Norwalk After Two Hundred & Fifty Years

theory was that the people themselves were the church, and the meeting house was for the people. Without stretching their logic much, they came to think when they met in it, to transact town business, that this was church work. Accordingly, on the. 22d of May, 1655, after four years of meetings with Rev. Thomas Hanford, preaching where he might, they voted "to send after the na.yles for the meeting house with all speed." Their idea of speed, or at least their realization of it, may be noted from the fact that three years and eight months subsequent, the meeting house was yet only an idea. One cannot drive "nayles" into an idea nor into a vote. The meeting house, however, became a reality, "thirty foot in length and eighteen foot in width." As the years rolled on the wilderness was incessantly * invaded by these determined workers. Lots as they were f reclaimed were planted and fenced, orchards were begun, p. gardens were cultivated. The rude log cabins with their I °il:B.aPered windows gave ^way to Tramed houses with massive timbers, with two rooms on the lower floor and the great stone chimney in the centre, and little diamond- shaped glass windows. Those within the house were patient workers also. We read of no servants in the kit- chens. The "lady of the house" was cook, laundress, soap maker, candle maker, tailoress, dressmaker, shirt maker, stocking knitter and general repairer, and there were growing children in the family. The Indian bread and corn bread, the samp and hominy, the succotash — the art of which they had learned from the Indians — the bean soup or porridge, the hasty corn puddings for the table, repeated their invitations three times a day for seven days in the week. For meats there was wild game galore. Wild turkeys, partridges, quails, wild geese and pigeons in their season, and wild ducks, with bear meat and venison — which were abundant — helped to spare the lives of their sheep, swine and poultry. Wild straw- berries and blackberries, whortleberries and wild grapes were plentiful. The fish of the streams and the fish of the salt water, bluefish — and especially bass — were easily obtained, and the shellfish, to which we are accustomed, were found in rich abundance. Then there was the wool to be carded and spun, the flax to be rotted, hackled and dressed for their own weaving. As the cloth gave out, many a lad and man wore his daily garments, in the style of short clothes, made of the skins of animals ; made at home and often "fearfully and wonderfully made." 134 Preparing tea and coffee, however, did not add to the household burdens. There were neither of these in Norwalk for a hundred years to come, and among their vegetables, probably the potato, a rare vegetable as yet, had no place. Their pewter plates and dishes must be made to shine like silver, but they were spared the neces- sity of care for^ their forks, since they never saw one. Nor was much time used in millinery. Hoods and sun- bonnets went with them to the meeting house and home- spun was correct fashion. Calico was as costly as silk. I have not mentioned their special environments. Wolves were not dangerous, but they were troublesome. Bears would have been unwelcome neighbors but for the fact that they could be made serviceable. The In- dians were relatively few, numbering about six thousand in the entire State, or twelve hundred warriors. Those in Norwalk were ready for friendly alliance with the set- tlers. Some entered the service of these English far- mers, learning meanwhile the English tongue. One Norwalk Indian did this to good purpose, namely, Cockanoe, who taught his Indian language to the great Indian apostle Eliot. I quote Eliot's own testimony: "I found a pregnant-witted young man who had been a servant in an English house, who pretty well under- stood our language, and well understood his own, and hath a clear pronunciation. Him I made my interpre- ter. By his help I translated the Commandments and many texts of Scripture." Peaceable as the Norwalk Indians were, they were nevertheless Indians, and the weapons of our ancestors were ever ready in the field and in the house of worship. So far as the records show, the subject of education did not greatly add to the burdens of the people. One generation probably had to content itself with such in- struction as could be acquired at home. There may pos- sibly have been public instruction previous to the time of the first record of it, but twenty-seven years had passed before the vote is recorded, that Mr. Cornish was engaged "to teach all the children to lerne to read and write." It does not appear that the gentle art of spelling had then been discovered. The spelling of their records was according to the moods of the one who made words his agents, but would not submit to their being his mas- ter. Almost any combination would do, with a supreme indifference as to how the words came out, and if they were never twice alike, as they seldom were, it only added m to the interest in the way of a pleasurable variety. In 1686 Mr. Cornish was again "hiered for that cervice." There was a school law made by the General Court in 1644, for all the settlements in the colony, "That every township, after the Lord hath increased them to the num- ber of fifty households, shall forthwith appoint one to teach all such children, as shall resort to him, to read and write, and when any town shall increase to the num- ber of one hundred families, they shall set up a grammar school." You may imagine the school house of those days, twenty feet square — with a fireplace — the pupils seated on benches made of slabs, supported by straddling wooden legs set into augur holes. Few of the children had books. Blackboards they never saw. The ink usu- ally was made of soot and vinegar, and the ink bottle of leather. The main text book was the Bible, but they had lessons in ancient and general history so far as to learn, that "In Adam's fall We sin-ned all." There were in the settlement at this time one hundred and thirteen children. In 1681 the second meeting house, "forty foot square and sixteene foot between joynts," the great geographical monument of the town — as our Town House now is — was erected, and Thomas Barnum was "appoynted for to over see and keep good Decorum amongst the youth in times of exercise on the Sabbath and other Publique meetings, and the Towne doe impower him if he see any disorderly for to keep a small stick to correct with, oneley he is Desired to do it with Clemency." At the end of the first thirty years the one street, then but little more than a cart path, had not extended from the ceme- tery beyond the top of Earl Hill, and the Indian's trails were the white man's highways. We may remember also that during all this period there was not what Ave call a store of any kind in the settlement. It was the age of barter. We read neither of a physician, lawyer or dentist. At this period there were twenty-five settled towns in Connecticut, with twenty-one churches. In 1694 — forty-three years after' the settlement — the names of fourteen of the founders still appear on the re- cords. The Rev. Thomas Hanford had finished his min- istry of forty-one years and had died in 1693. Mrs. Han- 186 ford lived until 1730, and died at the age of one hundred years. When fifty years had ended, the little compact settlement had gradually expanded up the river towards the bridge and the mill — over the river at the "Old Well" and towards New Canaan and Saugatuck. The paths were being worked into roads rough and rocky. The children and grandchildren of the founders were now the social forces. With the year 1700 we may say that the pioneer stage had ended. I have spent time upon it, because the original stamp is not obliterated and the type is per- sistent. I meet men now in Norwalk whom I think the fathers would immediately recognize as the seventh or eighth editions of the original, the same text in modern binding. As the outward circumstances of the people gradu- ally improved, society took on another cast. The out- side world was coming nearer Boston, with now a population of 17,000 and New York a large village, were accessible. In 1721 the first newspaper was published in New York. Travel between Boston and New York now and then enlivened the isolated life of the town. Norwalk was getting out of the woods. In 1723 the third meeting house was erected on the same street still further north. Soon the town granted to the inhabi- tants of Saugatuck permission to have their own min- ister, and a little later the same liberty to New Canaan, and 1734 to the "Professors of the Church of England," freeing them from all obligation to the "Ancient Prime Society." The houses at this time were "indifferent" — gener- ally a story and a half in front and sloping to the rear to within six or eight feet of the ground. But if there were as yet no colonial mansions in Norwalk, there were grow- ing up some notable children. Thomas Fitch, grandson of the first Thomas — original settler — had entered the young Yale College, not vet out of its own teens, and was graduated in 1721. He studied theology, was licensed to preach, and did preach in his home church several rimes. For some reason he directed his atten- tion to law and civil government and became eminent as chief justice of the colony, Lieutenant-Governor of the Colony, and afterwards Governor for a period of twelve years, from 1754 to 1766. When the odious stamp act was 'being considered by the British Parlia- ment, and the news reached Hartford, the General As- 187 sembly ordered a document to be prepared, protesting against the measure. This was drawn up by Governor Fitch in a paper of great clearness, insisting upon the right of the colonies to tax themselves, and "shows," says Hollister, "an intimate acquaintance with the prin- ciples of the British Constitution and the rights of the subject tinder it that is unsurpassed by any paper origin- ating in any other colony during that exciting period." If Governor Fitch did not live to share in the Declaration of Independence he was yet one of the fathers of it.