Class. 0?. BooL OiyriglitN"_ COPVKIGHT DEPOSU: / .£1, zf^ Designed and Illustrated by Julius Turner Edson 114 Fifth Avenue New York City Litchfield County Sketches jKXxxraiL JULViMju^ QjiJUjJiyxju^ JimuuuJin^ \ KAPCLdr "i U/ 1A_^ LITCHFIELD COUNTY SKETCHES BY NEWELL MEEKER CALHOUN lb LITCHFIELD COUNTY UNIVERSITY CLUB 1906 LIBRARY of CONSR£SS JAN t_d^ 1907 /y Copyrrfirt Entry 5LAS»_ /\ , />, ( fd ^ ' Wte. No. COPY bT ■'. Copyright 1906 Newell Meeker Calhoun Par Avance This Volume is one of a series published under the auspices of the Litchfield County University Club, and in accordance with a proposition made to the Club by one of its members, Mr. Carl Stoeckel, of Norfolk, Connecticut Howard Williston Carter Secretary Prelude " Land of my birth, thou art a holy land ! Strong in thy virtue niayest thou ever stand, As in thy soil and mountains thou art strong! And as thy mountain echoes now prolong The cadence of thy waterfalls,— forever Be the voice lifted up of Time's broad river, As on it rushes to the eternal sea, Sounding the praises of thy sons and thee." JOHN PIERPONT, Born at Litchfield South Farms, April 6, 1785 Dedication To 3Ir. and Mrs. Carl Stoeckel Lovers of Litchfield County and Promoters of its Highest Interests This Volume is Respectfully Dedicated Foreword LITCHFIELD COUNTY bears the same rela> tion to the rest of the State of Connecticut that the Lake region does to Old England. As about Windermere, Grasmere and UUswater, in famous West- moreland, poets, preachers and literary men have made their homes, so more and more there is coming to our momitain comity this same delightful class of people. From New Haven, Princeton and New York university presidents and professors have turned their faces north- ward to these delightful hilltops, and here many of them have built their homes. Doctors, lawyers and editors are finding out that the ozone of these hills is better than drugs, and just as good as foreign travel. Henry Clay Trmnbull expressed it as his opinion, after careful thought and study, that Litchfield County had produced more distinguished men than any other county in the United States. Our University Club, born in Norfolk, is one of the most prosperous in the country outside the great cities. The county is also becoming a musical centre through the Litchfield County Choral Union, established and maintained through the gener- osity of Mr. and Mrs. Carl Stoeckel, of Norfolk. Westmoreland County, in England, cannot boast any more lakes than are to be found within our borders, and has no rivers to speak of, while Litclifield County is trav- Foreword ersed by the Farmington and the Naugatuck, the She- paug and the Housatonic. The time is come for us to appreciate better our own State and county. Lovers of the beautiful have only to look about them to find scen- ery that will match, if not excel, that of the Old World. If any thought or picture in these sketches shall make the pulses beat a little faster and the color come to the cheeks of any of her sons and daughters, as they say with pride, "This is my native count}^" our work will not have been in vain. If, better yet, it shall lead some of them back to their birthplace, to beautify the old home, to build a library or a church, to restore the old cemetery in memory of the dear ones gone, and, best of all, to live amongst us, and make the men and women of our county partakers of their lives, enriched by edu- cation and travel, then this little book will have accom- plished its purpose. To be a lover of our county is well, to be a native is better, but he has attained to a high state of earthly happiness who is lover, native and resi- dent of the best county of the best State in our beloved land. ]v^. M. C. Second Congregational Church, Winsted, Connecticut, ]VIarch 2, 1906. Illustrations PAGE Wood Road, Winchester F. H. De Mars Frontispiece Through the Forest F. H. De Mars 24 Sugar Camp Virgil Taylor 28 Oxen Ploughing Mrs. J. C. Kendall 31 Hay Field Mrs. J. C. Kendall 34 Farmington River King Sheldon 38 Tunxis Falls F. H. De Mars 42 Highland Lake N. M. Calhoun 44 A Bethlehem Street George W. Peck 48 Bellamy Monument George TV. Peck 54 Bank of Laurel F. H. De Mars 58 A Litchfield Street King Sheldon 62 Lake Waramaug J. I. West 66 Old House with Well-sweep F. H. De Mars 70 INIilking Time Mrs. J. C. Kendall 74 Old Home N. M. Calhoun 76 A Mournful Reminder F. H. De Mars 82 Old School House N. M. Calhoun 88 Canaan Valley King Sheldon 92 Trout Brook in Winter N. M. Calhoun 94 Highway in Winter Mrs. J. C. Kendall 100 Old Virginia Rail Fence F. H. De Mars 106 Sheep in Pasture Mrs. J. C. Kendall 109 Colebrook River F. H. De Mars 112 Trout Brook, Norfolk Mrs. J. C. Kendall 114 Illustrations— Continued PAGE Old ]Mill King Sheldon 118 A Country Doctor Old Print 124 Shepaug River^ Washington J. I. West 128 Congregational Church, Morrij i Anon. 132 Birthplace of John Pierpont Old Print 136 John Pierpont^ D. D. Anon. 140 Lower Housatonic Valley Anon. 144 A New jVIilford Street Anon. 146 Twin Lakes King Sheldon 150 Harwinton Meeting House King Sheldon 154 Town Hill Meeting House King Sheldon 158 The Neglected Graveyard N. M. Calhoun 164 A Yankee Farmer Anon. 170 Housatonic Valley at Kent Rev. Geo. W. Curtis 175 Map of Litchfield County W. Morey, Jr., C. E. Facing page 57 Tail Pieces Mrs. Clara G. Chapman ^•■' Contents PAGE Grass-grown Roads 19 The Procession of the Seasons 27 The Upper Reaches of the Farmington 37 Two Country Parsons 47 The Finest Drive in the World 57 White Roses and Clover Blooms 71 A Deserted Farm 77 The Old Red School House 85 A Highway in Winter 95 Stone Walls and Shad i"„nces 103 Trout Brooks Ill The Country Doctor 121 A Hill-town fleeting House 131 The Delectable Mountains 143 Huckleberrying 153 The Neglected Graveyard 161 The Yankee Farmer 167 'The scenery and music are changed continuously. LITCHFIELD COUNTY SKETCHES Grass-grown Roads THIS particular road was not always grass-grown, for the wheels, the hoofs and the feet passed along too often. But the West called with loud voice, and the city held out riches in the one hand and pleasure in the other, and those \.ho had passed this way often in the old days have hardened their hearts and gone away. So it came to pass that the grass grew luxuri- ously where wheels once rattled over the stones. The grass-grown road is not the same for two days in the season. This is a pleasure-house where the scen- ery and music are changed continuously by unseen hands. It will first show you some hepaticas in the warm hollow by the fence, and blood root and dog violets and adder tongues. Then the strawberries begin to crowd out toward the middle of the road, sending out advance runners, and showing white starlike blossoms, in spite of roadside dirt and dust. The low vine black- berries are only a day or two behind. These climb the lichen-covered wall and drape the unsightly piles of stone which the farmer some time since dumped heed- lessly by the roadside. Thej^ too have snowy white 19 Grass -grown Roads blooms ill marked contrast to the juicy blackberry, sweet and toothsome, which is promised. Then come the rasp- berry blossoms, both red and black, and the high bush blackberries, all contending for their highway rights. They must know that the boy has his eye upon them from the first, and has marked them for his own. It is just possible tliat they like boys and girls and birds. These last are only paid back for the cleaning off from their stems and leaves of some destructive worms both big and little, and sundry and divers bugs. What the boy is paid for who can tell, for he does nothing for all these wild berry bushes, save to watch them. He lias been known, however, to spare their lives when the farmer had passed sentence of death upon them. There must be a tradition of this passed on from mother berry bush to motlier berry bush, so that they know that the boy always voted not to cut them down so long as they pro- duced berries. These white and sho'v\y blooms often had mixed in with them the coral colored huckleberry blossoms, which modestly seemed to say, "We do not brag so loud as our neighbors, but just wait and see what we ^vi\l do." The huckleberry bush is more civilized than the black- berry vines, for it lias no savage thorns to scratch the hands of the pickers of the fiiiit. The grass-grown road, winding up and down and in and out until stopped by a pair of bars or by a travelled highway, has other promises for the school children who pass that way, their feet, bare and brown, cooled by the green grass. There are the choke-cherry blossoms, snow 20 Grass -gro^vn Roads white and so thick as ahiiost to hide the httle green leaves. They have pushed themselves back into the fence corners, and even have been known to occupy the soil with the timibling down stone wall, in their hu- niiHty and desire not to seem to intrude. The farmer said they were good for nothing, but the birds said they helped out their larder wonderfully, and the boy sought them as keenly as the birds, although the cherries red and yellow puckered his mouth and furred his tongue. They ^\•ere good to eat and he liked them. These same choke-cherries were highly artistic when in fruit as well as in blossom time. They gave a fine touch of color to the roadside in August, when color was mostly want- ing. Indeed, one can readily understand how they helped out the swamp maples and gave them a longer summer, before they put on their gorgeous garments, fair heralds of the death of the leaves. The elders took their tiu'n at wayside decoration. Snowy M'hite and in great clusters, they looked like white umbrellas, raised to protect the lesser plants from the increasing heat of the sun. The boy observed them, but had no particular use for the blossoms, although his sis- ters had, for they took them to the old red school house and decorated the teacher's desk with them. Those elders, however, were the boy's good friends, and he was always admiring the straightest of them, and thinking what "popguns" they would make. One was carefully se- lected, long between its joints, the ])ith pushed out with a stout hickory rod, paper pulp put in either end, the air compressed with the rod, and lo ! a mighty explosion. 21 Grass-grown Roads Occasionally one of the wads might hit something or somebody. This was the airgun of a former genera- tion. By j)utting a plug in the end of the gun in which a small goose quill had been inserted, and winding his rod to make an airtight valve, his popgun became a "squirt gun." This became the terror of the girls and his little brothers. Elderberries helped to make the wayside attractive later, when in place of the white clusters of bloom there were shown among the shining green leaves jet black bunches of berries. You could have a pie made of them, as you could of tlie choke-cherries, but neither were quite voted in by the Litchfield County housewife. The roadway was further made beautiful, as the sea- son wore away, by the sumachs. These were always under sentence of death, since a part of the family were bad, and the many had to bear the sins of a few. There was much ignorance as to ^vhich part of the family de- served to be killed, so that the good had to atone for the sins of the bad, as tliey always have to in this world of men and women and little children. The sumachs began tlieir fall advertising early, by displaying in July their long bunches of bright red berries. These had to come early or they would not have been seen at all, by reason of the flaming red leaves, which were among the first to show the Autumn's pencillings. Hardly anything is more beautiful than a clump of sumachs in early fall, when all other foliage save the swamp maple is still clothed in green. It has crowded out into the roadway 22 Grass -gro^vn Roads as far as it dare, and stands there in its scarlet cloak, im- perial sentinel of the king's highway. The scene changes rapidly as the September winds begin to blow, and the nights to show frosts in the val- leys, the Autumn seed of Winter's snows. The berry bushes are brilliant in their worn-out clothes, which drop from off them one by one in their beauty. The golden rod and asters make believe that there is time enough to enjoy themselves in their gay attire, imitating humans. The bitter-sweet is cracking open its bright berries, gor- geous both without and within, and every living thing, and dying thing, for that matter, puts on bright colors to celebrate the season's close. As if they were saying, "The leaves are getting scarlet^ The nuts are turning brown. Lest I should be old-fashioned, I'll put a trinket on." Nature does not do as we mortals have a way of doing in the putting on of black for our dead, for she is al- ways hopeful of a resurrection in the Springtime. God has a way of telling his secrets, and some people have a way of stopping their ears. Nature never does this; she always listens to what God has to say, and then takes the comfort of it. The grass-grown road would be attractive for its color and fruitage alone, but when you stop to listen there is not an hour in all the days of Spring, Summer and Au- tumn when there is not music. The birds are less dis- 23 Grass -grown Roads turbed than on more frequented highways, and sing just to hear themselves praise the One who made and feeds them. They do not sing for people alone, but for His ear, for they sing the sweetest when all the world is asleep. Then it must be for the Heavenly Father's sake, and for the joy of a few early risers, who must always be bird lovers. The roadside concert has its finer musicians by day and b}'^ night. The grass is full of them, some vocalists and some players on instruments peculiarly their own. He who takes their Stradivarius must take them. Their music is graded down to that fineness that can be heard only in the quiet stillness of the deserted roadside. Be- yond the power of the human ear there must be oratorios, choruses and solos from all the lesser folk who live on and are happy by the side of the grass-grown road. These two — the boy and the girl — chased butterflies, picked berries, and went to school along this same coun- try road, and in later years, he from his hilltop and she from the valley, walked as lovers and saw and heard and felt its beauty. But they do not care to live beside it now. Their eyes are blind to its homely beauty, and their ears deaf to its delightsome music. The odors of a thousand flowers do not awaken in them slumbering memories of the long ago. The god of this world hath blinded their eyes, appearing to them as pleasure, love of power and love of gain. The deceitfulness of riches and the mad pursuit of the butterflies of fashion ab- sorb their time and thought. It may be they will awaken some Summer day, open their eyes and hearts, 25 Grass -grown Roads and come back to see their old friends the birds and the flowers, and the mornings and the evenings which they used to love. It seems strange to us that they and others should prefer the Babel noises of the city to the heaven- ly stillness of some grass-grown road. Ah, well, if they all wanted to live in the country there would be no grass-grown roads for those of us who love them; then what should we do? 26 LITCHFIELD COUNTY SKETCHES II The Procession of the Seasons THE procession of the seasons, as seen through youthful eyes, along country lanes and up shaded slopes, was the most interesting thing in all the world. The \\'inding roads and the grassy fields, wooded uplands and corn-waving intervales are all there as of old, l)ut the seasons come and go unnoticed by the thou- sand toilers along city streets and in the marts of trade. The boy, long since a man, watches for the coming of the Spring in parks and tiny gardens, and sees only in memory the glorious procession of childhood. Spring with her lap full of flowers led the glad troop of the months, heralded by soft winds and sweet odors. With April first the sap began to stir in the trees, and the blood of the farmer and his boys flowed in sweet rhythm with it. Books were put aside for evening use, and all started for the sap bush, to make maple sugar and syrup. The sap ran in those days as if the tree itself would dis- solve, and the buckets were emptied into the great kettle, the fire was kindled, and the boiling away process begun. So all da}^ the blue smoke and the savory steam arose as sweet incense on Springtime's altar. As the twilight 27 The Procession of the Seasons fell, and the moon hung low in the west, like a white ghost of the full moon of last month, the sugaring off began. The maple wax from the kettle was poured on the snow, found under the hemlocks up the glen, for the delectation of the children, and afterward each was given a saucer of the sweet liquid from the kettle to stir until it was cooled, when lo! the most delicious of con- fections, fresh from the earth and the trees. Huyler cannot match the old-time maple wax and maple sugar, home-made and forest-made, eaten as the firelight under the kettle flared and flickered, lighting up the dark re- cesses of the woods. Sucli mornings as those were in the sugar camp, when the fu'st bluebirds were calling, and the robins began timidly to show themselves, and all the old wood sounds were heard again. Stumbling along with a bucket of sap, the sharp eyes of the boy dis- covered the arbutus half hidden by its green-brown leaves, smiling at him after its long Winter's nap. After a few days of sunshine the hepaticas and wood violets keep company with the arbutus, and together proclaim the coming of the Spring to an invalid sister, shut in- doors at the farm house. The squirrels and the wood- peckers and all the dear old forest friends are watched for and welcomed. What an education for the eye and ear was this out of doors life to growing childhood ! But this was only an interlude between the acts, for the scene soon changed, indeed was changing every hour. The sun mounted higher each daj% and its warmth made the grass green on the southern slopes, tempting one to lie down upon it. The sap had something to do now besides 29 The Procession of the Seasons flowing into buckets set to catch it, for it must be about its business. There were thousands of leaves to make, and branches to be strengthened, and httle twigs to be made longer, and tassels to hang out, and odors to dis- til, and seeds to provide with wings. So the buckets were put away, and the plough was burnished in the soil, and the brown sod turned over. As part payment for this kindness it oiFered its incense as a sweet smelling savor, welcomed always by the man who loves tlie soil. Ho^v beautifully the poet Holmes sings of The Plough- man: "Clear the brown path to meet his coulter's gleam. Lo ! on he comes behind his smoking team, With toil's bright dewdrops on his sunburnt brow, The lord of earth, the hero of the plough. These are the hands whose sturdy labor brings The peasant's food, the golden pomp of kings; This is the page whose letters shall be seen Changed by the sun to words of living green; This is the scholar whose immortal pen Spells the first lesson hunger taught to men ; These are the lines that heaven-commanded toil Shows on his deed — the charter of the soil." That "smoking team" was oftentimes a pair of half- broken steers, led by the family horse, on which the boy rode. This was not an easy job by any means, and not always to his comfort, for a stone at the point of the plough would bring the team up standing, throwing the boy forward on the neck of his steed, or pitching him off into the dirt in a very humbling way. Still he 30 The Procession of the Seasons rode a king, and led the van, determining where the rest should follow. Given his choice, however, he would have held the plough, for he had a way of thinking that the boy was always given the hardest work. He would have preferred to build the wall rather than to pick up Lo ! on he comes behind his smoking team." stones, cut the grass ratlier than ted it, and pitch it upon the cart rather than to rake after. The Spring hurried on even faster than this "smoking team," for it had a way of always being a little in ad- vance of tlie farmer. The seed must be planted, for a bobolink was seen this morning, and the little leaves on the walnut trees are as large as mouses' ears, both of 31 The Procession of the Seasons which were sure indications to the tiller of the soil. The corn was dropped and covered, and in a very few days the boy conld follow the rows and drop the small hand- ful of ashes and plaster on the shoots which ambitiously were pricking the soil. After that came the hoeing of corn and potatoes, with a few spare hours at noontime down by the brook, where the speckled trout lay beneath the bank. There was only an alder pole and a coarse line and hook, but the trout were captured all the same.