Home

For, after all, gentle reader, cities of themselves, and, in fact, empires of themselves, are nothing without an historian.

--- Washington Irving, Knickerbocker's History of New York, 1809

History, n. An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.

--- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary, 1906.

 

1. Henry Smith, Puritan Preacher.

    The Reverend Henry Smith arrived in New England in 1635 or 1636 (or 1637), when he was about 48 years old. He was, according to the genealogist Henry Stiles, the first settled pastor at Wethersfield CT. Stiles says:

In 1641, after [Peter] Prudden, [Roger] Sherman and [Richard] Denton had, one after another, ministered to the people, and had each passed away to more quiet fields of labor, Wethersfield, for the first time, became possessed of a settled minister in the person of the Rev. Henry Smith, who is described as 'a gentleman of good family,' and one who, 'as the patriarch of one of the best sustained and accomplished families in New England, is entitled to our regard as a gentleman of uncommon culture, refinement and firmness.' With his wife and several small children, he is supposed to have arrived [in Wethersfield ]in 1639, if not earlier --- probably from Charlestown, Mass., where he had arrived in 1637, from England.

    There was at least one other Henry Smith who came from Old to New England in the Great Migration with John Winthrop's fleet in 1630. Very likely this other Henry Smith was the one who married the daughter Anne (or Ann) of the noted merchant William Pynchon, who also came over with Winthrop's fleet. Winthrop was the administrative leader of the immigrants, not the captain of the fleet. He became the first governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and it was he who characterized the colony-to-be as a "Citty upon a Hill, the eyes of all people are uppon us". [1]

The ecclesiastical leaders of the exodus [to New England] were Puritan ministers like Thomas Hooker, Samuel Stone, John Warham, Ephraim Huit, and Henry Smith, who had been preachers of note in England. The majority of them were alumni of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, where Puritanism was rampant.

    Henry's son Samuel, in the letter alluded to before, says his father was a graduate of Cambridge. Jacobus and Waterman (the genealogists) say that he "may have been the Henry Smith who matriculated from Kings College, Cambridge, A.B., 1619/20; Fellow of Kings." The latter phrase, of course, refers to a position in Kings College (not Emmanuel, as Jones says, although perhaps he had positions in both?), and of course not to an associate of royalty (relations between royalty and Puritans were, to say the least, not good at the time). The genealogist Frederick Lewis Weis in his work on the colonial clergy of New England is more definite:

    The genealogist Henry Stiles has a lovely footnote in 1904 on the possible origin of our Rev. Henry (which contradicts Jacobus and Waterman). Stiles says one account of Rev. Henry holds him to have been from Blaby, co. Leicester, England, and that he was son of Erastus or Erasmus (the indecision is Stiles's) Smith who married (1) a Miss Bydd (could it have been Byrd?), and (2) about 1576, Margaret Cecil, daughter of William Cecil, Lord Burleigh, Elizabeth I's prime minister, and widow of Roger Case (or Cave)(or Carr). Presumably Henry's mother was the mysterious Miss Bydd, and not Margaret Cecil.

How many months was she in prison? Was the jailer's son the father of the child? She is, so says the historian John Putnam Demos, on the whole "a historical phantom, impossible to study, or portray, in three-dimensional detail."

..... that a devil was wont to do her many services. Her master blamed her for not carrying out the ashes, and a devil did clear the hearth for her afterwards. Her master sending her into the field, to drive out the hogs that used to break into it, a devil would scour them out, and make her laugh to see how he feazed [drove] 'em about." "Her first familiarity with the devils," says Mather, "came by discontent; and wishing the devil to take that and t'other thing; and, the devil to do this and that; whereupon a devil appeared unto her, tendering her the best service he could do for her.

In the time of her imprisonment, the famous Mr. Samuel Stone was at great pains to promote her conversion unto God, and represent unto her both her misery and remedy," apparently with some success, since "she died in a frame extremely to the satisfaction of them that were spectators of it."

    In a proof of the existence of witchcraft, in his work of 1689 called Memorable Providences, Relating to Witchcraft and Possessions, Mather puts great weight on the confessions of witchcraft made by Mary Johnson and some others. He says: "If such Confessions must be Ridiculed: all the Murders, yea all the Bargains in the World must be meer Imaginations if such Confessions are of no Account." But he was, in a way, consoled by the existence of witches. From the existence of witches he deduced the existence of devils, since "Those are the Objects that Witches converse withal." And, he says, "Since there are Witches and Devils, we may conclude that there are also Immortal Souls," since "Devils would never contract with Witches for their Souls if there were no such things to become a prey unto them."

    In the letter from Samuel, son of Henry, to Ichabod, son of Samuel, we learn that the Reverend Henry Smith of Wethersfield CT

..... came to this Land by reason of the Great Persecution by which the infamous Archbishop Laud and the Black Tom Tyrant (as Mr. Russell was always wont to call the Earl of Strafforde) did cause the reign of his Majestie Charles the Firste to loose favour in the sight of the people of England.

Concerning of ye earlie days I can remember but little save Hardship. My Parents had broughte both Men Servants & Maid Servants from England, but ye Maids tarried not but till they got Married, ye wch was shortly, for there was great scarcity of Women in ye Colonies. Ye men did abide better. Onne of em had married onne of my Mother's Maids & they did come with us to Weathersfield, to our grate Comforte for some years, untill they had manny littel onnes of theire Owne. I do well remember ye Face & Figure of my Honoured Father. He was 5 foote, 10 inches talle & spare of builde, tho not leane. He was an Active as ye Red Skin Men & sinewy. His delight was in sportes of strengthe, & withe his owne Hands he did helpe to reare bothe our owne House & ye Firste Meetinge House of Weatherfield, wherein he preacht yeares too fewe. He was well Featured & Fresh favoured with faire Skin & longe curling Hair (as neare all of us have had) with a merrie eye & swete smilinge Mouthe, tho he coulde frowne sternlie eno' when need was.

Ye firste Meeting House was solid mayde to withstande ye wicked onsaults of ye Red Skins. Its Foundations was laide in ye feare of ye Lord, but its Walls was truly laide in ye feare of ye Indians for many & grate was ye Terrors of em. I do minde me yt alle ye able-bodyed Men did work thereat & ye old and feeble did watch in turns to espie if any Salvages was in hidinge neare & every Man keept his Musket nighe to his hande. I do not myself remember any of ye Attacks mayde by large bodeys of Indians whilst we did remayne in Weathersfield, but did oftimes hear of em. Several Families wch did live back a ways from ye River was either Murderdt or Captivated in my Boyhood & we all did live in constant feare of ye like. My father ever declardt there would not be so much to feare iff ye Red-Skins was treated with such mixture of Justice & Authority as they cld understand, but iff he was living now he must see that wee can do naught but fight em & that right heavily.

After ye Red Skins ye grate Terror of our lives at Weathersfield & for many yeares after we had moved to Hadley to live was ye Wolves. Catamounts were bad eno' & so was ye Beares, but it was ye Wolves yt was ye worst. The noyse of theyre howlings was eno' to curdle ye bloode of ye stoutest & I have never seen ye man yt did not shiver at ye sounde of a Packe of em. What with ye way we hated em & ye goode money yt was offered for theyre Heads we do not heare em now so much, but when I do I feel again ye younge Hatred rising in my Blood & it is not a Sin because God mayde em to be hated. My Mother & Sister did each of em Kill more yan one of ye gray Howlers & once my oldest Sister shot a Beare yt came too neare ye House. He was a good Fatte onne & keept us all in meate for a good while. I guess one of her Daughters has got ye skinne.

As most of ye Weathersfield settlers did come afoot throu ye Wilderness & brought with em such Things only as they did nost neede at ye firste, ye other Things was sent round from Boston in Vessels to come up the River to us. Some of the shippes did come safe to Weathersfield, but many were lost in a grate storm. Amongst em was onne wch held alle our Beste Things. A good many Yeares later, long after my Father had died of the grate Fever & my Mother had married Mr. Russell & moved to Hadley it was found yt some of our Things had been saved & keept in ye Forst wch is by ye River's Mouthe [Saybrook], & they was brought to us. Most of em was spoilt with Sea water and Moulde especially ye Bookes [Footnote by Juliana: 'My Father [Mr. Russell] hath one of these books --- The Vision of Piers Plowman. It is so ruinated with damp and mould yt no one can read ye whole of it'] & ye Plate. If this there was no grate store, only ye Tankard, wch I have, and some Spoones, divided amongst my Sisters, wch was alle so black it was long before any could come to its owne colour agen, [& Mr. Russell did opine yt had not been so it might not have founde us agen, but he was sometimes a little shorte of ye Charity wch thinketh no Evil, at ye least I was wont to think so when his Hand was too heavy on my Shoulders & I remembered ye sweetnesse & ye Charity of my firste Father ...]

    Such was life in the early days of Wethersfield CT, which is said to have been the first settlement by Europeans on the Connecticut River. In fact, Sherman Adams reports in the genealogical book by him and Henry Stiles that "The Rev. Stephen Mix, settled minister of Wethersfield from 1694 to 1738, and born in New Haven in 1672, was of the opinion that Wethersfield was the 'oldest town on the river.' " [4]

    The first serious settlers (or planters as they said in those days) of Wethersfield migrated to the region in 1634 from Watertown MA, led by John Oldham.. John Winthrop wrote in 1635 that "the occasion of their desire to remove, was, for that all towns in the Bay began to be much straitened by their own nearness to one another, and their cattle so much increased." In his edition of Winthrop's Journal, James Savage said "In this fifth year of the colony history [in Massachusetts] so sadly crowded was the settlement at Newton, that Watertown was not a mile and a half distant, nor Charlestown more than two miles."  Already a population problem!

    On the other hand, the New England historian William Hubbard "who having been born in 1621, could well remember the Connecticut migration" maintained that an "impulsive cause" which "did secretly and powerfully drive on the business" was a conflict of leading ministers, and that "Two such eminent stars as were Mr. [Rev. John] Cotton and Mr. [Rev. Thomas] Hooker, both of the first magnitude, though of differing influence, could not well continue in one and the same orb."

    Adams was careful to give a legal definition of "town" made in 1628 by Sir Edmund Coke: "It can not be a town in law, unless it hath, or in past time hath had, a church and celebration of divine services, sacraments and burials." This pretty well leaves out Indians and earlier European explorers who may have camped awhile on the River. Actually, Adams remarks: "That Indians either dwelt at, or frequented Pyquag, is very evident from their implements of war, the chase, domestic use, etc., which have been found on the plot which the settlers selected for their burying ground." Pyquag (or Pyquaugh; Paquiaug, Puckquiog, Pua-qui-auke, etc., meaning, according to Adams, "cleared land" or "open country") was an Indian name for the region which was renamed by the English first Watertown, and then soon after, Wethersfield.

It is to be remembered that, in all these land purchases [by Englishmen from various Indians], our forefathers seem to have acted in perfect honesty and good faith with the Indians. More than that, it is evident that they subsequently looked upon the former owners of the soil as, in a sense, their wards and needing their protection." So, as you see, the Indians had nothing to worry about as their lands were taken away after what they appear to have understood to be gifts signaling friendship rather than payments for real estate. Besides, a great percentage of the Indians in this region died in these times of diseases imported from Europe, to which the Europeans were on the whole immune, which resulted in much land being vacated by them. Numerous Puritans took this as a sign that God was on their side. For example, in 1634, commenting on the smallpox epidemic in New England in 1633, John Winthrop wrote in a letter that by this epidemic "God hath hereby cleared our title to this place," and in another letter that as "for the natives, they are near all dead of the smallpox, so as the Lord hath cleared our title to what we possess.

    In 1643, the General Court appointed a committee to look into the discontent at the church in Wethersfield. In April the committee suggested that Rev. Henry resign as pastor "if yt may be done according to God." Rev. Henry apparently declined the invitation. In July, the Court requested that the charges be put in writing. In November, the Court announced that most of the charges against Rev. Henry were mistakes. They furthermore fined Clement Chaplin 10 pounds "for divulging and setting his hand to a paper called a declaration, tending to the defamation of Mr. Smith." Also fined various amounts were Francis Norton and John Goodridge for signing Chaplin's declaration, Mr. Plum for "preferring a roll of grievances against Mr. Smith, and failing of proof in the prosecution thereof," and Robert Rose for joining with Mr. Plum.[5]  According to Savage, Francis Norton left no children, and there is no record of Clement Chaplin having left any either. Norton mentions a cousin John, by which he meant his nephew, and Chaplin's wife went back to England after Clement died, no children mentioned.

While the rule in New England pastorates was that the pastor was literally as well as figuratively the head of an obedient flock, which paid him all due deference, and followed his lead as sheep follow the piping of the shepherd, the pastors who successively essayed the charge of the church in Wethersfield were the unfortunate exceptions. In no sense could Mr. Smith have found his new pastorate a bed of roses. Besides the privations and hardships common to all pioneer pastors, there seems to have been a strong and most unusual element of turbulence in the membership of this wilderness church, for two preceding ministers had tried and failed to unite the members of the congregation sufficiently to secure a settlement, and the trouble did not immediately cease upon Mr. Smith's installation. Previous to or about the time of his settlement in Wethersfield the most prominent of the insurgents, under advice of the Rev. John Davenport and others, had removed to Stamford; yet the restless spirits who were left found enough to say against Mr. Smith's ministry during the next few years. There is evidence tending to show that he may have been too liberal in his construction of doctrinal views, and inclined to too great charity in matters of personal conduct, to suit the more rigid among the townsmen. In at least one instance matters went so far that the pastor was brought before the General Court on charges the nature of which is not now apparent; but it is recorded that fines which for that day were very heavy were laid upon certain individuals "for preferring a list of grievances against Mr. Smith and failing to prove in the prosecution thereof." From references to this, which appear in manuscript of about a century after this date, referring to this trial as a thing still remembered, it would seem that Mr. Smith was opposed to severity in church discipline, and also to the importation into the Connecticut Colony of the bribe to hypocrisy which was offered by the law restricting to church-members the right of suffrage in town as well as church matters; and that he also preferred to believe an accused man to be innocent untiol he was proved guilty, and even then did not believe in proceeding to extremities until after every gentle means had been tried in vain.

One cause of animadversion is said to have been that Mr. Smith had advocated the separation of a wife from a drunken husband who had frightfully abused her and her children. This seems to have been thought by some members of the congregation to indicate great laxity of moral principle on the part of the pastor; but evidently the majority of the people were with him on these and other disputed points, and so were his friends, Mr. Thomas Hooker, the beloved pastor of the church at Hartford, and Mr. Warham of Windsor. Another complaint against Mr. Smith was that he refused to listen to those who brought him reports concerning alleged infractions of church discipline, on the ground that many of these things were matters which lay solely between a man and his Maker. In the end Mr. Smith carried the church with him, and when he died, in 1648, he was sincerely mourned even by those who at one time had "despitefully used" him.

Mr. Smith is said to have been "a scholarly man of gentle birth and breeding, a persuasive preacher and a loyal friend."

    Henry Stiles intriguingly remarks that Clement Chaplin, Rev. Henry's chief calumniator. "was quite a large land-holder, and both he and Mr. Smith had lands allotted to them, on both sides of the River, in the general distribution of 1639." This brings to mind the extended debate among historians on the relationship between the spirituality and economic ambitions of Puritans, both in Old and New England. Did Clement by any chance have in mind getting hold of Henry's land if Smith could be drummed out of Wethersfield?

    Reverend Alonzo Chapin says that Henry Smith "died in 1648, grieved and wearied with the burdens of the world," which may be compared with Henry's son Samuel remembering "ye sweetnesse & ye Charity of my firste Father."

    The genealogist Donald Lines Jacobus looked into the English origins of Samuel Hale [7] and decided that his family, which lived in Watton at Stone, Hertfordshire, "was one of the yeoman class and in comfortable circumstances." I take it that in this period, a yeoman was a kind of farmer who held his own land. Three siblings in this family migrated to New England: Samuel, his brother Thomas, and his sister Martha. The brothers started out in Hartford CT, but are said to have been later among the founders of Norwalk CT, though neither of them remained there either. Thomas eventually settled in Charleston MA with his wife, who (I quote Jacobus) "had been an apprentice girl, but the Rev. John Eliot assures us that they both lived ' well approved by the saints.' " This is where I will leave Thomas and his wife. Martha's husband was Paul Peck, who was a deacon of the First Church in Hartford, which is where I will leave Martha and Paul.

    Samuel Hale arrived in Hartford CT perhaps as early as 1634, and became one of its original proprietors, and as such was entitled to some land there. He was still there in 1639, at which time he owned at least one additional plot of land he was given for having served in the war against the Pequot Indians in 1636 and 1637. By 1643 he was living in Wethersfield. In the early 1650s, he became one of the founders of Norwalk CT, where he again obtained some land. In 1660, he returned to Wethersfield CT, to the part which became Glastonbury CT, presumably upon the occasion of marrying Mary Smith, whose father, as I've said, was minister there. Samuel and Mary took the former residence of Gov. Thomas Welles, who died in 1659. Rev. Alonzo Chapin remarked in 1853 about this place that: "It may serve to throw light upon the conveniencies [sic] of those days, to mention that this house had no stairs leading into the chamber, the second story being reached by means of a ladder. His wife's name was Mary." I don't know whether Rev. Chapin meant the conjunction of the mentions of the ladder and Samuel's wife's name to suggest something or not.

The Captain [speaking of himself in the third person] also said, WE MUST BURN THEM [capitals in the original]; and immediately into the Wigwam where he had been before, brought out a Fire-Brand, and putting it into the Matts with which they were covered, set the Wigwams on Fire. Lieutenant Thomas Bull and Nicholas Omsted beholding, came up; and when it was thoroughly kindled, the Indians ran as Men most dreadfully Amazed. And indeed such a dreadful Terror did the ALMIGHTY let fall upon their Spirits, that they would fly from us and run into the very Flames, where many of them perished. [8]

"Thus," says Captain Mason of the Pequots trapped in the burning Fort Mystick, "were they now at their Wits End, who not many Hours before exalted themselves in their great Pride threatening and resolving the utter Ruin and Destruction of all the English, Exulting and Rejoycing with Songs and Dances: But GOD was above them, who laughed his Enemies and the Enemies of his People to Scorn, making them as a fiery Oven: Thus were the Stout Hearts spoiled, having slept their last Sleep, and none of the Men could find their Hands: Thus did the LORD judge among the Heathen, filling the Place with dead Bodies!"  Some 7 Pequots were captured, and 7 escaped.

But Capt. Mason [speaking of himself] apprehending an exceeding great Hazard in so doing, for the Reasons fore mentioned, as also some other which I shall forbear to trouble you with, did therefore earnestly desire Mr. Stone that he would commend our Condition to the LORD, that Night, to direct how & in what manner we should demean our selves in that Respect; He being our Chaplin and lying aboard our Pink, the Captain on shoar. In the Morning very early Mr. Stone came ashoar to the Captain's Chamber, and told him, he had done as he had desired, and was fully satisfied to sail for Narragansett, which the next Morning we put in Execution." [9]

Cotton Mather says of him that on the breaking out of the Pequot war 

Mr. Stone it was who, attending the soldiers as Chaplain, kept their courage ever high and holy through pious mindfulness, -- who went to pray with them as they sailed, as they marched, in fatigue, in pain, and during the perils of a mortal struggle."

An English man stept into a Wigwam and stooping for a fire-brand, an Indian was ready to knock out his braines. But he whipt out his sword and runne him into the belly, that his bowels followed. Then were the Wigwams set on fire, which so raged, that what therewith, what with the sword, in little more than an houre, betwixt three and foure hundred of them were killed, and of the English onely two, one of them by our owne Muskets, as is thought. For the Narragansets beset the Fort so close, that not one escaped. .....

They [the English immigrants] have overcome cold and hunger, are dispearsed securely in their Plantations sixty miles along the coast, and within the Land also along some small Creekes and Rivers, and are assured of their peace by killing the Barbarians, better than our English Virginians were by being killed by them. For having once terrified them, by severe execution of just revenge, they shall never heare of more harme from them, except (perhaps) the killing of a man or two at his worke, upon advantage, which their Centinels, and Corps du guards may easily prevent. Nay, they shall have those bruites their servants, their saves, either willingly or of necessity, and docible enough, if not obsequious. The numbers of the English amount to above thirty thousand, which (though none did augment them out of England) shall every day bee, doubtlesse, encreased, by a facultie that God hath given the Brittish Ilanders to beget and bring forth more children, than any other nation of the world. I could justifie what I say from the mouthes of the Hollanders and adjoyning Provinces, where they confesse (though good breeders of themselves) that never woman bore two children, nor yet had so many by one man, till the English and Scotch frequented their warres and married with them.

William Bradford, about 1650: 

It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fire and the streams of blood quenching the same, and horrible was the stink and scent thereof; but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave praise to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them, as to enclose their enemy in their hands and give them so speedy a victory over so proud and insulting an enemy.

It was on Friday, May 20, 1637, that this memorable action was performed; and it was rendred [sic] the more memorable by this, that the very night before what was now done, an hundred and fifty Indians were come from the other fort unto this, with a purpose to go out with all speed unto the destruction of some English town; whereas they were now suddenly destroy'd themselves; and in a little more than one hour, five or six hundred of these barbarians were dismissed from a world that was burderned with them; not more than seven or eight persons escaping of all that multitude.

It had been previously concluded not to burn the fort, but to destroy the enemy, and take the plunder; but the captain [Mason] afterwards found it the only expedient to obtain the victory, and save his men. Thus parents and children, the sannup [married man] and squaw, the old man and the babe, perished in promiscuous ruin.

John S. C. Abbott, 1857: 

The heat [as the Pequot fort on the Mystic river burned] became so intense and the smoke so sothering that the English were compelled to retire outside of the fort. But they surrounded the flaming fortress, and every Indian who attempted to escape was shot. In one short hour the awful deed was accomplished. The whole interior of the fort was in ashes, and all the inmates were destroyed with the exception of seven only who escaped, and seven who were taken captives. The English knew that at a short distance from them there was another fort filled with Pequot warriors. It consequently was not sage to burden their little band with prisoners whom they could neither guard nor feed. They also wished to strike a blow which would appall the savages and prevent all future outrages. Death was, therefore, the doom of all.

John W. De Forest, 1852: 

But of its moral features, what shall we say? What shall we say of this indiscriminate butchery of both sexes and all ages, allowing none or almost none to escape, but consigning nearly a whole community to a death of unsurpassed anguish and horror? ..... My own opinion of the burning of the Pequot fort is, that it was a piece of stern policy, mingled with something of revenge, from which floods of argument could not wash out a stain of cruelty.

John Gorham Palfrey, 1858:

When, for urgent reasons of public safety, it has been determined to take the desperate risk of sending scores of men into the field to encounter as many hundreds, and to be set upon, if they should be worsted, by as many thousands, the awful conditions of the case forbid being dainty about the means of winning a victory, or about using it in such a manner that the chance shall not have to be tried again. At all events, from the hour of that carnage, Connecticut was secure.

Henry Cabot Lodge, 1881: 

The trouble with the Pequods belonged to Massachusetts and Plymouth; but while it was a peril to those colonies, it meant extermination and death to the settlers of Connecticut, where the savages were already murdering and burning on the outlying farms. The colonists faced the danger with stern Puritan courage. Their fighting men were mustered, and put under the command of John Mason, who led them against the stronghold of the Indians; and in the desperate assault upon the Pequod fort the men of Connecticut bore the heaviest share, and did more than any others to break the power of their formidable enemies, and give the land the peace of forty years.

The Pequot war in Connecticut grew out of the differences between the Dutch and English settlers. The English brought back the Indians whom the Pequot tribe had just driven away. The Pequots began the war by killing some English traders. ..... In 1637, John Mason, a trained soldier, at the head of a company of Connecticut men, with some from Massachusetts, marched into the Pequot country. At Mystic, Connecticut, just before daybreak, the Connecticut men surrounded the palisaded village of Sassacus, the dreaded Pequot chief. In the first onset Mason set the village on fire. A horrible slaughter followed." On the next page, Eggleston writes in a box: "Many of the white people sincerely desired to do the Indians good. ..... But even in trying to do the Indians good, the white men offended them. The chiefs and "medicine-men" of the Indians did not like to see their ancient customs treated with contempt, and their own influence destroyed by the new religion.

William Grimshaw, 1841 (in a textbook for schools): 

By extending their settlements, the English became exposed to serious danger. The Indians around Massachusetts, being feeble and unwarlike, and having received from the early settlers what they deemed an equivalent for their lands, gave no indication of hostility: but Providence and Connecticut had to contend with nations more numerous and powerful. Among these, the most considerable were the Naragansets and the Pequods. The latter could bring into the field a thousand warriors; not inferior, in discipline and courage, to any Indians in America. Foreseeing that the extermination of their entire race must be the consequence of permitting Europeans to spread over the continent, they applied to the Naragansets; requesting them to forget their mutual animosities for a season, and co-operate in expelling a common enemy. But the latter, with a refinement in policy, similar to that which deluges with blood the numerous countries of the Christian world, perceived, in this, a favourable opportunity of weakening, if not of totally destroying, an ancient rival: instead, therefore, of acceding to this prudent offer, they discovered the hostile intention of their neighbours to the governor of Massachusetts, and entered into an alliance with the English against them.

"More exasperated than discouraged by this treachery, the Pequods took the field, plundered and burned remote settlements, and attacked fort Say Brook; from which, when driven off, they retired to places deemed inaccessible to an invading enemy. The troops of Connecticut were soon assembled, and ready for the field: but the march of those from Massachusetts was retarded by the most singular cause that ever influenced the operations of a modern army; reminding us of the superstitious Spartans, who, when solicited to join the Athenians in opposing the arms of Persia on the plains of Marathon, made answer, that it was an established law with them, not to begin a march before the full moon. When mustered, it being found that some of the officers and many of the private soldiers were "under a covenant of works," it was declared, that a blessing could neither be implored nor expected to accompany the arms of such unhallowed men. The alarm became general; and many arrangements were necessary, to cast out the unclean, and render this little band sufficiently pure to fight the battles of a people who entertained so high ideas of their own sanctity and importance.

Not waiting for their puerile allies [from English Massachusetts], the Connecticut troops, with the Naragansets, commanded by captain Mason, advanced against the enemy; who had posted themselves in the middle of a swamp, near the head of the river Mistic, and surrounded their camp with palisades. But they displayed more prudence in choosing their situation, than in guarding it from surprise. Their assailants reached the paling unperceived, and if a dog had not given the alarm, the Indians must have been massacred whilst asleep. In a moment, the warriors were in arms, and, raising the war cry, prepared to repel this formidable attack. Notwithstanding, however, that, like the defenders of the Roman capitol, they had been summoned by an instinctive guardian, they were not equally successful in overthrowing their invaders. A dreadful carnage ensued. Entering hastily by two winding passages, which had been left open, the English directed their guns towards the floors of the little huts, that were covered with their inhabitants asleep. Roused from their dreams by the unremitting discharges of musketry, if they came forth, they rushed against the surrounding swords; in they reached the palisades, and attempted to climb over, they were met by a shower of balls. Their crowded dwellings were soon in falmes: many, afraid to venture out, remained in the devouring fire; others, who had recoiled from the deadly weapons, rushed amidst the blaze, and shared their fate. In a few minutes, "five or six hundred lay gasping in their blood, or were silent in the arms of death." "The darkness of the forest," observes a New England author, "the blaze of the dwellings, the shrieks of the women and children, the yells of the friendly savages, presented a scene of sublimity and terror, indescribably dreadful." The Massachusetts' troops, under captain Stoughton, at length arrived, and in a few months the Pequods ceased to be a nation. Their very name was heard no more. Those who had been taken alive were sold as slaves, abroad, or reduced to servitude at home.

As the first in a long series of New England's Indian wars, the "Pequot War" has been much written about by contemporaries as well as historians. Yet, more than three centuries after its occurrence, explanations of it are full of lacunae and contradictions. .....

"To get at the real motives for the Pequot conquest, we must attend to two major, inextricably interconnected events: the Pequots negotiation of a peace and friendship treaty with Massachusetts Bay in 1634 and the early colonization of the Connecticut Valley by Englishmen. ... …

"At the center of the strife was the [Massachusetts] Bay magistrates' desire to control all colonizing in New England. ..... Now we must attend to a substantial group of orthodox Puritans led [into Connecticut] by the Reverend Thomas Hooker. ..... Connecticut was undeniably outside the limits set by Massachusetts's patent. That fact both attracted the dissenters and stimulated the magistrates to obstruct Hooker's plans to colonize Connecticut. .....

"In sum, Hooker's people intended to squat in territory that was already occupied by numerous Indians; that was claimed by Massachusetts, which had just acquired the preeminent Indian right to it; and that was further claimed by duly consituted agencies of both the Dutch and English nations. ... …

"[By 1636] The whole region was in a most volatile condition. To preexisting Indian feuds the intruding English added their own quarrels and striving. The treaty between Massachusetts and the Pequots, which became also a peace between Pequots and Narragansetts, had brought a lull in violence and had opened the opportunity for orderly English expansion and orderly Pequot withdrawal. The treaty was a master stroke of Pequot diplomacy, recognizing the realities of power, retreating from untenable positions, and removing foreseeable causes of war. Ironically, however, its very existence stimulated and accelerated a competition between Massachusetts and Connecticut in which neither colony could succeed without first reducing the Pequots to overt subjection.

Howard S Russell, 1976: 

When the Pilgrims arrived in 1620, not only did they find a large area of open, previously cultivated land at Plymouth and more on Cape Cod, but later noticed some of Boston Harbor's islands cleared from end to end and formerly cultivated. Their inhabitants, like Plymouth's, had been wiped out by a deadly sickness, three years after [Capt. John] Smith's visit [in 1614]. ..... Like those on Cape Cod and further north, the native Indians on the Rhode Island and Connecticut coasts who had escaped the plague were farming busily. Captain John Endecott, who fought some of them in 1636, commented on their many cornfields. He laid waste 200 acres of their corn on Block Island. In the Pequot War the next year, Captain John Mason of Connecticut, finding the Pequot village by the Pawcatuck River with its wigwams full of corn, loaded his ship with it before burning their wigwams.

Alden Vaughan, 1977: 

That the war was a product of English land hunger and Pequot defense of its tribal territory, finds little documentation. It seems doubtful that in 1636 English settlers wanted land with which the Indians wereunwilling to part. The Connecticut Valley tribes were welcoming the English and encouraging their settlement there. ..... The records clearly demonstrate that the bulk of the settlers proceeded upon the assumption that the Indian --- heathen or not --- had legal title to the lands upon which he lived, a title that could be changed only through the civilized conventions of sale and formal transfer. Only two instances exist in which the New Englanders acquired any substantial amounts of land from the Indians by means other than treaties. One was the Pequot War of 1637, the other King Philip's War of 1675-76; neither can reasonably be explained as campaigns for territorial expension.

In seeking to identify the causes of the war and apportion responsibility for its outbreak, one must begin with the fact established by the testimony of all the whites and most Indians that the Pequots were blatantly and persistently provocative and aggressive. ..... On the other hand, it is undeniable that Puritan severity in the Endicott campaign provided the spark that set off the ultimate conflagration. Although the harshness of the Bay Colony's policy in the summer of 1636 is understandable, it cannot be excused.

While land as such was plainly not at issue, the Endicott expedition may well have represented something even more fundamental at stake here -- the struggle between Puritans and Pequots for ultimate jurisdiction over the region both inhabited. The Puritans, determined to prevent Indian actions that might in any way threaten the New World Zion, had assumed through their governments responsibility for maintaining law and order among all inhabitants, Indian and white. ... …

At bottom it was the English assumption of the right to discipline neighboring Indians that led to war in 1637. The Endicott expedition of 1636 was sent primarily to act as a police force, with orders to inflict punishment upon Block Island and obtain sureties of good behavior from the Pequots. The Pequots naturally resented the interference of Massachusetts in an area over which they had but recently acquired hegemony, and rejected the Bay Colony's assumption of the right to impose authority. The result was war.

Alden Vaughan, 1994: 

The causes of the Pequot War are not easily unraveled. The reasons for the clash of the Puritan colonies, aided by the majority of the New England tribes, against the Pequots are legion: the restlessness of the River tribes under Pequot hegemony; the murder of ten or more Englishmen between 1634 and 1636, most notably Stone and Oldham; the severity of the Endicott expedition; the vicious Pequot raids that followed it; the urge for revenge that moved the Narragansetts and Mohegans; and the uncompromising attitudes of both Pequots and Puritans. From a mere recitation of the causes, one fact is clear: there was no "Indian side" to the story. The outlook of the Narragansetts, Mohegans, Massachusetts, and River tribes differed radically from that of the Pequots. And since most of the tribes of New England were on the white man's side, the Pequot war cannot accurately be described as an "Indian war" in the usual sense. This was no racial conflict between white man and red, no clash of disparate cultures or alien civilizations.

What did propel New England into armed conflict was the attempt by the Puritan colonies -- supported by the bulk of the Indians -- to curb the militant Pequot tribe. The English had sought to live peacefully and equitably with their Indian neighbors; this they had been able to achieve until 1637. At the same time time the Puritans were determined to prevent criminal acts against English subjects. Besides their strong devotion to English law and Biblical injunction, there was their own safety to consider: it made little sense to escape the clutches of Bishop Laud only to fall prey to an Indian tomahawk. The Pequots, by contrast, wanted to maintain their recently acquired dominion over the Connecticut Valley and its inhabitants; they also seem to have had little respect for the lives of either Englishmen or Indians who were not under their dominion. Given this disparity of underlying intentions, it is not surprising that minor irritants swelled to unmanageable proportions.

Some of the blame for the war must fall on the Pequots, who, according to the testimony of all the whites and most of the Indians, were guilty of blatant and persistent aggression.

Richard Drinnon, 1980: 

A short, quick step had thus taken the English from burning and spoiling the country to burning and spoiling some four hundred persons in little over an hour. ..... Though the Pequots were the first of the New England tribes to sense the genocidal intentions of the English and the implications of their different style of battle [involving killing of large numbers of non-combatants], the fury of the attack on their fort still was demoralizing.

Neal Salisbury, 1982: 

The victory, though primarily a Connecticut accomplishment, was one with which all Puritans could identify. The rhetoric and imagery of the Pequot slaughter were deliberately reminiscent of the Old Testament, particularly of the Israelites "smiting" the Canaanites and driving them from the Promised Land. In 1637 this message was important.

Laurence Hauptmann, 1990: 

What befell the Pequots in 1637 and afterward clearly fits the most widely accepted definition of genocide, one set by the United Nations Convention on Genocide in 1948. ..... Modern Pequots use this tragedy to overcome tragedy. They see their present-day successes as the long culmination of holding actions and survival strategies developed over the centuries. The War of 1637 is thus indelibly marked in the contemporary Pequot's psyche and has influenced nearly every phase of the tribal renaissance over the past decade and a half. Moreover, Pequots can hardly escape their past even if they try, since their reservations date from the mid-1660s and the site of the Mystic Fort is only ten miles down the road from the reservation.

Celebration of victory over Indians as the triumph of light over darkness, civilization over savagery, for many generations our central historical myth, finds its earliest full expression in the contemporary chronicles and histories of this little war. The myth from its inception was grounded in a distorted conception of Indian character and behavior. The Pequot War was not waged in response to tangible acts of aggression. It cannot be understood as a rational response to a real threat to English security. It was, however, the expression of an assumption central to Puritan Indian policy. Puritan magistrates were persuaded that from time to time violent reprisals against recalcitrant savages would be necessary to make the frontier sage for the people of God. The campaign against the Pequots was driven by the same assumption that had impelled Plymouth to massacre Indians suspected of plotting against them at Wessagusett in 1623. The incineration of Pequots at Fort Mystic served the same symbolic purpose as the impalement of Wituwamet's head on Plymouth's blockhouse. Both were intended to intimidate potential enemies and to remind the Saints that they lived in daily peril of massacre at the hands of Satan's minions.

Robert Fuller, 1995: 

In his lengthy history of the American colonies, *Magnalia Christi Americana*, Cotton Mather explained that Satan had beaten them to the New World and had already laid the traps with which he intended to snare his opponents. The Native Americans, Mather surmised, were Satan's first line of defence against the forces of righteousness: "Though we know not when or how these Indians first became inhabitants of this mighty continuent, yet we may guess that probably the devil decoyed these miserable savages hither in hopes that the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ would never come here to destroy or disturbe his absolute empire over them." [1702] ... …

The Puritans' proclivity for demonizing their enemies served an even more important ideological function when it became necessary to murder the Native Americans wholesale. For a community that had conceived of itself as dedicated to the gospel of love, the widescale slaughter of Indians posed serious questions about the Puritans' character and moral resolve. Knowing that their adversaries were in league with Satan helped ease the consciences of God's chosen people. Within weeks of arriving on the shores of Plymouth, the Pilgrims had been forced of necessity to raid Indian storage bins for corn and native crafts. Violent skirmishes broke out from time to time, leading up to the Pequot War of 1637 in which the Puritans killed more than five hundred native men, women, and children in a single battle.

    Whether or not Samuel Hale was present at the Fort Mystick operation, he did serve under Mason in the overall campaign, which continued for some time after the immolation at Mystick, and resulted in more slaughter of Pequots. It was at one time widely believed that in these years, the Pequot tribe was totally exterminated. Early on, the Connecticut General Assembly declared that the name Pequot had become extinct (some captives were taken by other tribes as "vassals" or sent to Bermuda as slaves), and that no survivors should carry that name. In Herman Melville's Moby Dick, published in 1851, Pequod, a variant of Pequot, is the name of the ill-fated ship commanded by Captain Ahab. "Pequod, you will no doubt remember," says Melville, "was the name of a celebrated Indian tribe of Massachusetts Indians, now extinct as the ancient Medes."

    Yet scattered individual Pequots did survive, and the name lived on. In 1983 both houses of the U. S. Congress unanimously approved a Pequot claim for $900,000 to buy 800 acres to establish their own reservation. U. S. President Ronald Reagan vetoed the claim on the grounds that this was "too much to pay" these improbable survivors, as the historian Richard Drinnon put it. In fact, though (as reported by Jack Campisi), the White House agreed to reconsider the bill if certain conditions were met, notably that the state of Connecticut put up more money toward the $900,000, and that the Pequots submit a formal request for official recognition by the U.S. government. The legislation was reintroduced in an amended form, and the new version was passed in October of 1983. The federal government acknowledged that the Pequots still exist, after all.

Off the reservation. The Federal Election Commission last week released a list of individuals and organizations that donated at least $100,000 in 'soft money' to the major political parties during the 1992 presidential campaign. The most unexpected entry on the list: the Mashantucket Pequot tribe of Connecticut, which gave $100,000 to the Democratic National Committee. A spokesman for the 250-member tribe --- which runs a $500 million-a-year gambling casino on its reservation outside New London [CT] --- explained that the contribution was made to the Democrats because they 'recognize the need for Native Americans to have better housing and education.' But sources off the 1,800-acre reservation say that the tribe may have been making one of the best bets in American politics: gambling on a prospective winner. The tribe wants to expand its booming casino operation into a full-service resort and would like to buy 1,200 nearby acres formerly used as a Boy Scout camp. However, before it can expand the reservation, the Mashantucket Pequot tribe needs approval from the Bureay of Indian Affairs, a unit of the Interior Department, which is now run by Bruce Babbitt, who, of course, is a Democrat. [11]

Forgotten race, farewell! Your haunts we tread;
Our mighty rivers speak your words of yore;
Our mountains wear them on their misty head;
Our sounding cataracts hurl them to the shore:
But on the lake your flashing oar is still;
Hushed is your hunter's cry on dale and hill;
Your arrow stays the eagle's flight no more;
And ye, like troubled shadows, sink to rest
In unremembered tombs, unpitied and unblessed.
................
It is not meet thy name should moulder in the grave.

    During the time of the Pequot War, Samuel Hale was in his early twenties and unmarried. His wedding to Mary Smith took place in 1642/43, and together they had 9 children. He acquired a lot of land in Connecticut, and served several times as a Deputy to the Connecticut General Court, as a selectman for Wethersfield, was an original proprietor of Hartford and a founder of Norwalk, and served on numerous juries. Jacobus and Waterman note in this connection that "On 4 Dec. 1645, he was fined twenty nobles "for his mysdemeanor by excesse in drinkeing," but was again called for jury duty, 1 Oct. 1646." Samuel died in Glastonbury CT, 9 Nov 1693, at the age of 78. I don't have the Mary's date of death, but it appears Samuel was married a second time to Phebe (Bracy)(Dickinson) Rose. They had no children, and Phebe is not mentioned in Samuel's will, even though she is reported to have died in 1710/11, well after Samuel.

Glassonbury December the twenty sixt one thousand sixe hundred and ninetie two---

I Samll Hale senir being of perfect understanding and memorie and perceiving in myself the symptoms of mortality and knowing that all flesh must yield to death when God shall call and being minded to sett things in order, doe make and declare this my last will and testamt in maner and form following, hereby revoking and annulling all former and other will and wills testament and testaments heretofore by me made and declared either by word or writing and this to be taken onely for my last will and testamt and no other: And first and principally I commend my soul into the hands of almight god, in christ Jesus my merciful creator and redeemer, my body to the earth from whence it was taken, to be buried in such decent and christian like manner as to my executrs hereafter by me named shall seem meet and convenient---And for the setling of my temporall estate and such goods and Chattells as god of his meer bounty farre above my desert hath given to me, I doe give and dispose of the same in manner and forme following. And first my will is that all my debts whatsoever that I owe either in lawe or conscience to any prson or persons whatsoever be well and truely paid or ordained to be paid within convenient time after my decease, my debts and funerall expenses being discharged. As I have formerly given to my beloved sons Samuel, John, Thomas, and Benezer considerable portions in lands I doe now give and bequeath to my beloved son Samuel my Muskett and my two horsbrands. Item I give and bequeath to my beloved son John a pair of shoes the best pair of my wearing shoes that I shall leave at my decease. Item I give and bequeath to my son Benezer all my right and title to threscore acrs of land granted to me by the Generall Court for my service in the pequot warre: my said right and title to stand as good and firm to him to all Intents and purposes and to his heirs for ever as it should or might have done to me and to my heirs for ever. I doe also give and bequeath to my said Beloved son Benezer my great bible and all the rest of my books except one of Mr Dikes his works formerly given to my daughter in law Naomi. Item I give and bequeath to my beloved son Thomas all my Cask and barls whatsoever that have been used to hold Corn. Item I give and bequeath to my beloved Daughters Marie Rebeccah and Dorothie to each of them one of my greatest peauter platters. And to my said daughter Rebeccah I also give my three pint peauter pot. Item I give and bequeath to my beloved Grandchildren John Hale and Thomas Hale the sons of my son John Hale, all my Interest in that tract of land lying on the east side of the said town of Glassenbury and being sixemiles in length and five in breadth, to have and to hold all my right and Interest in the said tract of land to them and their heirs for ever: And my will is that if either of my said grandchildren shall happen to dye before me, or under age: that then all my right and Interest in the said tract of land shall be to the serviver and his heirs for ever. Item I give and bequeath to my said grandchild Thomas Hale my great chest and all my wearing Clothes, a sword, a great square glasse a pint glasse and a half pint glasse also all my axes hoes beetle rings and wedges also a horse or mare my sadle and handsaw and powder flask: and a hive of bees. Item I give and bequeath to my grandchild Abigail Beniamin all my bedsteds beds and bedding and all the linnen that I shall leave at my decease. Also 1 cowe and 1 mare and my great brass Kettle, my firepan tongs trammel frying pan and warming pan. Also one peauter platter and bason with my name on them, and a small bason, an Iron pot a quart skillet and a pint skillet, her grandmothers chest and all her grandmothers linnen and woollen (which I formerly Inhuaged to her that she should have them) Also I give and bequeath to my said grandchild Abigail, my gridiron, chamber pot, two great chairs and a little one and all my wooden bowles platters dishes and spoons, a new poudering tub with the flesh I shall leave in it at my decease also my boxiron and heaters. Also my brass chafing dish, stewpan lid, lamp, and candlestick, two wheels two apir of Kards and Kneeding trough or bowl, my spit and sieve, also my pannel pillion and bridle scaels two pound weight 1 pound weight, half pound weight and 1 hive of bees I give to my said grandchild abigail. Also I give to her my half bushel my bear barrel a small milk keeler and two pails. And I doe appoint and constitute my forementioned beloved sons Samll Hale and Thomas Hale executrs of this my last will and Testament. In Witness thereof I have hereunto sett to my hand the day and year above written---Signed and delivered in the presence of us

                                              his
Eleazr Kimberly                  Samuel + Hale senr
Samuel Emons                     mark

Eleazar Kimberly and samll Emons personally appearing this sixt day of december 1693 gave their severall respective testimonies upon oath before me that the abovewritten Instrument was signed and delivered by Samll Hale senr the testator therein mentioned as his last will and testament I say before me

John Chester: Comisser

Glassenbury Novembr 13: 1693 An Inventorie of the estate of Samll Hale senr deceased the 9th of this Instant---taken by us Eleazr Kimberly and Joseph Hill select men:

                                                                                               lb s d

Impr His apparell                                                                    08 00 00
Item: bedsteads bedds and bedding                                        10 00 00
Item: gun sword and belt and flash                                        02 00 00
Item: pewter platters pots and basons                                  01 10 00
Item: Brasse and Iron vessels                                                  03 00 00
Item: Books                                                                                01 00 00
Chests 1lb: wooden vessells and sieve 10s                              01 10 00
Item: frying pan spitt 10s: hour glasse looking glasse and brush 4s---all
                                                                                                    00 14 00
Item: beetle rings wedges axes and other Iron implements  01 10 00
Item: Trammel tongs fire pan smoothing Iron and heaters  01 00 00
Item: Sadle pannell and bridle                                                 00 10 00
Item: Scaols and weights 3s Coopers ware 20s                       01 03 00
Item: provision for the familie 15s: baggs 4s                           00 19 00
Item: Corn in the Chamber and in the barn                            14 00 00
Item: hops 10s: tobacco 15s: hay 3lb                                         04 05 00
Item: flaxe 1lb 10s: 2 cowes 8lb 1 Calf 15s                                 10 05 00
Item: 2 swine 1lb: 10s i horse 2 mares 2 Colts 9lb                    10 10 00
Item: 24 pound of yarn                                                                02 08 00
Item: Glasse bottles baskets and pumpions                             00 08 00
Item: 2 brand Irons 5s 2 chairs and wheels 8s i hive of bees12s
                                                                                                      01 05 00
Item: salt                                                                                      00 04 00

                                                             [total]                                74 01 00

                              [Signed by Eleazr Kimberly and Joseph Hills.]

    Lt. Samuel was for many years a justice of the peace in Glastonbury. His epitaph reads: "Here lieth inhumed the body of Mr. Samuel Hale, Esq., of late one of Her Majestie's Justices of the Peace, who d. on the 18th day of Nov'r Anno Dom. 1711, and in the 67th year of his age." He also served for many years on the general court of the colony, and was for some time the captain of the local militia, or as it was called then, the train band. The train was for training, I presume, and band for a military grouping perhaps equivalent to present-day company or maybe squad..

    Lt. Samuel Hale acquired before 1688 some land which had been owned by his grandfather Rev. Henry Smith. He also acquired in 1701 some land which had once belonged to Clement Chaplin, Henry Smith's cantankerous adversary, and then to Josiah Walcott. Actually, the Rev. Alonzo Chapin reported in 1853 that Lt. Samuel acquired 2/3 of the land. When the land came up for the sale, Lt. Samuel consulted with his pastor Rev. Timothy Stevens about the advisability of buying it. According to Rev. Alonzo, "Mr. Stevens deeming it an excellent bargain on the terms offered, advised the purchase, only insisting that he should be permitted to come in with Mr. Hale and take one-third of it. " Rev. Alonzo also reports that at one time Lt. Samuel was a member of the Glastonbury School Society, which I take it was what now would be called a school board.

All the people were English and had their own ideas as to a town and colony government, which differed from those of Winthrop in Massachusetts. At a meeting of the General Court in February 1636, the town was given the name of Wethersfield, probably at the suggestion of some one from old Wethersfield in England. They soon built substantial houses, with great fireplaces, for wood was easy to procure. There was very little furniture. Stools, benches, and forms were used and a little later the high back settle by the fireplace.

They had no tea, coffee or potatoes, and very little sugar, but after trade began with the West Indies sugar and molasses were more plentiful. Bees were valued highly. The water in the Great River was unpolluted. In the early spring the river teemed with shad, salmon and alewives. It was customary to put a shad or a couple of alewives in a hill of corn for fertilizer. Game was abundant in the woods- -- wild ducks, geese and turkeys. The settlers brought pigs and a few goats as well as cattle. The pigs were allowed to run at large. When Nathaniel Foote [13] died in 1644 his "hoggs" were valued at more than his horses. Leonard Chester left "Hoggs" in his estate in 1648. There were no sheep until after the wolves had been partially exterminated. Both the town and colony paid a bounty on their heads; this reduced the numbers in a few years … …

At one time there was a tavern to welcome the thirsty wanderer of the sea, and a school in a private house for the little girls of the neighborhood, where they were taught to read and spell, and to sew "a fine seam". One little girl made a shirt for her brother which was treasured in the family for many years. They were also taught to make their curtsy to the minister when he called and never to tell a lie.

Early in the nineteenth century Sophia Woodhouse manufactured straw bonnets at her home. She used the grass growing in the "Flats" of the Common, and perfected a process of making fine Leghorn bonnets.

Rev. Alonzo B. Chapin, D.D., 1853: 

The increase of the population [in Glastonbury] seems to have been more rapid at this period, than could have been expected. In 1693, we have seen there were thirty-four householders, and it will appear from documents given below, that in 1714, there were sixty-four resident tax payers, and probably householders. In 1723, the number had increased to one hundred and eighteen. As late as 1757, the number was one hundred and ninety-nine. This increase of population was so rapid, that the meeting-house which had been built in 1693, was found too small to accommodate the people as early as 1706, and it was accordingly voted to enlarge the same "by galleries or lean-tos, as the committee should judge most expedient." What order was first observed in regard to seats in the meeting-house, does not appear; but in 1712, a committee was appointed "to seat the meeting-house," and a vote passed that persons not sitting in the seats assigned by the committee, should pay "a fine of five shills a year." The committee finding the subject attended with very great difficulty, declined going through with the work; in consequence of which it is said there had been "great disorders on Sabbath days, and other days of Public Worship," whereupon a new committee was appointed, and persons refusing to sit in the seats assigned them were fined "fifteen shillings a month." What kind of seats were employed in the meeting-house is no where mentioned, but that they were not pews, is evident from a vote passed Dec., 1717, permitting Thomas Kimberly, and Richard Goodrich "to build each of them a pue in the meeting-house."

In their dress and habits the Puritans were not radical. They wore bright colors and silver buttons on their waistcoats and dresses, as long as they were obtainable. But they also dressed in leather and homespun on working days. These were far more appropriate to their stations than would have been the lace and silks adorned with expensive jewelry found at Court. Only the ministers wore black habitually. Children played with dolls and toys, though simple ones, of course. The Puritans frowned on secular music and art, but not on beauty in itself. Wine and beer formed an important element in their daily diet, but inebriation they abhorred. Their morals were reasonable, contrary to popular conception, and not Victorian. Love in the home was a vital part of the marriage.

John Demos, 1986: 

And what of women ..... ? Along with men -- perhaps more than men -- women in mid-life knew the power of parenthood. A New England "goodwife" in her forties and fifties would likely preside over a household of ten or a dozen; not for her the "empty nest," either in actuality or in prospect -- quite the contrary. Her relation to her daughters (and maidservants "bound over" from elsewhere) was especially encompassing; to them she stood as ruler, tutor, example, protectress, all in one. Her duties were manifold, her skills indispensable. Gardening, cooking, dairying, textile production: thus the leading forms of specifically female labor, each one in itself subdivided into numerous smaller operations. "In the agricultural towns and villages of early New England," one scholar has written, "women were the ones whose knowledge guided the key transformation of nature into culture." Men "broke" the raw materials of Nature (e.g. by cultivating and harvesting a variety of animal and vegetable products), while women "improved" these same materials (through processing and preparing them for human consumption).

This sounds like a "domestic" definition of women's lives; and so indeed it was. Yet with some regularity women stepped out into roles and activities beyond the home-hearth. They entered the local economy, especially in marketing herbs, cheeses, cloth, and other products of their own hand. They practiced a traditional "doctoring," sometimes in direct competition with male physicians. (One branch of medicine belonged exclusively to women: childbirth was for female hands and eyes only, with midwives officially in charge.) They assisted their menfolk in running taverns, inns, and small shops. At least occasionally they went into court as "attorneys" for temporarily absent husbands. There is enough evidence here for one scholar to have invented the term "deputy husband" as a way of describing the full range of women's responsibilities in early New England.

Bruce Daniels, 1995: 

No New England colony ever passed a general statute forbidding dancing, but colony and local laws hedged it about with extreme restrictions. A controversy over the probity of dancing surfaced in Salem [MA] in 1635. The congregation's young minister, Richard Levett, asked Boston's leading theologian, John Cotton, for guidance. Cotton replied that one should not automatically condemn all dancing. He cited a passage in Exodus that supported dance "lending to the praise of ... God." Cotton, continued, however, that this did not include "lascivious dancing to wanton ditties, and amourous gestures and wanton dalliances ... [which] I would bear witness as a great flabella Libidinis" [fanning of sexual desire]. And herein lay the problem: at its worst, dancing was thought to incite adultery and fornication. Being particularly popular everywhere with women, dancing allegedly caused them to lower their guard against attacks on their chastity. Hence "lascivious dancing," which authorities defined as any dancing that allowed men and women to touch or hold each other, was forbidden, as was any association between alcohol and dancing.

Rev. Samuel Peters', LL. D., 1781: 

Weathersfield [sic] is four miles from Hertford [sic], and more compact than any town in the colony. The meeting-house is of brick, with a steeple, bell, and clock. The inhabitants say it is much larger than Solomon's Temple. The township is ten miles square; parishes four. The people are more gay than polite, and more superstitious than religious. This town raises more onions than are consumed in all New-England. It is a rule with parents to buy annually a silk gown for each daughter above seven years old, till she is married. The young beauty is obliged, in return, to weed a patch of onions with their own hands; which she performs in the cool of the morning, before she dresses the beefsteak. This laudable and healthy custom is ridiculed by the ladies of other towns, who idle away their mornings in bed, or in gathering the pink, or catching the butterfly, to ornament their toilets; while the gentlemen, far and near, forget not the Weathersfield ladies' silken industry. ..... The women of Connecticut are strictly virtuous, and to be compared to the prude rather than the European polite lady. They are not permitted to read plays; cannot converse about whist, quadrille, or operas, but will freely talk upon the subject of history, geography, and mathematics. They are great casuists and polemical divines; and I have known not a few of them so well skilled in Greek and Latin as often to put to the blush learned gentlemen. .....

Notwithstanding the modesty of the females is such that it would be accounted the greatest rudeness for a gentleman to speak, before a lady, of a garter, knee, or leg, yet it is thought but a piece of civility to ask her to bundle -- a custom as old as the first settlement in 1634. It is certainly innocent, virtuous, and prudent, or the puritans would not have permitted it to prevail among their offspring, for whom, in general, they would suffer crucifixion. Children brought up with the chastest ideas, with so much religion as to believe that the omniscient God sees them in the dark, and that angels guard them when absent from their parents, will not -- nay, cannot -- act a wicked thing. People who are influenced more by lust than a serious faith in God, who is too pure to behold iniquity with approbation, ought never to bundle. ..... The Indians, who had this method of courtship when the English arrived among them in 1634, are the most chaste set of people in the world. ..... I am no advocate for temptation, yet must say that bundling has prevailed 160 years in New-England, and, I verily believe, with ten times more chastity than the sitting on a sofa.

    Mary's mother, Elizabeth Hollister, is to me another mostly unknown person. Elizabeth and her husband Samuel Welles had six children, born between 1660 and 1670. Writing about Elizabeth in 1886, Lafayette Wallace Case says: "She married Samuel Welles, son of Gov. Thomas Welles of the Connecticut Colony, in 1659. She died, and he married 2d, Hannah, daughter of George Lamberton of New Haven; no children by the second marriage." Just she died, no more. Incidentally, after Samuel Welles died, his widow Hannah married John Allyn of Hartford. It appears that there was a lot of visiting going on, back and forth between Wethersfield, Glastonbury, Hartford and New Haven. Hannah's father George Lamberton was captain of the once locally famous Phantom Ship, lost at sea in 1646, or more precisely about Capt. Nathaniel Turner, who perished with Capt. Lamberton, and Nathaniel's daughter Rebecca, who married Thomas Mix of New Haven.[14]  Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote a poem about this:

The Phantom Ship

In Mather's Magnalia Christi,
  Of the old colonial time,
May be found in prose the legend
  That is here set down in rhyme.

A ship sailed from New Haven,
  And the keen and frosty airs,
That filled her sails at parting,
  Were heavy with good men's prayers.

"O Lord! if it be thy pleasure"---
  Thus prayed the old divine---
"To bury our friends in the ocean,
  Take them, for they are thine!"

But Master Lamberton muttered,
  And under his breath said he,
This ship is so crank and walty
  I fear our grave she will be!"

And the ships that came from England,
  When the winter months were gone,
Brought no tidings of this vessel
  Nor of Master Lamberton.

This put the people to praying
  That the Lord would let them hear
What in his greater wisdom
  He had done with friends so dear.

And at last their prayers were answered:---
  It was in the month of June,
An hour before the sunset
  Of a windy afternoon,

When, steadily steering landward,
  A ship was seen below,
And they knew it was Lamberton, Master,
  Who sailed so long ago.

On she came, with a cloud of canvas,
  Right against the wind that blew,
Until the eye could distinguish
  The faces of the crew.

Then fell her straining topmasts,
  Hanging tangled in the shrouds,
And her sails were loosened and lifted,
  And blown away like clouds.

And the masts, with all their rigging,
  Fell slowly, one by one,
And the hulk dilated and vanished,
  As a sea-mist in the sun!

And the people who saw this marvel
  Each said unto his friend,
That this was the mould of their vessel,
  And thus her tragic end.

And the pastor of the village
  Gave thanks to God in prayer,
That, to quiet their troubled spirits,
He had sent this Ship of Air.

Perhaps the incident is less a legend than the poet believed. Even the most critical historian must admit that the world of imagination loomed large in the thoughts of the Puritan colonist. Thomas J Wertenbaker has suggested, in connection with this story of the Phantom Ship, that "the God of seventeen-century New England was a God of dramatic revelations." [The First Americans, 1607-1690, 1927] Any deviation from the known outline of nature was taken as a "sign from heaven." In such a climate of opinion, a weird cloud formation, a storm, and a rainbow could appear convincingly significant. And with a John Davenport on hand to interpret the "sign from Heaven," the miracle need not have stemmed entirely from the literary inventions of a later day.

Viewed against the general background of the colony's history, the loss of the Lamberton ship marked one more setback to the ambitions of the merchant adventurers. The attempt to establish direct trade with England took place after the Delaware experiment appeared destined to fail. Winthrop's comments on the ill-fated voyage intimate the almost desperate attitude of those who arranged it. Unwilling to wait for the frozen harbor to thaw, the eager inhabitants cut through three miles of ice in order to send their ship out to sea. The cargo of wheat, West India hides, and beaver represented a value of more than L5000, and the ship's passenger list included Mr. Gregson and another magistrate, Captain Turner, Mrs. Goodyear, and seven or eight additional figures of importance. One gets the impression of a daring gamble designed to reverse a series of economic disappointments. The loss of the "Great Shippe" weakened the financial structure of the colony and thus played a significant part in its subsequent decline.
..... [from a chronology:]
1647 Mr. Gregson, Captain Turner, and several other prominent New Haveners leave New Haven in January for a trading voyage to London in "The Great Shippe." They are never heard from again.

The town we now know as Glastonbury had its beginnings in 1636, when the Wethersfield proprietors bought from the sachem. Sowheag. a large tract of land measuring six miles west of the river, three miles east, and six miles from the north to south. No record of an Indian deed to the tract, which of course included Glastonbury, the "three miles east", have been found, but apparently there was an agreement indicating that some sort of payment had been made, for 65 years later, in 1671, certain Wethersfield and Glastonbury men paid several Indian Leaders 12 yards of "trading cloth" to sign, with their marks, a confirmatory deed to the original sale. This was recorded in the Wethersfield land records and reads, in part, as follows:

"..... and six milles in length by the Riuer side on the east side of the said Conecticot Riuer, from Pewter Pott brooke, north, to the Bounds betwene Weathersfield and Middletowne, south; the said Great Riuer west, the wholle leanth to runn three large milles into the wilderness east; the which lands, as afore said, hath been quietly possessed by the English now for severall yeeres past; but, in as much as there is noe written deed found under the hand of the said Sowheag, which may be an ocasion of trouble hereafter, for the preuention of which, knowing what our predeceassers haue don, and what hee had receiued for the same; and for the consideration of twelue yards of trading cloth, giuen to us a gratuity, by Capt. Samuel Wyllys, Mr. Henry Wollcot, Mr. James Richards, Capt. Samuell Welles, Mr. Samuel Tallcot [15], Mr. John Chester, Mr. James Treat, in the name and behalfe, and for the use of all others, the rest of the seuerall proprietors of the said land with in the limites of the Towneship of Weathersfield, aforesaid: We, Turramugus, Sepannamaw Squaw, daughter to Sowheage; Speunno, Nabowhee, Weesumshie, Waphanck; true heirs of and rightful sucksessers to the aforesaid Sowheage --- hath fully confirmed, and doe by these presents fully and absolutely confirme the aforesaid grant made by our predeseasser, Sowheage, afore menssioned, enfeeoffed, sett ouer and confirmed ..... To haue and to hold all the aforesaid tract of lands, as they are bounded, with all the meaddowes, pastere, woods, under-woods, mines, mineralls, stones, qurrys, profits, comoditys, priulidges and appertinances, whatsoeuer, that are or may bee to the same belonging.

    According to Jacobus and Waterman, Thomas Welles and his wife Alice arrived in New England in 1635 and settled in Hartford CT. According to Henry Stiles, they arrived probably about 1636, probably in Boston MA or vicinity, then perhaps went to Saybrook CT, and from there to Hartford (1637 or earlier), and then in 1643 to Wethersfield CT. Donna Siemiatkowski says it is incorrect, as reported for example by Rev. Alonzo Chapin in 1853, that Thomas was a private secretary to Lord Say and Sele, who was a prominent backer of colonization by the English along the Connecticut River, including what became the town of Saybrook. It seems Thomas may never have gone to Saybrook at all. She says Thomas arrived "with his wife and six childen in the late summer 1636 and settled first in the Boston area, probably Cambridge", and that he "probably came to Hartford with Thomas Hooker's party in June 1636." This may leave you wondering when the late summer of 1636 occurred.

No one of the distinguished men of his time was more uniformly attentive to all his official duties than Gov. Welles, from his first appointment in 1637, until 1659. He was a constant attendant upon the General Court, except when employed in other public duties. His whole public life being fairly examined, he was as important a prop to the new colony as any of the principal men, except Gov. Winthrop --- He died in 1660, and left a large estate to his children, viz. Thomas, Ichabod, Samuel, Jonathan, Joseph, Rebecca and Sarah." ..... Gov. Welles came to Massachusetts in a vessel named the Susan and Ellen, E. Payne, master, in company with Richard Saltonstall, Esq., and family, Walter Thornton and others." On the other hand, Donna Holt Siemiatkowski observed in 1990 in her genealogy of this Welles family that: "At least one other Thomas Welles came to Boston in 1635. This second man we now know as Thomas Welles of Ipswich. He is probably the Thomas who came on the "Susan and Ellen".