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 Copy 1 
 
 NEW HAVEN LOYALISTS 
 
 By FRANKLIN B. DEXTER, Litt.D. 
 
 Reprinted from 
 
 Papers of the New Haven Colony Historical Society 
 
 Volume IX 
 
 NEW HAVEN 
 1918 
 

 ay 
 
 JUN 83 1919 
 
NOTES ON SOME OF THE NEW HAVEN 
 
 LOYALISTS, INCLUDING THOSE 
 
 GRADUATED AT YALE. 
 
 By Feaxklix B. Dextee, Litt.D. 
 
 [Read January 18, 1915.] 
 
 A good many years ago, while spending a summer in London, 
 I was interested in turning over, in the Government Record 
 Office, the manuscript reports of the Commissioners appointed 
 in 1783 to review the applications made by the American Loyal- 
 ist refugees for compensation for losses which they had suffered. 
 At that time I made notes of the testimony in cases of special 
 interest; and some of these notes have formed the basis of the 
 present paper. I should mentioHi^j however, that more recently 
 a full transcript of all these records has been secured for the 
 !N"ew York Public Library, in New York City; and as this 
 transcrij)t can be freely consulted by any one, with very slight 
 trouble, my notes have no longer even the modest value which 
 I may have once attached to them. 
 
 Any sketch, however slight, or superficial, of the sentiment in 
 Connecticut at the time of the Revolution must be based pri- 
 marily upon our historical development. 
 
 Under the self-government provided by the comparatively 
 liberal charter of 16G2, this Colony had been, generally speak- 
 ing, quiet and prosperous for a century; with the consequence 
 that in the exciting decade before the outbreak of the Revolu- 
 tion, a large proportion of the shrewdest and most influential 
 public and professional men doubted, to say the least, if they 
 were ncft likely to be better off under existing conditions in this 
 favored spot than they would be if independent of Britain: — 
 this being not merely a conviction in relation to their individual 
 
30 ^'OTES ox SOME OF THE NEW HAVEX LOYAEISTS. 
 
 welfare, but also in consideration of the permanent interests of 
 the community. 
 
 Foremost in the opposite scale was the healthy instinct of 
 loyal cooperation in the united action of other provincial govern- 
 ments, which in its turn involved also a broader and more com- 
 prehensive self-interest; and in most cases this process of 
 deliberation and argument resulted in the ungrudging support 
 of a policy of armed resistance. 
 
 By a law of human nature, hesitation in taking up the 
 attitude of rebels was at first especially the rule of the older 
 generation of public men, under the dominion of the habits of 
 a life-time. Of this class an early example was the Governor 
 of the Colony, Thomas Fitch, of Xorwalk, born in 1700, and 
 graduated at Yale in 1721, who after a lifelong service of the 
 State, culminating in twelve-years' tenure of the chief magis- 
 tracy, was relegated to private life in 1766, for regarding it his 
 bounden duty to take the oath required by the British govern- 
 ment to put in operation the odious Stamp Act. Of course I 
 would not imply that Governor Fitch is to be classed as a pro- 
 nounced Loyalist ; but his attitude, and that of the four members 
 of his Council who stood by him in this crisis (John Chester, of 
 Wethersfield, Benjamin Hall, of Cheshire, Jabez Hamlin, of 
 Middletown, and Ebenezer Silliman, of Fairfield), and of Jared 
 Ingersoll, of New Haven, the unhappy Stamp- Agent, was prac- 
 tically an anticipation of that of many others who were active 
 in pul)lic matters eight and ten years later; and when the need 
 of decision arrived for these also, we cannot wonder if a natural 
 instinct constrained some such to renuiin faithful to their 
 traditionary obligations. 
 
 Perhaps I may illustrate the custonuiry ways in which the 
 thinking men of this next generation were affected by the prob- 
 lem set l»efore them, by taking the exami)les of five of the more 
 conspicuous public men of the group of Yale graduates in 
 Connecticut, — a group, however, which included a large propor- 
 tion of the leading men in civil life. The five whose names 
 suggest themselves, and who were all about sixty years of age in 
 1774. are George Wyllys, of the Class of 1729; Elihu Hall, 
 
NOTES ON" SOME OF THE NEW HAVEN LOYALISTS. 31 
 
 Class of 1731 ; Abraham Davenport, Class of 1732 ; and 
 Benjamin Gale and Samuel Talcott, Class of 1733. 
 
 Colonel Wyllys, of Hartford, had grown gray in official service 
 as the Secretary of the Colony, and continued to hold that useful 
 station acceptably until his death at the ripe age of eighty-five; 
 and though he was currently understood to be averse at first to 
 the change of allegiance, he refrained prudently from overt 
 action, and not only outgrew completely the faint odium of 
 loyalty, but even the repute and recollection of it. 
 
 Colonel Elihu Hall, of Wallingford, on the other hand, is the 
 sole representative in this gi-oup of pure and consistent toryism. 
 His birth and family connections opened to him the best that 
 Connecticut had to offer ; and after his admission to the bar 
 his success as a lawyer was phenomenally rapid. An extensive 
 practice led to repeated trips to England, which increased his 
 attachment to the mother country, and ensured his choice of it 
 as a refuge after war began. He fled from New Haven to Xew 
 York in January, 1779 ; and a letter is preserved, retailing his 
 report to British authorities of conditions in Connecticut at 
 that date, which is as untrustworthy as such reports were apt to 
 be. He estimates, for example, that two-thirds of the inhabi- 
 tants of the Colony are in favor of reunion with Great Britain ; 
 and announces that Governor Trumbull's popularity is declin- 
 ing — as evinced at the polls : an assertion entirely inconsistent 
 with all other evidence. He also intimates that important con- 
 versions to the British side are imminent ; but unfortunately 
 the only two examples which he specifies do not display shrewd 
 judgment. One of these, his own brother-in-law, the Rev. 
 Chauncey Whittelsey, pastor of the First Church in IN^ew Haven, 
 is abundantly known as of unswerving find otherwise unsus- 
 pected patriotism; and the same is, so far as I can learn, true 
 of the other individual named, Colonel Thomas Seymour, of 
 Hartford. Such baseless gossip was bound to react on the 
 informer and his value as an adherent; and the sequel is not 
 out of keeping with this prologue. For our latest glimpse of 
 Colonel Hall is in London, after the war, pleading that, having 
 lost his large American property, his only support, in an infirm 
 
32 NOTES OX SOME OF THE X'EW HAVEX LOYALISTS. 
 
 and lonelj old age, is his pension of £80 a year, which will not 
 allow him to keep a servant. Others of the London colony of 
 refugees add their testimony to the dismal picture, — to the 
 effect that he has in earlier life been confined in a madhouse, 
 and now squanders the little he has in liquor and debauchery. 
 
 In the College class below him was Abraham Davenport, of 
 Stamford, a great-grandson of the first minister of l^ew Haven, 
 a prominent member of the Governor's Council, or Upper House 
 of the General Assembly, and Judge of the County Court. He 
 was naturally conservative in his judgment of public questions, 
 and it was no secret that he viewed with great hesitation and 
 disfavor a rupture with Great Britain; but when it became 
 necessary for the Colony to range itself definitely in the organ- 
 ized struggle, he yielded to the paramount claims of the common 
 cause, and thenceforth no one was more firm or more constant in 
 its service. 
 
 In the Class of 1733 were Dr. Benjamin Gale, of Clinton, 
 and Colonel Samuel Talcott, of Hartford. Dr. Gale was a 
 learned and skilful physician, of very pronounced and not alto- 
 gether orthodox views in religion and philosophy. He took also 
 a deep interest in politics, and had served for years in the 
 Assemblv. He was one of the most striking characters of his 
 generation in Connecticut, very pessimistic and critical in his 
 outlook, and acknowledging no man and no group of men as 
 master. To such an observer the revolutionary movement was 
 full of danger. He was firmly attached to the cause of liberty, 
 as he conceived it, but differed conscientiously from his neigh- 
 bors and associates as to the proper mode of opposition to 
 Great Britain; but in the issue, even this perverse and 
 captious critic was clear-sighted enough to concede that one's 
 preferences as to mode must give way, in cases where another 
 mode has been commonly agreed upon. 
 
 His classmate, Samuel Talcott, son of the Governor of the 
 Colony, and therefore, like George Wyllys and Abraham Daven- 
 port, placed at the head of his class by social standing, was by 
 inheritance and descent counted among the richest and most 
 liighly favored gentry of the period. In middle life he had 
 
NOTES OX SOME OF THE NEW HAVEN LOYALISTS. 33 
 
 performed his due share of civil and military service, and now, 
 in a leisurely old age, his circumstances and habits illy adapted 
 him to welcome the hardships of the Revolution. In the result, 
 however, he too is found standing firmly by the new State govern- 
 ment and withholding nothing. 
 
 Like these, in their different ways, the better part of the 
 maturer intelligence of the Colony went through the ordeal of a 
 conflict between self-interest, or private judgment, and public 
 policy, and rallied effectively in support of independence. 
 
 Under the Connecticut charter, the people elected their own 
 rulers, and accordingly there was here no such large official 
 class, dependent on the British power, as in the other American 
 colonies ; and what constituted the largest section of the Tory 
 party in most of the neighboring governments, was here prac- 
 tically non-existent. 
 
 As one result of this situation, the most numerous group in 
 Connecticut of those who were by personal affiliations predes- 
 tined to sympathy with Great Britain, was the body of mission- 
 ary clergy of the Church of England, all of whom, on receiving 
 orders in the mother country, had taken a special oath of alle- 
 giance to the croAvn, and were moreover dependent in good part 
 on the stipends furnished by the English "Society for the Propa- 
 gation of the Gospel." 
 
 If I have counted correctly, there were at the outbreak of the 
 war nineteen Episcopal clergjonen in Connecticut, of whom 
 fifteen were Yale graduates. The eldest of this group, the Rev. 
 John Beach, born in Stratford in 1700, and graduated in 1721, 
 had come as an undergraduate under the influence of Samuel 
 Johnson, then Tutor ; and after his settlement in the Congrega- 
 tional ministry in ISTewtown, while Johnson was in charge of the 
 Church of England mission in the adjoining township of Strat- 
 ford, he was led by the same influence to conform to Episcopacy, 
 and eventually to accept the cure of missions in J^ewtown and 
 Redding. It may be an indication of the weight of his character 
 that the proportion of Episcopalians in itTewtown before the 
 Revolution is said to have been higher than in any other town- 
 ship in Connecticut. He is specially remembered for his 
 3 
 
34 XOTES ox SOME OF THE XEW HAVEX LOYALISTS. 
 
 intrepidity in continuing to use in public worship, after all his 
 fellow-presbyters had closed their church-doors, the appointed 
 prayer for the King, which included a petition to "strengthen 
 him that he may vanquish and overcome all his enemies." 
 
 Next to Mr. Beach, at least among those of Connecticut birth, 
 in length of service in the Colony, was the Rev. Jeremiah 
 Leaming, bom on the confines of Durham and Middletown in 
 1717, and graduated at Yale in 1745. He also had been 
 touched by Samuel Johnson's influence, and, after receiving 
 orders and serving temporarily elsewhere, became in 1758 the 
 minister of the parish in ^STorwalk, where after twenty years of 
 devoted labor he suffered unhappily at the hands of both parties 
 to the war, — first as a tory from wanton exposure while lodged 
 on the floor of the county jail in winter, which rendered him a 
 wretched cripple for the rest of his days, and secondly from the 
 destruction of all his personal effects, a year later, when General 
 Tryon, though himself a member of the Venerable Society whose 
 commission Leaming bore, with equal wantonness burned his 
 house and his church in the invasion of iN'orwalk. He was then 
 transported within the British lines, but after the peace came 
 back to Connecticut, and found in his destitute and forlorn old 
 age an asylum here with that devoted Churchwoman, Madam 
 Hillhouse, in whose mansion, known to us as Grove Hall, he 
 died in 1804. 
 
 The most blatant and most notorious member of this group of 
 Church clergy was Samuel Peters, of Hebron, born of Episcopal 
 parents in 1735, and graduated at Yale in 1757, who became a 
 missionary in his native town and the vicinity. On the news 
 of British troops firing on Boston, in 1774, his arrogant and 
 offensive attitude, and especially his activity in publishing reso- 
 lutions condemning the popular opposition to Parliament, pro- 
 voked such treatment and such threats that he fled forthwith to 
 England. 
 
 His sworn statements of his resources and his losses, which 
 are still on file there, in connection with his applications for 
 compensation, are ludicrously and impudently overdrawn. He 
 claims, for instance, that his father, who was a plain, ordinarily 
 
NOTES ON SOME OF THE NEW HAVEN LOYALISTS, 35 
 
 well-to-do farmer, in one of the poorest towns in Hartford 
 County, had been the richest citizen of the entire Colony, and 
 that his own confiscated estate was valued at the absurd figure 
 of upwards of £40,000. By this extravagant tale he succeeded 
 in gaining a pension of £200 a year, which was withdrawn some 
 twenty-five years later, after fuller experience of his pretentious 
 unreliability. 
 
 It may seem like slaying the slain to enlarge on the falsehoods 
 of the notorious Parson Peters ; but whenever I read over anew 
 any of his attempts at narration, I am reassured that his colossal 
 powers of untruth have never been properly appreciated. Take, 
 for instance, his article in the Political Magazine of London, on 
 the History of his near neighbor. Governor Trumbull, of 
 Lebanon, who had striven hard to protect him from the mob in 
 his troubles, but whose life Peters pretends to sketch in a series 
 of the most outrageously unblushing and libelous falsehoods. 
 In justification of such a characterization it will be enough to 
 recall the initial statement in Peters' biography : — that Jonathan 
 Trumbull, a scion of a family of unblemished reputation, was 
 really an illegitimate child, and probably the son of the Rev. 
 Samuel Welles, the minister of the town, — and this regardless 
 of the plain fact that Mr. Welles was not settled in Lebanon until 
 more than a year after Trumbull's birth. 
 
 It only emphasizes Peters' peculiar character, or lack of char- 
 acter, to note that he was the only minister of the Church of 
 England in the Colony who thought it advisable or necessary to 
 forsake his post for a foreign asylum, before the war began; 
 though four others, James Scovil of Waterbury, Roger Viets 
 of Simsbury, Samuel Andrews of Wallingford, and Richard 
 Clarke, of jSTew Milford, were induced, after peace was declared, 
 under stress of poverty by the removal of their flocks, rather 
 than from experience of enmity ox odium, to accept the cure of 
 parishes in the British Provinces, of kindred origin and 
 sympathies. 
 
 There remain a dozen other Episcopal incumbents, whom I 
 have not mentioned specifically, who retained their places 
 through the Revolutionarv strua'gle, with more or less discomfort 
 
36 XOTES ox SOME OF THE XEW HAVEX LOYALISTS. 
 
 and some ill-usage, and finally acquiesced peacefully in the 
 results accomplished. Of this number were such familiar fig- 
 ures in this vicinity as the Eev. Richard Mansfield, Yale 1741, 
 of Derby, the Rev. Bela Hubbard, Yale 1758, of ]S[ew Haven, 
 and the Rev. Abraham Jarvis, Yale 1761, of Middletown — all 
 of whom lived to be doctorated in a succeeding generation by 
 their Alma Mater. It should perhaps be noted that Dr. ]\rans- 
 field, though not in any wise to be classed with Peters, had once 
 found it prudent to take temporary refuge on Long Island, on 
 account of the excitement caused by the report of a letter of his 
 to a British officer, 'which merely included some conjectural 
 estimate of the strength of Loyalist sentiment in Western 
 Connecticut. 
 
 Many lay-members of the Episcopal Church were also avowed 
 or suspected loyalists ; but comparatively few went to the length 
 of exile. In such a conspicuous case as that of the Hon. William 
 Samuel Johnson, of Stratford, Yale 1744, one of the most emi- 
 nent lawyers in the Colony, he must be credited with an honest 
 doubt as to the right course of action ; on finding himself unable 
 conscientiously to advocate independence, he retired definitely 
 from all public employment, but let it be known that he had no 
 inclination to aid the enemy, and had without hesitation con- 
 tributed to the patriotic cause : and when peace was established, 
 he assumed a prominent and effective part in the councils of the 
 State and of the nation. 
 
 One locally well-known lay-churchman who had to be dealt 
 with for his loyalty was Ralph Isaacs, a native of ISTonvalk, who 
 had settled in Xew Haven as a merchant after his graduation 
 at Yale in 1761, and became the grandfather of the Hon. Ralph 
 Isaacs Ingersoll, and uncle of the wife of the elder President 
 D wight. He was a rather volatile person, and was early mis- 
 trusted as a sympathizer with the enemy, so that for over a year 
 he was held under observation and restraint in one of the 
 interior towns, where it was presumed he would lack opportunity 
 of making trouble ; but he soon transgressed by taking advantage 
 of his partial liberty to supply his neighbors surreptitiously with 
 rum. After a further period of surveillance, he took the oath 
 
NOTES ON SOME OF THE NEW HAVEN LOYALISTS. 37 
 
 of fidelity, and lived thenceforth in comparative retirement, and 
 mostly on his farm in Branford. 
 
 Anotlier lay-churchman of ISTew Haven, who accompanied Mr. 
 Isaacs in his temporary banishment, was Captain Abiathar 
 Camp, a native of Durham ; and he also, after a like period of 
 detention, took the oath and was allowed to return to his resi- 
 dence here. But his allegiance was fickle, and finally he and 
 his family went off with the British after the invasion in 1779. 
 He had been a successful merchant, and in presenting in 1783 
 a claim for compensation, he estimated his income from his 
 business at £200 per annum, and his total losses at over £8000, 
 though this claim was eventually much reduced. It may be of 
 interest to know that while a diligent business man at that date, 
 of no special educational advantages, he owned a library of 
 English and Latin books, valued at ten guineas ; and also that 
 he filed in support of his demands a certificate of loyalty, fur- 
 nished in 1786 by his quondam fellow-townsman. General 
 Benedict Arnold, — which document praises him specifically 
 for activity in providing guides and pilots for the expedition 
 which Arnold himself had conducted against l^ew London in 
 1781. 
 
 Captain Camp died in ISTova Scotia soon after the adjudication 
 of his claim. I should add that there were included in his com- 
 pany in exile a son, Abiathar Camp, Junior, who had entered 
 Yale in 1773, but did not reach graduation, and who died in the 
 Provinces at a great age in 1841 ; and also a son-in-law, Daniel 
 Lyman, Junior, Yale 1770, a convert to the church, who became 
 eventually a Major in the British army. 
 
 Besides the Episcopalians, there was one other minute group 
 of less conspicuous sectarian Loyalists. 
 
 For local reasons Connecticut had never proved congenial soil 
 for Quaker colonists; but about 1764 the disciples of Robert 
 Sandeman, called Sandemanians, who imitated the Quakers in 
 being conscientiously bound to a policy of passive resistance to 
 war, and thus considered themselves obliged to remain loyal to 
 King George, had gained a scanty foothold here, especially in 
 Danburv and ITew Haven. 
 
38 NOTES OX SOME OF THE jS'EW HAVEN LOYALISTS. 
 
 They were mostly of undistinguished social standing and small 
 political influence. The best known of the group were Eichard 
 Woodhull, Yale 1752 ; Daniel Humphreys and Joseph Pynchon, 
 Yale 1757; Titus Smith, Yale 1764; and Theophilus Cham- 
 berlain, Yale 1765. 
 
 Richard Woodhull, from Long Island, had been a favorite 
 pupil of President Clap, and had therefore been employed to 
 fill with rather indifferent success for seven or eight 3'ears a 
 College tutorship. He remained, after his first conscientious 
 protest, peaceably and inconsj)icuously in ISTew Haven until his 
 death. Daniel Humphreys, the ablest member of the company, 
 was a son of the minister of Derby, and brother of General 
 David Humphreys. He practiced law here, and also taught a 
 private school of high grade ; but removed by the close of the 
 war to Portsmouth, New Plampshire, where he had a long and 
 rather brilliant career at the bar. His classmate, Joseph 
 Pynchon, from Springfield, had inherited a good estate, and 
 lived in dignified leisure in Guilford, where he had married. 
 After becoming a Sandemanian, he removed to 'New Haven, 
 perhaps for religious privileges, but was made so uncomfortable 
 here that he retired within the British lines, thus sacrificing a 
 large portion of his estate. He returned a year or two after the 
 peace to Guilford, and is to be remembered as the ancestor of 
 well-known New Haven citizens and of President P^Tichon, of 
 Trinity College. Titus Smith and Theophilus Chamberlain, 
 who were also of Massachusetts birth, had both done good service 
 as missionaries among the Indians, and after their abandonment 
 of Congregationalism were recognized as the preaching elders in 
 charge of the obscure handful of Sandemanians in this city. 
 Like Pynchon, they felt constrained to take refuge with the 
 British, and they both ended their days in Halifax. 
 
 Aside from these whom I have enumerated, the next most 
 notable company of Loyalist exiles from the New Haven town- 
 ship was the family circle of Joshua Chandler, Esquire, Yale 
 1747. He was a native of Woodstock, and a fellow-townsman 
 and first cousin of that stout Churchman, the Rev. Thomas 
 Bradbury Chandler, Yale 1745, of New Jersey, who ^vas active 
 
NOTES ON SOME OF THE NEW HAVEN LOYALISTS. 39 
 
 just before the Revolution in promoting the scheme for an 
 American Episcopate, and went later into exile as a Loyalist. 
 
 Joshua Chandler had adhered to the Congregational church, 
 and had become a successful lawyer, with every worldly motive 
 to prompt him to side with the popular current. His ample 
 town-house, built early in the same decade (1760-70) with other 
 notable old IsTew Haven residences, on the site of the Tontine 
 Hotel and the new Post-office, and thence removed in 1824 or 5, 
 is now occupied by Mr. Henry B. Sargent. Like other well-to-do 
 citizens of the day, Mr. Chandler had also bought extensive 
 landed estate in the suburbs, and after 1765 lived principally 
 on one of his farms in ISTorth Haven. In 1775, in the full tide 
 of his professional and political reputation, as Justice of the 
 Peace, Selectman, Deputy to the General Assembly, and Chair- 
 man of the town's Committee of Correspondence, he announced, 
 from conscientious motives, his determined loyalty to King 
 George, and accepted the consequent suspicion and obloquy. 
 Four years later he left town with the British invaders, accom- 
 panied by his wife, a daughter of Joseph Miles, of l^ew Haven, 
 three daughters, and four sons. He had moved in the first 
 circles in the community, and in letters sent back after his flight 
 professed a strong affection for his native country; but the 
 records of the London commissioners in 1783 who received his 
 appeal for compensation quote his statement to them that he 
 had remained so long as he did in the Colony, as thinking that 
 he might thus be able to communicate essential information to 
 General Tryon in his invasion, and in other ways to be of service 
 to the home government. The property vs^hich he abandoned, 
 to the estimated value of about £4000, was confiscated by the 
 toAvn, and he recovered compensation, covering three-fourths of 
 that amount. 
 
 His eldest son (John Chandler, Yale 1772) alone remained 
 here; but his career was blighted by the opprobrium of the 
 family record. The second son, William Chandler, Yale 1773, 
 had early espoused the British cause, and in 1777 raised a com- 
 pany in ^ew York of over a hundred men for the King's service ; 
 and he and a younger brother earned infamy by aiding to pilot 
 
40 NOTES OX SOME OF THE KEW HAVEN LOYAIJSTS. 
 
 the British in their invasion of Xew Haven. It is a satisfaction 
 to know that he failed to secure an allowance from the govern- 
 ment after the close of the war, except a paltry annual pension 
 of £40 ; which was to cease, if he should be put on half-pav as 
 a retired army-officer. 
 
 With the family went also Amos Botsford, Yale 1763, a son- 
 in-law and a ISTew Haven attorney, who stated frankly in his 
 later application for compensation that he was obliged to flee on 
 account of the odium arising from the action of his brothers-in- 
 law as e:uides to the invaders. He claimed that he had aban- 
 doned property worth over £2500, including a library, chiefly 
 of law-books, valued at £37 sterling; and that his annual pro- 
 fessional income was about £600, of which he had been able to 
 lay up on an average £225, after spending £375 for the support 
 of his family, which included a wife and three children. He 
 also testified that, when filing this application in Annapolis, his 
 available income scarcely exceeded thirty guineas a year; and 
 on this showing he was allowed an annual pension of £224, 
 
 There remain a few other names of notable ]^ew Haveners, 
 who were temporarily or permanently disaffected. One such is 
 that of Judge Thomas Darling, of Woodbridge, Yale 1740, a 
 son-in-law of the Rev. Joseph ]Sroyes, pastor of the First Church : 
 a stubborn, cross-gTained person, of strong convictions, unable 
 on principle to accept without dispute the current arguments for 
 renoimcing British sovereignty, but judicious enough in the long 
 run to restrain himself from fruitless opposition to the moral 
 sense of the community in which his lot was cast. With him 
 may be named his College classmate and pastor, the Rev. 
 Benjamin Woodbridge, in whose honor, when the farmers of 
 Amity Parish asked for town privileges, they preferred the name 
 of Woodbridge — a sufficient proof that imperfect s^anpathy on 
 the part of their old pastor with the new political order had not 
 made any serious breach in the regard of his people. 
 
 The two classmates. Darling and Woodbridge, agreed also in 
 their theological position, both being firm supporters of the Old- 
 Light party, which some of the patriotic New Lights tried to 
 discredit generally, as applying its conservatism to the political 
 
NOTES ON SOME OF THE NEW HAVEN LOYALISTS. 41 
 
 field. But ill fact disaffection was not limited, among the Con- 
 gregational clergy, to the conservatives. Dr. John Smalley, of 
 ^ew Britain, Yale 1756, a leader of the new theology of the 
 day, may serve as a typical instance of one who, starting from 
 a reasoned policy of non-resistance, reproved at first the patriotic 
 ardor of his flock, and was only slowly and laboriously converted 
 to their point of view. 
 
 Within College walls sentiment was overwhelmingly on the 
 side of the American cause. President Ezra Stiles, the typical 
 broad-minded student of his generation, and strictly speaking 
 neither a politician' nor a theologian, had been from the first an 
 outspoken patriot; and Professor Daggett's fearless, not to say 
 foolhardy, exposure of his person is one of the best known inci- 
 dents of the attack on JSTew Haven. But, on the other hand, the 
 only other permanent member of the Faculty, the Rev. l^ehe- 
 miah Strong, the Professor of Mathematics and ISTatural 
 Philosophy, who was by the way an Old Light in theology, was 
 decidedly lukewarm in his support of revolution, and perhaps 
 for this reason in part was provided so meagre a stipend that he 
 found himself in the course of the struggle driven to resign his 
 post. 
 
 The student body could naturally be counted on as enthusi- 
 astic for liberty, with a few marked exceptions: such, for 
 instance, as John Jones, a native of Stratford, of the Class of 
 17T6, who went directly from College into the British army; 
 and Jared Mansfield, of I^ew Haven, of the following class, a 
 nephew of the Rev. Dr. Richard Mansfield, who after a lawless 
 and broken College career, was among those inhabitants who 
 remained passively in the town when the British troops took 
 possession of it, and thus laid himself open to the charge of 
 toryism. The public spirit and efiiciency of his later career 
 have redeemed the memory of his early vagaries. 
 
 One peculiarly interesting connection of Yale with the con- 
 tending armies relates to the family of Dr. George Muirson, of 
 Long Island, who spent his last years in l^ew Haven, and had in 
 early life taken a highly notable part in the promotion of inocu- 
 lation for the small-pox in America. Himself a loyal Church- 
 
42 NOTES ON SOME OF THE NEW HAVEN LOYALISTS. 
 
 man, two of liis sons, graduates respectively in 1771 and 1776, 
 fought in the war — the elder on the British and the younger on 
 the American side, — an unparalleled instance in Yale or New 
 Haven history. Besides at least one other line of l^ew Haven 
 descendants, a sister of these youths was the paternal gTand- 
 mother of President Woolsey. 
 
 There were perhaps somewhat over a thousand Yale graduates 
 in active life at the time of the Revolution, and it is a satisfac- 
 tory evidence of their substantial agreement in sentiment that 
 less than twenty-five, or 2^ per cent, sided at once and per- 
 manently with the mother country and sought refuge in British 
 territory or died in British military service ; of this number the 
 majority were employees of either the Crown or the Church of 
 England. 
 
 Besides such of this brief list as have already been noticed, 
 only some half dozen more of the Yale Loyalists were persons 
 of any special distinction ; and their record can be easily 
 summarized. 
 
 There was, for instance, the Rev. Dr. Henry Caner, of Eng- 
 lish birth, the son of that master builder who was brought to-N'ew 
 Haven in 1717 to construct the original building named Yale 
 College, and who through the marriage of a granddaughter into 
 the Hillhouse family furnished a name for our (misspelt) 
 Canner Street. Born in the Church of England, he entered her 
 ministry in Fairfield, after his graduation in 1724, and proved 
 so attractive a preacher that in 1747 he succeeded to the rector- 
 ship of the most conspicuous and aristocratic Episcopal congre- 
 gation in ISTew England, that of King's Chapel in Boston. 
 When the Revolution came, in his old age, he accompanied the 
 British on their evacuation of the town, and finally settled down 
 in England in poverty and obscurity. His attested loss of an 
 annual income of £200 was at length made up by an equivalent 
 pension ; and he attained a great age, which made him for eight 
 years the oldest surviving graduate of Yale. 
 
 A second venerable Loyalist of prominence, who also attained 
 the distinction of being the oldest living gi-aduate, was David 
 Ogden, of Newark, New Jersey, Class of 1728, the leading 
 
NOTES ON SOME OF THE NEW HAVEN LOYALISTS. 43 
 
 lawyer of that Province, and a Judge of the Supreme Court. 
 As early as January, 1777, his active sympathy with the British 
 led him to seek the protection of the troops in JSTew York and to 
 receive honor there as a political counselor. Then followed 
 exile in England, where he lived in pitiful illness and loneliness, 
 on borrowed money, under the care of a servant, until on the 
 representation of his losses he was given a pension of £200, which 
 he relinquished, however, in extreme old age, to return to the 
 asylum which he craved under the flag of the United States. 
 
 Of a younger generation was another eminent graduate, who 
 was firm in conscientious opposition to the Revolution, William 
 Smith the younger, the historian of the Province of l^ew York, 
 of the Class of 1745. As a lawyer he stood at the head of his 
 profession for ability and integrity; and after he felt con- 
 strained to an attitude of neutrality, his advice in matters of 
 law and policy was still sought by his former associates and 
 freely given. Finally, when unable to take the oath of allegiance 
 to the new government, he was driven into the British lines, 
 where he was complimented with the titular rank of Chief Jus- 
 tice of JSTew York, and after the peace with the real and valid 
 appointment of Chief Justice of Canada. 
 
 Three years younger in College age was the Rev. Samuel 
 Seabury, a native of Groton, who took orders in the Episcopal 
 church, in which he had been reared. The approach of the 
 Revolution found him stationed in Westchester, IN". Y., on the 
 Connecticut border, where he had already been extensively 
 occupied as an anonymous pamphleteer in behalf of the claims 
 of the Church of England, and in opposition to the union of 
 the Colonies. In 1774 he printed, still anonymously, a series of 
 remarkably able and even brilliant papers in criticism of the 
 Continental Congress, the authorship of which he avowed in his 
 appeals to the Commissioners for compensation in 1783, 
 although contradictory statements over his signature are also 
 alleged to exist. In November, 1775, he was seized and brought 
 to New Haven by a posse of Connecticut soldiers, who resented 
 his partisan activity, was paraded ignominiously through our 
 streets, and was kept here under guard for a month. After his 
 
44 NOTES ON SOME OF THE NEW HAVEN LOYALISTS. 
 
 release be took refuge within the British lines, and there 
 received an appointment as Chaplain, from which he enjoyed to 
 the end of his life a small half-pay pension. His later career, 
 as the first Bishop of the American Episcopal Church, to which 
 office he was chosen after the peace, while still in iSTew York 
 City, is too well known to need rehearsal. 
 
 Another graduate of high official standing who adhered to the 
 British side was Judge Thomas Jones, of the iiSTew York 
 Supreme Court, of the Class of 1750. He held court for the 
 last time in April, 1776 ; and after repeated experiences of 
 arrest and imprisonment for disaffection to the American cause, 
 he embarked for England in 1781. In 1783 he estimated his 
 losses at upwards of £14,000 sterling; and a small pension was 
 assigned him, which he received until bis death in 1792. He 
 is now perhaps most generally remembered as the author of a 
 bitterly partisan History of Neiu York during the Revolution, 
 which was published from his manuscript in 1879 ; in this work 
 he refers to his Alma Mater as "then and still a nursery of sedi- 
 tion, faction and republicanism." 
 
 Another of the same group was Edmund Fanning, a native 
 of Long Island, and a graduate of 1757. He settled as a lawyer 
 in iN'orth Carolina, where he so won the favor of Governor Tryon 
 as to become a trusted and influential factor in the public 
 service. "When Tryon was promoted in 1771 to the llTew-York 
 governorship. Fanning went with him, and there also held impor- 
 tant office. In 1776, as an ardent Loyalist, he raised and took 
 command of a regiment, remaining in the field through the war. 
 Later, as a reward for his fidelity, he was made successively 
 Lieutenant-Governor of iJ^ova Scotia and of Prince Edward 
 Island. He accompanied Tryon on his expedition for the inva- 
 sion of New Haven, in 1779, and when soliciting an honorary 
 degree from Yale a quarter of a century later claimed that 
 through his intervention the College buildings were saved from 
 pillage and destruction. 
 
 I have not as yet emphasized the admitted fact that a consid- 
 erable minority of the business men of ISTew Haven in these 
 pre-Revolutionary days are credited with Tory proclivities ; but 
 
NOTES ON SOME OF THE NEW HAVEN LOYALISTS. 45 
 
 it is fair to remember that, however exasperating the differences 
 in opinion may have been, there was no open scandal ; and the 
 vote in town-meeting in 1766, of 226 to 48 in favor of support- 
 ing the Colony officials in ignoring the Stamp Act, probably 
 expresses about the usual strength of the two parties. 
 
 In any account of 'New Haven society, I should also mention 
 that, after the trying experiences of the war were over, and the 
 community had settled down again into its ordinary routine, the 
 development of interests tended to consolidate, in their opposi- 
 tion to the older and more conservative elements, the greater 
 part of the Episcopalians with the more venturesome commer- 
 cial adventurers and the restless, drifting fringe of the popula- 
 tion, who, with little at stake, were indifferent to hardly-won 
 standards. These miscellaneous elements, the nucleus of the 
 future Jeffersonians and Tolerationists, absorbed into their camp 
 the remnants of the loyalist faction, and so conspicuous a part 
 did these form that the whole group was often described as 
 "Tories," and classed as not altogether well-affected to the 
 Federal government. Thus, President Stiles, when he com- 
 ments in his Diary on the inauguration of the City government 
 in 1Y84, refers with evident asperity to the numerous Tory 
 element — estimating one-third of the duly enrolled citizens as 
 "hearty Tories," one-third as "Whigs," and one-third as "indif- 
 ferent." Of the forty voters who are Episcopalians, he labels 
 all as "Tories" but two, and includes from the same camp from 
 twenty to thirty of the First-Church flock. The credulous 
 President's figures may have been warped by gossip and preju- 
 dice; but at all events it is clear that thus early after the war 
 a considerable weight in public affairs was conceded to the party 
 which embraced the former Loyalists, in whom — so far as local 
 traditions show — there was no pretence of reversion to dead 
 issues, but a healthy and active interest in helping to work out 
 the adaptation of the familiar conditions of life in our old 
 democratic Colony to a new set of responsibilities and obliga- 
 tions in the Union of independent States. 
 
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