Norwalk After Two Hundred & Fifty Years

With the triumph of the war, Norwalk shared in the new impulse which came to the State and to the country. The war had been a great educator. Com- merce took on new enterprises. Private ventures were bolder and more successful. The battles for freedom had shown to the people the inconsistency of slavery, and all slaves born after 1784 were declared free. At this time there were forty-one slaves in Norwalk. With the year 1800, not all the losses had been re- covered, but the town was flourishing in a quiet way with a population of 5,105 people, including Wilton and New Canaan yet in the bounds of Norwalk. We come now to the Nineteenth Century stage. There are persons now living in Norwalk whose years have compassed nearly all of the last century. We have heard them tell of the wonderful changes in their day. This past is so near to us that we may not dwell upon it. In 1812 came the set-back of the embargo and of the blockade of our own harbor, but with the ending of the war in 181 5, the British ships left the Sound and the people were free again to work out the blessings of peace. In 1824 the first steamboat — the General Lafayette — was making its trips from New York to Old Well, when one could go to New York in one day and posi- tively return the next day. The railroad, whose whistle echoed the tune "The world's turned topsy-turvy," be- 149 gan the change of the center of gravity in Nor walk to the west end in 1848. We parted with New Canaan in 1801. It was named after the Canaan which in Bible times flowed with milk and honey, and doubtless because it was sup- posed that from its hilltops the people would be nearer the New Jerusalem than they could be at tide-water. Wilton became a separate town in 1802, and Westport in 1835. The year i860 brought the event of that century in our nation's history. Those who had been mourning the decay of patriotism and were piping their pessimistic strains because in the material changes and great growths of luxury the children of to-day had become degenerate sons of those noble sires who had left us their precious legacy of freedom, were amazed to discover how their eyes had been holden that they should have seen 'only the surfaces of life. The elders here well remember what answer was made when the Government called. The record of Nor- walk in that life and death struggle, which did not pause nor hesitate until the national unity was forever secured, and slavery abolished forever, was worthy of the men and women of 1651 and 1776. We are now standing before the questions of the twentieth century. In all this past local history the time could be spanned by three successive lives of eighty-three years each. This brings the fathers near to us, but how far away they are in the changes which the years have wrought. It has come to pass that we can no" longer isolate ourselves. One's home may be in Norwalk, but he belongs to the world and the world belongs to him. We are not only heirs to the people of 165 1 but we have the inheritances of all nations. When the century began which has just closed its gates upon us, John Adams was President of the United States with 5,000,000 of people, with the Mississippi River our western boundary, with a budget of receipts and expenses one-tenth that of the present city of New York. George the Third was king of Great Britain, and Napoleon Bonaparte the first Consul of the French Republic. The people of the fore- most nations of the earth were reading by candle light the very beginnings of the sciences of the chemical and physical properties of matter. Most of the work of the world was done by the muscles of men and horses, in- stead of by mechanical power. People traveled at the "*%*«*«» 148 rate of six miles an hour, where now we fret at forty miles an hour. Then an interview from Norwalk with a man at Boston would take three weeks, now we dis- patch it over the telephone in five minutes. The nine- teenth century has given us the railroad, the steamship, the telegraph, the photograph, photo-engraving, the sew- ing machine, the reaper, the mower, the tremendous power of machinery that works like intelligence, the de- velopment of manufactures, the electric light, the trolley car and the horseless carriage. It has given us the science of chemistry, the wonderful advance in scientific medicine, the miracles of surgery, the new domain of physics, the theories of light and heat and energy, the revelations of the spectrum analysis — the X-rays — the achievements of astronomy and the hypothesis of evolu- tion. It has given us archaeological unfoldings of people who lived and celebrated their anniversaries six thousand years ago ; the geographical, ethnological, bio- logical sciences with their new worlds for the coming generations to develop and to conquer. It has planted civilization in Japan and the seeds of it in China. It has builded universities for women that they may be scholars. It has brought us a new literature, a new library development with public libraries in every town not already in its grave clothes. It has been a strenuous century, a fruitful century in which every town and per- son has shared. We look out upon the century before us when the wide world is brought to our vision every morning, when people cross the oceans at the speed of 500 miles a day, as if they were ferries, when we flash our thoughts dry J shod over the bed of the sea on the. nerve of a wire, from continent to continent ; when one converses with an- other a thousand miles away as if they were face to face. In 165 1 the age was narrow and the people were narrow, but they were broader than their times. They turned their faces forward, leading their age. This gave them a work and they did their work. Ever to be remembered are the eminent Norwalk- . born sons who in this work have brought conspicuous honor to their native town. Thomas Fitch, governor, and Thomas Fitch, Jr., patriot soldier; Captain John Thacher, Rev. Abraham Jarvis, the second bishop of the Episcopal Church in Connecticut ; Prof. Moses Stuart, . forerunner in Oriental literature in this country; Dr. Jonathan Knight, the eloquent professor in Yale ; Rear- 144 Admiral Francis Gregory, of the United States Navy; Nathaniel Bouton, father of the National American Home Missionary Society; Hon. Charles H. Sherman, Judge of the Supreme Court of Ohio, and the Norwalk- born parents of Hon. John Sherman and General Wil- liam Tecumseh Sherman, men of world fame. Others who have gone out from us have also been founders of towns, so that Norwalk is also in Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, Missouri, Florida and California. As we rejoice to-day in our beautiful town of twenty thousand people — a suburb of the metropolis of this con- tinent within the distance of an hour — heirs of a thou- sand privileges of which with all their hopes the fathers never dreamed, it is not for us to forget how they blazed the way for our smoother paths. They did not recoil from grappling fearlessly with the duties and the evils of their time. We, their children, can best honor them by being as true to our times as they were to theirs. The day has not yet come for us in the outlook from our higher civilization to cease to honor the fathers and their principles, while we, for our part, are seeking to work out our own problems of destiny in honest duty, that our day may be as wholesome and true as it is free and great. On Tuesday afternoon, September the Tenth, the schools of the town assembled in the Armory. Abiathar Blanchard, Secretary of the Board of School Visitors, presided. The order of exercises was as follows: MUSIC, Star Spangled Banner. ADDRESS, "Yesterday, To-day and To-morrow." Miss Mary Merriman Abbott, President of the State Federation of Women's Clubs. MUSIC, Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean. ADDRESS, "Citizenship." Rev. Romilly F. Humphries. MUSIC, Fair America, Hail Columbia. ADDRESS, "The Men Who Made Connecticut." Walter Seth Logan, Esq., President of the Sons of the American Revolution. MUSIC, America. 145 POEM BY DR. JOHN GAYLORD DAVENPORT, Of Waterbury, Conn. "A SWEET AND HALLOWED TIME." We've come to a sweet and hallowed time When the past broods o'er the town, And wakes again the scenes and men Of conflict and renown. A dreamy light is on the bay And its rippling waters tell Of clumsy craft and homespun sail Which once they knew so well! The hills stand silent as if in thought, In their ancient robe of green, And lift their heads as if to speak Of the things that they have seen. There are murmured tales, if we understood, In the sobbing of the rills, And every vale and slope and wood With retrospection thrills! "Colonial homes" exult to-day In their heritage of years, And boast superior style, while each At modern structures sneers! And up in their attics, as I suspect, While there's no one there to see. All "Grandma's treasures" are prone to share In a burst of old-time glee! The great wheel says to the linen-wheel, "Let's honor these passing days," And they whirl in a jig while the snapping reel Keeps time to their merry maze! And the warming pan with its cymbal lid, Applauds as they chasse, And the footstove rattles its ashes cold In a musical sort of way! And the bellows flutter the blackened herbs That hang from the garret wall, And the boneset leaves and the motherwort Into the cradle fall! And the ancient churn that has rested long Its dasher lifts once more, 146 While the straight-backed chairs, join arms and skip O'er the blackened oaken floor! And the shell that used to sweep the fields With its clear-toned call to dine, Says to the brass-nailed, oxhide trunk, "Your style's as loud as mine!" And the pewter platters clap their hands, And the old blue pitcher dreams Of the time gone by when its nose was whole And it caught the cider streams! And grandfather's clock that stands apart, With its hands before its face, With a desperate effort strikes the hour With much of its former grace! 0 these are days, we may well believe, Of honest; and hearty mirth, With all that in far-off. golden years Can boast exalted birth!