fight for the very existence of their charteredprivileges and natural rights, not alone the British Crown, but theEnglish people. The disposition of the people of England to reap wherethey had not sown had become very clear. In April, 1701, Connecticut wasnamed in the bill then introduced in Parliament to abrogate all Americancharters. She resisted with all her might through her agent, but itpassed the second reading, and would have become a law but for thebreaking out of the French War. Its principle was supported by themercantile interests and the great men of England. Then for the firsttime the people of Connecticut fully realized that their foes were tobe, not the exiled house of Stuart, but the English people themselves, and that though they changed their dynasties they did not change theirown nature. 

In 1707, the principal kingdoms of Europe and their colonies were ablazewith war. Anne was Queen of England. In that very year she attached hersignature to that long projected and most important constitutionalarrangement, the Act of Union between England and Scotland, which madethem one kingdom, the crown of which, by the Act of Settlement passed afew years before, had been forever vested in the person and heirs ofSophia, the electress of Hanover, the present reigning dynasty. Anne'saccession to the throne in 1702 had been followed by theacknowledgement, by Louis XIV, of the son of James II, the deposed andfugitive king of England and the determined foe of the rights of theColonists, as the rightful king, although in the Treaty of Ryswick, in1697, he had solemnly stipulated to the contrary. This act of perfidyroused the English to fury. The primary cause of the war, then raging, was the acceptance by Louis of the crown of Spain for his grandsonPhilip despite a previous formal renunciation. But the immediateoccasion was his espousal of the cause of the son of James II aspretender to the British throne, which enabled the English Government toform a great European alliance to wrest Spain from Philip and preventLouis from becoming the absolute master of Europe. 

The year before, 1706, had witnessed the humbling of the pride andambition of Louis by the defeat of his armies, at Ramillies by the Dukeof Marlborough, in Piedmont by Prince Eugene, and in Spain by LordGalway. Charles XII of Sweden had advanced to Dresden in Saxony, anEnglish and Portuguese army had occupied Madrid, and an attack of thecombined fleets of Spain and France upon Charlestown, S. C. , thenclaimed by Spain as a part of Florida, had been repulsed by the vigorand martial skill of the Colonial authorities. 

At that time, the valley of the St. Lawrence was occupied by about fiftythousand French settlers, imbued with bitter hostility towards thesettlers in New England and New York. Already the vast design of LaSalleto acquire for the King of France the whole interior of the Continentseemed to have been accomplished. While as yet the English werestruggling to secure a foothold upon the Atlantic seaboard, the Frenchhad explored the Mississippi and its tributaries to its mouth, and thewhole vast region drained by them, between the Alleghanies and theRockies, had been taken possession of by the French under the name ofLouisiana, and a chain of military and trading posts from New Orleans tothe St. Lawrence, admirably chosen for the purpose, had been establishedto hold it, and another chain was already planned to extend southwardalong the west side of the Alleghanies, to forever keep out the English. The French had been for fifty years hounding on the numerous tribes ofCanada and northern New England to attack and exterminate the settlersof New England. The conquest of Canada by the English was therefore anobject of the greatest political importance, and necessary for the peaceand safety of the colonies, and their future growth, and it continued toengross the efforts and exhaust the means of the colonists, until theirpurpose was finally accomplished in 1763. 

The people who settled here were entirely familiar with the hardships, dangers and horrors of Indian warfare to which they were liable intaking up their abode on this frontier. The horrible incidents whichattended the massacre of the inhabitants of Schenectady, in 1690, seventeen years before, during the previous war, and of the inhabitantsof Deerfield, Mass. , and other places in 1704, during the war stillraging, were household words throughout Connecticut, and had left anabiding imprint in the minds of the people on the border. Though theIndians, right about them here, seem to have been few in number andcomparatively harmless, they knew from their own and their fathers'experience, that their position was one of extreme danger, and that atall times their scanty and hardwon possessions and their lives wereliable to instant destruction, from unheralded irruptions by the moredistant Indian tribes of the North and Northwest, urged on by theirFrench instigators and allies. For the experience of the last seventyyears, from the time of the Pequot War, and during the subsequenttroubles with the tribes in southwestern Connecticut, and on LongIsland, and during King Philip's War, had fully taught them the craft, treachery and pitiless cruelty of the savages, as well as their capacityfor extensive combination among widely separated tribes. 

When Major DeRouville, in 1704, with his band of civilized anduncivilized savages, committed the atrocities at Deerfield, Mass. , thesuspicion of the Colonists that the French had instigated the formerIndian outrages became a certainty, for in this instance they openlyshared in them. Their object was, as I have said, to drive the EnglishColonists from North America, and substitute in their place their owncolonial system. For this purpose they fitted out hundreds of parties ofsavages to proceed to other portions of the English settlements, shootdown the settlers when at work at their crops, seize their wives andchildren, load them with packs of plunder from their own homes, anddrive them before them into the wilderness. When no longer able tostagger under their burdens, they were murdered, and their scalps tornoff, and exhibited to their masters, and for such trophies bounties werepaid. The French government in Paris paid bounties for the scalps ofwomen and children, as Connecticut did for those of wolves, and it notonly fitted out other savage expeditions, but sent its own soldiers toassist in the murderous work. Detailed reports of each case wereregularly made to the government at Paris by its agents in Canada whichcan now be read. This is true of every French and Indian war until 1763, and the fact was as well known to the settlers here in 1707, as it is tothe historical investigator of to-day. 

In the beginning of 1707, reports of an expedition by the French andIndians against some part of New England gave alarm to the Colony, andon the 6th of February of that year a council of war was convened atHartford, consisting of the Governor, most of the Council, and many ofthe chief military officers of the colony. Suspicions were entertainedthat the attack would fall upon western Connecticut, and that theIndians in this vicinity intended to join the French and Indians. TheCouncil of War determined that the then western frontier towns, Danbury, Woodbury, Waterbury and Simsbury, should be fortified with the utmostexpedition. They were directed to keep scouts of faithful men to rangethe forests to discover the designs of the enemy, and give intelligenceshould they make their appearance near the frontier. At the Octobersession in 1708, it was enacted that garrisons should be kept at thosetowns, and so it continued until after the close of the war in 1713. 

It was in the midst of alarms and dangers such as these that thesettlement of this town was begun. One of the first houses constructedhere had palisades about it to serve as a fort, which lasted many years, and in 1717 soldiers were stationed here for the protection of theinhabitants, and this was repeated several times afterwards. Every manwas a soldier. He was a soldier when he sat at his meals, a soldier whenhe stood in his door, a soldier when he went to the cornfield, a soldierby day and by night. 

At the time the first settlers arrived here there was a tract of clearedland on the west side of the river called the Indian Field. It extendedfrom where the river runs in an easterly direction south to the mouth ofthe little brook which runs along Fort Hill. It was not included in theoriginal purchase from the Indians, having been reserved by them intheir deed. It was, however, purchased from them in 1705, by JohnMitchell, and was conveyed by him to the inhabitants of the town in1714. This was of the greatest advantage to the first settlers. Itfurnished them a space of cleared ground, where each planter could atonce plant his corn and other crops, without the delay of felling thetrees. 

It is thought also that the ground where we now stand, and Aspetuck Hillhad been in a large measure cleared of trees by the Indians by burning, as was also Grassy Hill, two miles east of here. There appears also tohave been some meadow land partially cleared at the mouth of theAspetuck River. 

At that time the country about here presented no such appearance as itdoes now. The river then flowed with a fuller tide. With the exceptionsI have noted, a continuous forest overspread the whole landscape. Nothickets, however, choked up the ways through it, for the underbrush wasswept away every year by fires built by the Indians for that purpose. Winding footways led here and there which the Indians and wild beastsfollowed. The roots of the smaller grasses were destroyed by this annualburning over. A coarse long grass grew along the low banks of the riverand wherever the ground was not thickly shaded by trees. After theoccupation of the country by the white settlers this annual burning wasprohibited. In lieu thereof, the General Court early in its historyenacted that every inhabitant, with a few exceptions, should devote acertain time yearly, in the several plantations, to the cutting of brushand small trees in the more open forests for the purpose of allowinggrass to grow in such places, as during the summer the cattle rangedthrough the forests near the plantations subsisting on what grew there. It is said that in the early settlement of this town, all meadow landwas secured by clearing marshy or swampy ground and allowing it to growup with grass from the roots and seeds already in the soil. It was oneof the early difficulties in the Colony to secure grass, from want ofgrass seed. 

The forests about here abounded with bears, wolves, foxes andcatamounts, deer and moose, wild turkeys, pigeons, quail and partridges, and the waters with wild geese, ducks, herons and cranes. The riveritself was alive with fish and every spring great quantities of shad andlamprey eels ascended it. Strawberries, blackberries and huckleberrieswere extremely abundant in their season. 

The winters were usually of great severity. In 1637 the snow lay on theground three feet deep all over New England from the third of Novemberuntil the 23rd of March and on the 23rd of April it snowed for severalhours in Boston, the flakes being as large as shillings. The springswere very backward, the summers extremely hot and often dry. 

Upon the petition of the people in Milford, in May, 1702, the GeneralAssembly granted them liberty to purchase from the Indians a township atWyantonock, the Indian name of this place, and directed them to reporttheir doings to the Assembly. The next March they made an extensivepurchase of the natives, and a patent for the same was granted by theAssembly. In October, 1704, the Legislature enacted that the tract sopurchased should be a township by the name of New Milford, and that itmust be settled in five years, --the town plat to be fixed by a committeeappointed by the General Assembly. In October, 1706, the Legislatureannexed the tract to New Haven County. In April, 1706, the first meetingof the proprietors was held at Milford, and it was voted that the townplat and home lots should be speedily pitched and laid out by thecommittee appointed by the Legislature, according to its own bestjudgment, following certain rules laid down by the proprietors. Duringthat year and according to those rules, the town plat was laid out. 

It was originally intended to lay out the settlement on the hillimmediately east of the present village, from this circumstance calledTown Hill to this day. In point of fact, it was laid out on AspetuckHill, and consisted of the town street and sixteen home lots. The streetwas twenty rods wide. It began at the south end of the brow of the hill, or at the lower end of what was then called the "Plain on the Hill" andextended northward. Eight lots were laid out on each side of thisstreet, each lot being twenty-one rods wide and sixty deep. 

By the rules adopted by the proprietors, these lots were to be taken upsuccessively in regular order by the settlers as they should arrive. John Noble took the first lot on the east side of the street at thelower end, he being the first settler to arrive. John Bostwick took thelot on the opposite side of the street, he being the next settler on theground. This method was followed by others until there were twelvesettlers with their families, numbering seventy souls located on thisstreet in 1712. Of these twelve families, four were from Northampton andWestfield, Mass. , four were from Stratford, two from Farmington, andonly two from Milford. In 1714, the town street was extended southwardto the south end of the present public green. 

The first houses constructed here by the settlers were of the rudestdescription. They were built of logs fastened by notching at thecorners. They were usually from fifteen to eighteen feet square, andabout seven feet in height, or high enough for a tall man to enter. Atfirst they had no floors. The fireplace was erected at one end by makinga back of stones laid in mud and not in mortar, and a hole was left inthe bark or slab roof for the escape of the smoke. A chimney of sticksplastered with mud, was afterwards erected in this opening. A space, ofwidth suitable for a door, was cut in one side and this was closed, atfirst, by hanging in it a blanket, and afterwards by a door made fromsplit planks and hung on wooden hinges. This door was fastened by awooden latch on the inside, which could be raised from the outside by astring. When the string was pulled in the door was effectually fastened. A hole was cut in each side of the house to let in light, and, as glasswas difficult to obtain, greased paper was used to keep out the stormsand cold of Autumn and Winter. Holes were bored at the proper height inthe logs at one corner of the room, and into these ends of poles werefitted the opposite ends, where they crossed, being supported by acrotch or a block of the proper height. Across these poles others werelaid, and these were covered by a thick mattress of hemlock boughs, overwhich blankets were spread. On such beds as these the first inhabitantsof this town slept and their first children were born. For want ofchairs, rude seats were made with axe and auger by boring holes andinserting legs in planks split from basswood logs, hewn smooth on oneside. Tables were made in the same way, and after a time, the floor, abare space being left about the fireplace instead of a hearthstone. 

No sooner had the first settlers taken up their abode here than theywere called upon to defend the title to their lands in the courts of theColony. About thirty-seven years before, the General Court had grantedpermission to certain Stratford parties to buy land from the Indians andsettle a plantation at this place, and they had bought over twenty-sixthousand acres hereabouts. Apparently, however, no attempt was madetowards a settlement of the same until after the purchase of same tractfrom the Indians by the Milford parties in 1702, and the grant for apatent for the same to them by the General Court in 1703. Soon after thesettlers first broke ground here in 1707, a suit was begun against themby the Stratford people in the County Court at New Haven in May, 1708, and it was carried thence to the General Court. It was tried sixteentimes. The first fifteen times, the plaintiffs won on the strength oftheir Indian title. The sixteenth, the defendants won on the strength oftheir Indian title, the patent from the General Court, and occupation. This incident is particularly interesting because one of the plaintiffsand the lawyer in this great case was the famous John Read, one of theablest men and most remarkable characters which New England hasproduced. Some notice of him will not be inappropriate here, as he wasone of the earliest inhabitants of this place. 

He was born at Fairfield, June 29th, 1679, and was a brother-in-law ofGovernor Talcott. He graduated at Harvard in 1697, became a minister, preached in Woodbury as a candidate, and in various towns in Hartfordand Fairfield Counties and preached the first sermon ever delivered inthis place. He studied law, and when in 1708 the General Assembly firstprovided for the appointment of attorneys as officers of the Court, hewas one of the first admitted. He held the offices of Colony Queen'sAttorney, 1712-16, Deputy for Norwalk, 1715-17, Commissioner to settlethe boundary with New York 1719, and he was Connecticut's representativein the Inter-Colonial Commission in regard to Bills of Credit, in 1720. He removed to Boston in 1722, and became the Attorney General and amember of the Council of Massachusetts. He was by far the most eminentlawyer in New England, and was called "the Pride of the Bar, Light ofthe Law, and Chief among the Wise, Witty and Eloquent. " It was he whoprepared the instructions to Lord Mansfield, the counsel for Connecticutin the great case of Clark vs. Tousey, in which was discussed thequestion whether the Common Law of England had any force in Connecticutother than as it was adopted by the people of Connecticut. Hisexposition of the principles involved was most masterly, and it was thegreat authority upon which in a later generation the people ofConnecticut relied to sustain them in their opposition to the measuresof the crown in 1775. 

In a centenary sermon delivered at Danbury in January, 1801, the Rev. Thomas Robbins had this to say of him, "One of the early inhabitants ofDanbury was John Read, a man of great talents and thoroughly skilled inthe knowledge and practice of the law. He possessed naturally manypeculiarities and affected still more. He is known to this day throughthe country by many singular anecdotes and characteristics under theappellation of 'John Read, the Lawyer. '"

In 1712, the town was incorporated, which gave it the power to tax theinhabitants to support a minister, and the place became thereby anecclesiastical society. In March, 1712, the Rev. Daniel Boardman wascalled to preach to the settlers. In May, 1715, the settlers petitionedthe General Assembly that they might obtain liberty for the settlementof the worship and ordinances of God among them, and the Legislaturegranted them liberty to embody in church estate as soon as God in hisprovidence should make way therefor. On November 21st, 1716, Mr. Boardman was duly ordained as the pastor of the church of Christ in NewMilford, the total number of inhabitants of the town then being onehundred and twenty-five. The first vote of the town to build a meetinghouse was passed in 1716, but work was not commenced upon it until 1719, and it was not completed until 1731, after infinite struggling. It wasforty feet long, thirty wide and twenty feet in height between jointsand was provided with galleries, pews and a pulpit. Long beforecompletion, when it was first used for religious purposes, thecongregation was accustomed to sit upon its outer sills, which were ableto accommodate every man, woman and child in the town with a littlesqueezing. In 1713, the town voted to build for the minister a dwellinghouse forty feet long, twenty-one wide, two stories high, and fourteenfeet between joints. In 1726, thirteen years later, the house was stillunfinished. The first Sabbath day house was not built until 1745. 

In 1721, when there were but thirty-five families residing here, apublic school was ordered by the town to be kept for four months thewinter following, one-half of the expense to be borne by the town. Thechildren were taught reading, spelling after a phonetic fashion, writing, and the first four rules of arithmetic. In 1725, it was votedto build a school-house twenty feet long, sixteen feet wide, and sevenfeet between the joints. 

The first settlers crossed the Housatonic to their lands on the westside by fording it at a point near the mouth of Rocky River, about amile above the settlement, or at Waunnupee Island in times of very lowwater. In 1720 the town built a boat for the purpose, which was useduntil 1737 when the first bridge ever built across the Housatonic fromits source to its mouth was constructed at what is now the foot ofBennett Street. 

The settlers for many years crushed their grain by hand in mortars orcarried it to mill at Danbury, Woodbury, or Derby, and brought back theflour and meal. In 1717, John Griswold, under an arrangement with thetown, built a grist and sawmill on Still River, at what is nowLanesville. 

It is said that in 1713, there was but one clothier in the colony. Themost that he could do was to full the cloth which was made in the homes. A great proportion of it was worn without shearing or pressing. He livedat Woodbury, and thither the early inhabitants of this town resorted tohave their cloth fulled. People, to a very large extent, wore clothingmade from the skins of animals. They also wore wooden shoes andmoccasins, or went barefoot, although leather boots and shoes weresometimes used. 

The implements which they used in subduing the wilderness, their axes, saws, plows, hoes and scythes were of the rudest description. Theirhorses, cattle, sheep and swine we should now regard as of very inferiorquality. The same was true of the few vegetables they cultivated, and oftheir fruits, especially their apples. Turnips, squashes and beans werethe principal vegetables. Potatoes were not as yet cultivated in NewEngland, onions were not generally, and tomatoes were looked upon aspoisonous. Some of them owned negro slaves but worked the harderthemselves to make them work. 

They had little or no currency, taxes and debts being paid in produce. What they ate, what they wore, what they coaxed from the reluctant soilof these hillsides, cost them infinite labor. As was to be expected, astingy avarice was their besetting sin, which manifested itself in allthe relations of life. They were without newspapers, none beingpublished in the Colony until 1755. They had few books, the firstprinting press in the Colony not having been set up in New London until1709. They suffered greatly from malaria and other forms of sickness, asdid all the early settlers in the State. Medical treatment was poor anddifficult to obtain. The women went to the limit in childbearing, andthe burden of rearing their large families was awful. The art of cookingwas little understood. They had no stoves or table forks. The food wasserved in a very unsavory fashion, and was very indigestible. The peopletherefore had frightful dreams, and dyspepsia was very prevalent. Nocarpet was seen here for a hundred years after the settlement. Communication with the outer world was slow, difficult and rare. Onseveral occasions, owing to the failure of their crops and thedifficulty in getting relief from distant places little better off, theynearly starved to death. 

Truly the task which they had undertaken to subdue this wilderness, toplant here the civil, religious and educational institutions ofConnecticut, and to prepare this beautiful heritage for their childrenand children's children, was no holiday pastime, no gainful speculation, no romantic adventure. It was grim, persistent, weary toil and danger, continued through many years, with the wolf at the door and the savagein the neighboring thicket. 

Beside the physical evils with which they were beset, they had spiritualtroubles also. They fully believed in witchcraft as did all theircontemporaries, in a personal devil who was busily plotting the ruin oftheir souls, in an everlasting hell of literal fire and brimstone, andin a Divine election, by which most of them had been irrevocably doomedfrom before the creation of the world to eternal perdition, from whichnothing which they could do, or were willing to do, could help to rescuethem. The great object of life to them, therefore, was to try to findout what their future state would be. Said one of their preachers, "Itis tough work and a wonderful hard matter to be saved. 'Tis a thousandto one, if ever thou be one of that small number whom God hath pickedout to escape this wrath to come. " That we may get a touch of realityfrom those far off days, let me quote you a few lines from the saintlyThomas Hooker, the founder of Connecticut, and long the model for herpreachers. "Suppose any soul here present were to behold the damned inhell, and if the Lord should give thee a peephole into hell, that thoudidst see the horror of those damned souls, and thy heart begins toshake in consideration thereof; then propound this to thy own heart, what pains the damned in hell do endure for sin, and thy heart willshake and quake at it. The least sin that thou didst ever commit, thoughthou makest a light matter of it, is a greater evil than the pains ofthe damned in hell, setting aside their sins. All the torments in hellare not so great an evil as the least sin is; men begin to shrink atthis, and loathe to go down to hell and be in endless torment. "

The only test they were taught to apply to ascertain whether they werepredestined to suffer or escape this fearful doom, was in their abilityand willingness to conform their wills to the will of God as revealed inthe Bible. Accordingly as they had succeeded in this, they had areasonable assurance as to their fate, although no wile of the devil wasmore frequent than to falsely persuade men that their prospects werefavorable. To study the scriptures day and night to ascertain the willof God, and to struggle without ceasing to conform their wills to his astherein revealed, was therefore the great object of existence for them, not that they could thereby alter in the least their future state, butthat they might, if possible, find out what it was likely to be. 

Should this recital of their beliefs provoke a smile, our amusement willsoon be checked by the thought of the little progress which has beenmade in the last two hundred years, towards solving the same problem. The origin of evil, the ineradicable tendency of the human heart to sinand do evil, the mournful spectacle of ruin and desolation in the moralworld, and the future life are the same inscrutable mysteries to us asto them. If we have constructed or adopted a more comfortable theology, it is probably because we are less logical than they. It is perhapsbecause we have forgotten or refused to look at some things at whichthey did not blink. 

Then, too, the Lord was abroad in those days. Their thoughts were deeplytinged by the semi-pagan views with which the authors of both the Oldand New Testaments were imbued. When the thunder crashed, it was thevoice of an angry God that spoke. When the lightning flashed, it was thegleam of His angry eye. Benjamin Franklin was then but a year old, andelectricity had not become the packhorse of the world. The smiles andfrowns of nature in all her varying moods through all the days andseasons, which we ascribe to the operations of law, were to them thevisible tokens of the wrath or favor of the Almighty. On December 11th, 1719, for the first time in the history of the Colony, the northernlights were seen here. They shone with the greatest brilliancy. Theconsternation they caused was fearful. The people had never heard ofsuch a phenomenon. They considered it the opening scene of the day ofjudgment. All amusements were given up, all business was forsaken, andsleep itself was interrupted for days. Again, on the 29th of October, 1727, a mighty earthquake occurred, which shook with tremendous violencethe whole Atlantic seaboard. The people here believed that the Lord wasabout to swallow them up in His fierce anger. The women throughout NewEngland immediately discontinued the wearing of hoop skirts thenrecently come into fashion, believing that the earthquake was the signof the Lord's displeasure at the sinful innovation. 

Hardly had the first settlers here begun to build permanent homes forthe living, when they were called upon to provide resting places for thedead. The first person to be buried in yonder burying ground was achild, a girl, Mary, the daughter of Benjamin Bostwick. The next wasJohn Noble, the first settler, and the first Town Clerk. He died August17th, 1714. The town formally laid out the burying ground in 1716. Within fifty years three hundred had gone to rest there. 

There were no religious exercises at the funerals, neither singing, praying, preaching, or reading of the scriptures. This was by way ofrevolt from former superstitious practices. The friends gathered, condoled with the afflicted ones, sat around a while and then the corpsewas taken to the burying ground. After that the party returned to thehouse of the deceased, where much eating and drinking was indulged in, and if the weather permitted, outdoor games and horse races were inorder. The next Sabbath an appropriate funeral sermon was preached. Abereaved husband or wife usually soon married again. 

The meeting house was never heated, but the people, summoned by drumbeat, attended it every Sabbath, morning and afternoon, even in theseverest weather, although no Sabbath day house was erected here until1745. 

The sacramental bread often froze upon the communion plate, as did theink in the minister's study. The people worked their minister very hard, as was the case in all early New England communities. They went tochurch not so much because they had to as because they wanted to. Church-going was their principal recreation. They demanded long prayersand two long sermons each Sabbath from their minister, usually ondoctrinal points, which they acutely criticised. Services began at nineo'clock in the forenoon, and continued until five in the afternoon withan hour's intermission. Soldiers, fully armed, were always in attendancethroughout the services ready to repel any attack upon the settlement. 

It should be added, however, that with all their strictness in Sabbathkeeping and catechising, in family and church discipline, there wasgreat license in those days in speech and manner, much hard drinking, and rude merrymaking, due to their rough form of living. They were notwhat they wanted to be, nor what a loyal posterity perhaps longs tobelieve them. They had red blood in their veins. They were among themost enterprising men of their generation. They were backwoodsmen, thevanguard of that wonderful race which in two hundred years pushedwestward the frontier from this place to the Pacific, fighting with manand beast the whole way, and sowed the land with vigorous sons anddaughters. 

The congregational singing in those days must have been an interestingperformance. When the first settlers came to New England from the oldcountry, they brought with them a few tunes to which they sang all thepsalms and hymns. The proper mode of rendering these was through thenose. With the lapse of time and the advent of a new generation, thesetunes became jangled together in inextricable confusion. The practicewas for a deacon as leader to read a line of the psalm or hymn, and thecongregation sang at it as best they could, each one using such tune ashe chose, and often sliding from one tune to another in the same line orimprovising as he went on. Finally, in 1721, the Rev. Thomas Walter ofRoxbury, Mass. , published a treatise, upon the grounds or rules of musicor an introduction to the art of singing by rote, containing twenty-fourtunes harmonized into three parts. The attempt to supersede the oldPuritan tunes and restrict the liberty of the individual singers metwith the greatest opposition and was long successfully resisted in allthe churches in New England, so tenacious were they of the rights of theindividual singer. It caused great dissension in the church at thisplace. Finally, in February, 1740, the church voted to half the time forthe next year, singing the old way one Sabbath and the new way the next, and in 1741, at a meeting specially called to settle the matter, it wasvoted thirty to sixteen to sing thereafter after the new way. 

No musical instruments were allowed in the meetinghouse. They hadnever seen or heard a church organ. But they knew that their fatherslikened its sound to the bellowing of a bull, the grunting of a pig, andthe barking of a dog, and had resisted its use in religious serviceseven to the shedding of blood. Nor were flowers allowed in the church. 

In those days in New England women were not thought to have minds wortheducating, and they were brought up in extreme illiteracy. Nevertheless, their natural wit, brightness, and good sense made them very agreeablecompanions of the superior sex. And their influence over their husbands, sons and brothers, was quite as great as that of their more cultivateddaughters of the present day. The refining, educating, stimulatinginfluence of the women had much to do in withstanding the tendency backto barbarism, which life in an isolated and new community led to. Thedebt which is owed to them is incalculable. 

As the descendants of those people assemble here to-day after the lapseof two hundred years, to commemorate their work and rejoice in all thestrength, beauty and order, now smiling around us in peace and plenty, which have grown out of what they began, and as we look back upon theircondition, trials and experiences, we are apt to imagine that their lot, contrasted with our own, was an unhappy one. Nothing could be furtherfrom the truth. They were a brave, hardy, thrifty, frugal, industriousand most capable people. Man for man and woman for woman, they wereprobably superior to those here to-day in faculty, and in the capacityfor healthy enjoyments. Their whole previous lives had inured them totheir experiences. They were the sons and grandsons of the originalpioneers of New England, and they had been born and reared in rudesettlements. They never indulged the delusion that this region was aland flowing with milk and honey. Before they came they knew that theywere to wrest their living from an uncongenial soil, to struggle withpenury and to conquer only by constant toil and self-denying thrift. Theforest would supply them with the materials for shelter and fuel and tosome extent with food and clothing. All the rest must depend upon theirown exertions. There was a pleasure in facing and overcoming the perilsand difficulties which they encountered, which those, more delicatelyreared who now live here can never know. Their individual helplessnessin the face of appalling obstacles to be met, but bound them closertogether in mutual helpfulness. Accordingly we find that their socialfaculties were highly developed. It may well be doubted whether the sumtotal of human pleasure among the whole five thousand inhabitants of thetown to-day is any greater than it was among the few hundred who settledit. Probably our own superabundance of good things has actually lessenedour capacity to enjoy, in comparison with theirs. Their simple tastesand homely joys amid their rude surroundings were probably moreproductive of positive pleasure and real happiness, than all therefinement and culture of our twentieth century civilization. 

It would be a pleasing and instructive task to trace the progress ofthis old town, from those rude beginnings to its present strength andwealth. But the limits of the time and subject allotted to me on thisoccasion forbid. It is the product of the labors of eight generations, who now sleep beneath its soil. They never could have foreseen thepresent. They never knew or thought of us. Each generation was busy withits own problems, tasks and experiences. As we look back upon them ourhearts are filled with gratitude for the results of their work. A cleanblooded, land-loving thrifty race, through their activities they escapedfrom the poverty of their beginnings and attained unto an almost idealabundance of the primal needs of civilization. Their physical conditionbecame probably as good as that of any other village community in theworld. Their experiences stimulated their intellectual life into fullactivity, and they bore their full share in the wonderful work whichConnecticut has done in the world. In all critical times in both Stateand Nation, the sons of New Milford, both native and adopted, have beenvery active and influential and one of them, Roger Sherman, performed awork which will last as long as this nation shall continue to be freeand independent or as long as the Constitution of the United Statesshall endure. 

We know that the past two hundred years are but the beginning of a longhistory of this town. We believe that as the years roll by, at the closeof each century of its life, the events of this day will be repeatedhere. What will be the lot of those who stand here, one, two, three andfour hundred years hence, to recall the origin and history of this town, we cannot conceive. Our hope is that it will be as peaceful, asprosperous, and as contented, as our own. 

Whatever it shall be, we expect that their desire to know what can beknown of that long vanished world, in which both present and future havetheir roots, will lead them to examine the memorial of what is said anddone here to-day. We are not more sure that the Housatonic will then beflowing than that they will share with us in affectionate interest inwhat has gone before.