Historic Towns of New England

Yale has always been progressive in respect to the Fine Arts. On receiving the collection of Colonel Trumbull, embracing many pictures of scenes and participators in the Revolutionary War, a building was erected for their exhibition on the campus. Lecture courses were given and interest so far developed that later a large and beautiful building was erected for the purposes of an art school, which has attained great success.

Yale shows that she well deserves her reputation by more than doubling the number of her students within twenty years. The present attendance is upwards of twenty-five hundred, drawn from all parts of the world. The only aristocracy at Yale is that of brains and character, and it is a significant comment on this state of affairs to note that the sons of millionaires frequently do without the luxuries to which they are accustomed, to avoid being classed merely as rich men’s sons. The Yale spirit recognizes manliness and industry as paramount qualities, and none stands higher among his fellows than the poor boy who courageously works his way through college, overcoming the obstacles that lie in his way, and maintaining an honorable rank in his class.

New Haven has sought to preserve memories and mementoes of her historic existence, and the Historical Society building, at the foot of Hillhouse Avenue, never fails to quicken the pulses of the antiquary. Here he finds one of Benjamin Franklin’s Leyden jars; Benedict Arnold’s badly punctuated sign, his account-book, medicine chest, mortar and pestle; the table on which Noah Webster wrote the Dictionary; a silver spoon that once belonged to Commodore Isaac Hull (said to have been in his mouth when he was born); and an almost endless collection of relics, rare portraits and books.

Of famous houses, many are still standing: two of Benedict Arnold’s; the dwelling of Roger Sherman, signer of the Declaration of Independence, the city’s first mayor and a United States Senator; the Trowbridge house, built in 1642 by an original settler; the Noah Webster house and others of less interest. One of the “famous spots” is the northwest corner of Union and Fair Streets, where once stood the house of Isaac Allerton, a Pilgrim of the Mayflower. A tablet has been placed on the present building bearing the following inscription:

“Isaac Allerton, a Pilgrim of the Mayflower, andthe Father of New England Commerce, livedon this Ground from 1646 till 1659.”

Across the way, on the southeast corner, stands an old house bearing the announcement that this was the birthplace of Andrew Hull Foote, Rear Admiral of the United States Navy.

Center Church, near the centre of the Green on Temple Street, stands over what was formerly a portion of the original burying-ground, and but a few feet from the site of the first meeting-house. From its historic associations it is one of the most interesting churches in the country. Over the principal entrance are these inscriptions:

QUINNIPIAC CHOSEN FOR SETTLEMENT, A.D. 1637THE WILDERNESS AND THE SOLITARY PLACE SHALL BE MADE GLAD FOR THEMO GOD OF HOSTS LOOK DOWN FROM HEAVEN AND BEHOLD AND VISIT THIS VINEA.D. 1638, A COMPANY OF ENGLISH CHRISTIANS LED BY JOHN DAVENPORTAND THEOPHILUS EATON WERE THE FOUNDERS OF THISCITY. HERE THEIR EARLIEST HOUSE OF WORSHIP WASBUILT A.D. 1639THE FIRST CHURCH BEGINNING WITH WORSHIP IN THE OPEN AIR APRIL 15 (O. S.), WAS THE BEGINNING OF NEW HAVEN, AND WAS ORGANIZED AUG. 22 (O. S.), 1639. THIS HOUSE WAS DEDICATED TO THE WORSHIP OF GOD IN CHRIST DEC. 27, 1814

Dr. Leonard Bacon was for many years pastor of this church. Underneath is a crypt containing the remains and tombstones of many of the Puritan fathers and their families; and here lies the body of Abigail Pierson, sister of the first president of Yale, and wife of John Davenport, Jr.

While around and beneath Center Church “the rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep,” the oldest cemetery now existing is that on Grove Street. Many distinguished sons of New Haven are buried there, among them Rear-Admiral Andrew H. Foote, General Amos B. Eaton, Admiral Francis H. Gregory, General Alfred H. Terry, Noah Webster, Lyman Beecher, Benjamin Silliman, Theodore Winthrop, Jedediah Morse (father of American geography), the elder President Dwight and President Day, Colonel David Humphreys, aide on the staff of General Washington, Eli Whitney, inventor of the cotton-gin, Jehudi Ashmun, first colonial agent at Liberia, Governors Ingersoll, Baldwin, Edwards, and many others eminent in business and professional life.

Tottering old men sometimes point to places where Nathan Hale made his great leap, where

John C. Calhoun got his boots made, where Joel Barlow ate his hasty pudding, the porch where Commodore Hull liked to sit; and tell no end of stories about visits of Lafayette, James Monroe and “Old Hickory.” These are innocent chroniclers, forgetting the present in the glorious past, and we must allow a little for the play of the imagination; but when they aver that Noah Webster, as a lieutenant commanding a company of Yale students, once escorted General Washington through the town and received a compliment therefor, an approving nod is in order, for the great lexicographer recorded the incident in his diary “at the day and time of it.”

Visitors frequently refer to the city as an overgrown village. It is hard for a New York man to realize as he strolls through the ample grounds of his New Haven friends, that he is in a city of more than one hundred thousand inhabitants. The value put upon breathing-places is shown in the large tracts of land devoted to public purposes. One walks hardly ten minutes in any direction without coming upon a square shaded by graceful elms and carpeted by a cleanly shaven lawn; while the margins of the city by river and sound

abound in tastefully arranged parks. The transformation of the two great wooded ridges beyond the dwelling-line into well-graded drives, art vying with nature to please the eye and win the soul to beauty, completes the impression sometimes expressed, that New Haven is an immense village encircled by gardens.

But while all this may suggest a condition of dreamy repose, the city is by no means given over to dolce far niente. The University with its manifold departments is a veritable hive of industry; the scales of Justice at the County Court House are tipping endlessly in favor of right against wrong; while the busy hum of the Winchester Arms and a hundred other mills, makes a music that dies not out.

Altogether, historic New Haven is a pleasant place in which to live, and its hospitality is as generous as are its gardens and its parks.

1

De Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, chapter v. Mr. F. J. Lippitt, who assisted M. de Tocqueville in the preparation of this work, says that once when they “had been talking about town-meetings, de Tocqueville exclaimed with a kindling eye (usually quite expressionless), ‘Mais, c’est la commune!’ ” —Cf. The Century Magazine, September, 1898, p. 707.

2

Geo. Wm. Curtis, Orations and Addresses, vol. iii.

3

In 1810, less than 15 per cent. of the population of Rhode Island was found in towns of 8000 or more inhabitants; in 1890, nearly 80 per cent. In Massachusetts, in 1790, five per cent. were urban dwellers; in 1890, 70 per cent. In Connecticut, in 1830, 3 per cent. lived in cities; in 1890, more than 50 per cent. In 1840, 3 per cent. in New Hampshire lived in cities; in 1890, more than 25 per cent. In 1820, in Maine, 4 per cent. lived in cities; in 1890, 20 per cent.

4

Cf. Town Records of Brookline, 1897-98.

5

Chapter cii., Bryce’s American Commonwealth. For an interesting and significant account of the impression made by one of the Western Christian colleges upon a friendly and thoroughly trained French observer, see the translation of an article by Th. Bentzon (Madame Blanc) in the Revue des Deux Mondes, printed in McClure’s Magazine, May, 1895.

6

See Editor’s Preface p. v.

7

The Ordinance of 1784, the original of the Ordinance of 1787, was drawn up by Jefferson himself, as chairman of the committee appointed by Congress to prepare a plan for the government of the territory. The draft of the committee’s report, in Jefferson’s own handwriting, is still preserved in the archives of the State Department at Washington. “It is as completely Jefferson’s own work,” says Bancroft, “as the Declaration of Independence.” Jefferson worked with the greatest earnestness to secure the insertion of a clause in the Ordinance of 1784 prohibiting slavery in the Northwest; and the clause was lost by only a single vote. “The voice of a single individual,” said Jefferson, who foresaw more clearly than any other what the conflict with slavery was to mean to the republic, “would have prevented this abominable crime. Heaven will not always be silent. The friends of the rights of human nature will in the end prevail.” They prevailed for the Northwest Territory with the achievement of Manasseh Cutler, Rufus Putnam and Nathan Dane.

Was it from Jefferson that Putnam and his men at Marietta caught their classical jargon? There was a great deal of pretentious classicism in America at that time, new towns everywhere being freighted with high-sounding Greek and Roman names. The founders of Marietta – so named in honor of Marie Antoinette – named one of their squares Capitolium; the road which led up from the river was the Sacra Via; and the new garrison, with blockhouses at the corners, was the Campus Martius. Jefferson had proposed dividing the Northwest into ten States, instead of five as was finally done, and for these States he proposed the names of Sylvania, Michigania, Assenisipia, Illinoia, Polypotamia, Cherronesus, Metropotamia, Saratoga, Pelisipia and Washington.

8

Rufus Putnam was born in Sutton, Massachusetts, April 9, 1738, just fifty years before he founded Marietta, where he died May 1, 1824. He was a cousin of General Putnam. Early in life he was a millwright and a farmer; but he studied mathematics, surveying and engineering – after distinguished service in the old French war – and became our leading engineer during the Revolution, and an able officer in many campaigns. He first planned the Ohio settlement, and at the outset made it a distinct condition that there should be no slavery in the territory. Five years after the founding of Marietta, Putnam was made Surveyor-General of the United States; and his services in Ohio until the time of his death were of high importance.

9

The illustration shown on page 335 is from a pen-and-ink copy of a quaint old painting on glass from China, probably in 1820. In that country a set of china with this design as decoration was made for this Plymouth celebration.

10

Pioneers of France in the New World.

11

Arnold, Rhode Island, i., 107.

12

Proc. R. I. H. S., July, 1895

13

Isham & Brown, Houses, p. 21.

14

Planting of Providence, p. 43.