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 NEW HAVEN IN 1784. 
 
 A PAPER 
 
 READ BEFORE THE NEW HAVEN COLONY HISTORICAL SOCIETY, 
 JANUARY 21, 1884, 
 
 FRANKLIN BOWDITCH DEXTER.
 
 
 
 NEW HAVEN IN 1784. 
 
 ON the evening of January 21, 1784, the President of Yale 
 College wrote in his diary : " This afternoon the Bill or Charter 
 of the City of New Haven passed the Governor and Council, 
 and completes the incorporation of the Mayor, four Aldermen 
 and twenty Common Council." It is fitting to recall on this 
 anniversary some characteristics of the New Haven of 1784. 
 
 The town then covered the territory now occupied, not 
 only by the present town, but also by West Haven, East 
 Haven, North Haven, (the greater part of) Woodbridge, Ham- 
 den, and Bethany, in all an area of perhaps ten by thirteen 
 miles, or from ten to twelve times as extensive as now. 
 
 The inhabitants were estimated at 7,960 souls ; of whom 
 3,350, less than almost any one of our wards to-day, were in 
 that part which was chartered as a city. There are now within 
 the town-limits of 1784, by a more than tenfold increase, some 
 87,000 inhabitants, while the city proper has multiplied more 
 than twentyfold. 
 
 In the settled part of the city (that is, the original nine 
 squares, called " the town-plat," and the south-eastward exten- 
 sion to the water, known as " the new township"), there were 
 some 400 dwellings, mostly of wood, but a good number of 
 brick, and one or two of stone. A nearly contemporaneous 
 map (1775) on our walls shows that these dwellings lay almost 
 wholly in the area bounded by Meadow, George, York, Grove,
 
 52 CENTENNIAL OF NEW HAVEN. 
 
 Olive and Water streets, the northern part of this area being 
 by far the least fully inhabited. 
 
 The streets were without regular lines of trees, without 
 pavements, sidewalks, or names ; but it was an awkward mode 
 of designation by localities identified with personal names (as 
 we still speak of Cutler Corner) ; and eight months after the 
 charter was given, 21 of the principal streets (Broadway, 
 Chapel, Cherry, Church, College, Court, Crown, Elm, Fair, 
 Fleet, George, Grove, High, Meadow, Olive, Orange, State, 
 Temple, Union, Water, and York) received at a city meeting 
 their present names. A few may have been already known by 
 these titles ; I dare not affirm it of any but College and Chapel 
 streets, in both which cases the names were applied only to the 
 immediate vicinity of the two college buildings which occa- 
 sioned them. A few more had been known by other names : 
 thus, the lower part of Church street was called Market street, 
 from the market-house at the open intersection of George and 
 Church ; State street is called on the map of 1775 Queen 
 street, a designation which would seem to go back to distant 
 Queen Anne ; part of George street was long known as 
 Leather lane ; York street was sometimes called West street, 
 and Grove street North street. 
 
 Of the new names Church street was suggested by the 
 Episcopal Church which stood on the east side of that street, a 
 little nearer to Chapel than to Center street ; Temple street, 
 from the two churches on the Green, in front of which it ran ; 
 York street, from the name of the " Yorkshire quarter," given 
 at the very beginning to that neighborhood where some leading 
 immigrants from Yorkshire sat down ; Elm street from the 
 already patriarchal trees planted in 1686 in front of the Rev. 
 Mr. Pierpont's dwelling and remaining almost to our day ; and 
 Court street, because it was intended that it should run across 
 the Green past the Court House.
 
 NEW HAVEN IN 1784. 53 
 
 New Haven had already been described in print (Peters' 
 History of Connecticut) as " the most beautiful town in New 
 England" ; and one special feature which contributed to this 
 impression was the Green, usually called the market place, 
 because the southern border was used for this purpose. Dr. 
 Jedidiah Morse, however, states in the first edition of his 
 American Geography (1789) that "the beauty of the public 
 square is greatly diminished by the burial ground and several 
 of the public buildings which occupy a considerable part 
 of it," 
 
 Chief among these buildings was an elegant and commodi- 
 ous brick State House or County Court House, built in 
 1761-64 by the State and County jointly, and standing a little 
 to the north of, and much nearer Temple street man the 
 present Trinity church ; it had both east and west doors, fur- 
 nished with stone steps ; the first floor was devoted to court 
 rooms and offices, and the second to the use of the two houses 
 of the General Assembly at its October sessions, while the third 
 floor was an open hall. The judge of the County Court was 
 Col. James Wadsworth, a graduate at Yale in 1748, of whose 
 college days an interesting reminiscence is preserved in the 
 plan which he drew of New Haven in his senior year and 
 which was engraved in 1806. 
 
 Next to this building stood what was still the "New 
 Brick " meeting-house of the First Church, built in 1753-57, 
 measuring about seventy-five by fifty feet, and holding an aver- 
 age congregation of not much over nine hundred persons ; it 
 was on the site of the present Center Church, and was arranged 
 internally in a corresponding way, with the pulpit toward the 
 west, but it was as if the church now standing were shifted 
 around sidewise, the north and south length being the greatest, 
 and the bell-tower at the northern end. The minister was the 
 Rev. Chauncey Whittelsey, now near the end of his life,
 
 54 CENTENNIAL OF NEW HAVEN. 
 
 having reached the age of sixty-six, and having been settled 
 for thirty-six years. 
 
 The earliest secession or separation from the common church 
 of the whole town had been the society formed in consequence 
 of the Whitefieldian revival, and after a long struggle finally 
 recognized by authority of the General Assembly in 1759, and 
 dubbed with the unaccountable name of the White Haven 
 Society.* Their wooden meeting-house, built in 1744 and 
 much enlarged in 1764, measuring about sixty feet square, and 
 called from its color the Blue Meeting-house, stood on the 
 southeast corner of Elm and Church streets. The congregation 
 worshiping there had dwindled from a much larger number 
 than that of the parent society, to less than eight hundred 
 hearers, under the dry preaching of that acute metaphysician, 
 Jonathan Edwards, the younger, now aged thirty-nine, and 
 for fifteen years their pastor. 
 
 The majority of those who had left Mr. Edwards's meeting, 
 as much from dislike of his extreme " New Divinity " views 
 as from his dull preaching, had formed a new congregation, 
 called the Fair Haven Society, now the largest in town, or 
 about one thousand persons, who worshiped in a house the 
 size of the " New Brick," built of wood, in 1770, on the site 
 of the present church of the United Society. Their minister 
 was Mr. Allyn Mather, a young man of thirty-six, now in 
 feeble health, and among the congregation was the Rev. 
 Samuel Bird, Mr. Edwards's predecessor, and Mr. Mather's 
 frequent substitute in the pulpit ; both of them died within 
 the year. It is one of the curious felicities of history that 
 not only have these two divergent offshoots from the old First 
 Church long ago come together in the United Society, but now 
 they are preparing to absorb also another organization (the 
 
 * May this name have been given with a covert reference to White- 
 field ?
 
 NEW HAVEN IN 1784. 55 
 
 Third Church) which represented in its origin an opposite 
 extreme'of theological belief. 
 
 The great majority of New Haven in 1784 was thus of one 
 religious faith. But besides these societies of the Congrega- 
 tional order there was a small Episcopal society, not numbering 
 much over two hundred members, which occupied what was 
 distinctively known as " The Church," built in 1754-55, on 
 Church Street, with the Rev. Bela Hubbard as rector, now 
 forty-four years of age, and having been here for fourteen 
 years ; this was the smallest in size of any of the church build- 
 ings mentioned, somewhat less than sixty by forty feet. 
 
 Besides the Episcopalians there was a handful of Sandema- 
 nians, the most radical of " New-Light " sects, too much so for 
 even Mr. Edwards to tolerate, who had held separate services 
 for a dozen years or more ; for a time they had had two elders 
 or ministers in charge of their simple worship, but these 
 leaders had sympathized (as did others of the flock) too plainly 
 with Tory principles to remain here in the Revolution ; and 
 the remnant that was left had dwindled into insignificance. 
 There were also one or two Jewish families, the first of which 
 appeared here in 1772. 
 
 I have mentioned the chief buildings on the Green. 
 There was, besfdes, a wooden jail, on College Street, built in 
 1735, with Stephen Munson, a college graduate, for jailor ; but 
 this dilapidated structure was replaced, late in the year 1784, 
 by a new jail, built just across the street, under the eaves of 
 the college. Adjacent to the jail on the south was the old 
 County Court House, the upper floor of which had been used also 
 as a State House for many years before the new one was built ; 
 in this building, or in a separate building near it, the Hopkins 
 Grammar School, which was now in a very low condition, was 
 kept by Mr. Richard Woodhull, a middle-aged man, of compe- 
 tent learning, whose career as a college tutor had been inter-
 
 56 CENTENNIAL OF NEW HAVEN. 
 
 rupted many years before by his conversion to Sandemanian- 
 ism, and whose attitude in the Revolution as a non-resistant and 
 loyalist had interfered still further with his prospects. Besides 
 this, there was a brick school-house on the Elm street side of 
 the Green, north of and older than the Fair Haven meeting- 
 house, and here youth of both sexes were taught. 
 
 Occupying a good part of the upper Green, which then 
 sloped much more than now from west to east, on the sides 
 and at the back of the Brick meeting-house, was the 
 ancient burial-ground, of irregular shape, which had lately 
 been inclosed by a rough board fence. This was, I suppose, 
 the only fence on or about the whole Green, the rest being 
 entirely open to the surrounding streets, and the more level 
 lower Green especially being a common thoroughfare for all 
 sorts of travel. 
 
 Two hundred and fifty button wood and elm trees, set out 
 in 1759 around the Green, were now half grown ; of these I 
 take it that the solitary buttonwood, still standing opposite the 
 First Methodist Church, is a survivor ; the veteran elm at the 
 southeast corner of the Green may be older, and a few others 
 of our oldest elms may be relics of this planting. On the Green 
 itself no trees were standing ; but a single row of elms was 
 placed, a year or two later, on the line of Temple street, in 
 front of the State House and the churches. 
 
 Next in interest to the Green was the College which 
 fronted upon it. The building originally named Yale College, 
 which had stood in the front corner of the yard, had recently 
 been torn down ; and the three buildings which in 1784 repre- 
 sented the College are all now standing, though greatly trans- 
 formed. The oldest, Connecticut Hall, or South Middle, built 
 in 1750-51, instead of being the four-storied structure which it 
 is to-day, had but three stories with a gambrel roof, and lodged 
 about one-third of the students ; what is now the Athenseum,
 
 NEW HAVEN IN 1784. 57 
 
 built in 1761-63, was of three stories, with steeple and bell, 
 and contained the chapel, library, and apparatus-room ; and in 
 the rear was the new dining-hall, built in 1782, later the 
 chemical laboratory. Besides these there were the President's 
 house, built of wood in 1722, and an elegant mansion for that 
 date, standing a little north of the present College street 
 Church ; and the Professor of Divinity's house, also belonging 
 to the College, on York street, on the ground now appro- 
 priated to the Medical School. 
 
 The President was Dr. Ezra Stiles, one of the most learned 
 Americans of his generation, now 56 years of age, having been 
 six years in office ; while the Professor of Divinity, or College 
 pastor, and at the same time lecturer on theological topics, was 
 the Rev, Samuel Wales, a young man of 36, installed only two 
 years before, and now at the height of his usefulness, his 
 remarkable power as a preacher as yet unaffected by the 
 insidious disease which soon ended his career. 
 
 There were enrolled as students during the current term 
 (Nov. 12-Jan. 13), the first term of the College year, 260 
 undergraduates, twenty-five per cent, more than in any other 
 American college ; but the great irregularity of attendance 
 which was then common reduced the number actually present 
 to less than 225. The Junior class was instructed by Tutor 
 Josiah Meigs, and the Sophomores by Tutor Matthew Talcott 
 Russell, while the Freshman class was so unusually large as to 
 be divided under the care of the two youngest tutors, 
 Simeon Baldwin and Henry Channing. The other officers 
 were, James Hillhouse, a young lawyer, treasurer, and Jere- 
 miah At water, steward. 
 
 I have thus named all that can be called public buildings in 
 the town ; certainly there was no bank, that luxury did not 
 come till 1792 ; no post-office, the infrequent mails were 
 handled in a corner of a small country-store ; no almshouse, 
 
 8
 
 58 CENTENNIAL OF NEW HAVEN. 
 
 for was it not voted, at the town-meeting in March, 1783, 
 " That the selectmen vendue [that is, farm out at auction] the 
 poor of the town which are now supported by the town so that 
 they may be supported in the cheapest manner ;" no hospital, 
 except the town pest-house on Grapevine Point, for t^e inocu- 
 lation and treatment of small-pox, then so formidable ; and no 
 public library, though this is less a wonder, since it is also true 
 of New Haven in 1884. 
 
 Turning to the classes which made up society, besides the 
 professional men already mentioned, there were eight or nine 
 lawyers in active practice ; but the very recent growth of that 
 profession in importance and public favor, and the losses it had 
 suffered through loyalty to the British crown, are shown by 
 the fact that the senior member of the bar was Charles 
 Chauncey, only thirty-six years of age, while the leader of the 
 profession in brilliancy was Pierpont Edwards, two years 
 younger, whose annual income of $2000 was said a little later 
 to be the largest earned by any lawyer in the State. 
 
 The medical profession had also eight or nine representa- 
 tives in what became the city, the leading physician, alike in 
 reputed skill and in social status, being Dr. Leverett Hubbard, 
 President of the County Medical Society which was founded 
 this same month, who lived in his new stone dwelling still 
 standing at the junction of George and Meadow streets. Dr. 
 John Spalding, after his removal here in the spring of 1784, 
 was considered the leading surgeon. 
 
 As for the business of the city, there was the usual provision 
 for domestic trading common to a place of this size. A statis- 
 tical enumeration gives fifty-six shops, half a dozen of which 
 carried from two to three thousand pounds (sterling) worth of 
 goods, and the rest from 500 to 150 worth. "What after- 
 wards became the leading retail house of Broome & Platt was 
 not removed here from New York till September, 1784 ;
 
 NEW HAVEN IN 1784. 59 
 
 Shipman, Drake, Howell, Perit, Helms, Austin, are among the 
 other leading names. There were no local manufactures, the 
 long course of British rule had thoroughly stamped out every- 
 thing of that sort ; the utmost that was done was the ordinary 
 spinning and weaving for domestic use, and a little ironwork- 
 ing and papermaking. 
 
 In one direction, however, there was activity. New Haven, 
 in fulfillment of the dream of its founders and of all the early 
 generations, was already of importance as a sea-port ; it had in 
 operation extensive oyster-fisheries; it had its Union Wharf 
 and Long Wharf, though not so long as now ; already, since 
 the announcement of peace, vessels had begun to sail direct 
 for England and Ireland, though the main stay was commerce 
 with the West Indies, so far as they were open to us, in the 
 export, of horses, oxen, pork, beef, and lumber, with return 
 cargoes of sugar and molasses. In 1784 thirty-six American 
 vessels, with one British ship and one Danish, are recorded as 
 entering this port, while thirty-three sea-going vessels were 
 owned here, all engaged in foreign and West-India trade, as 
 against forty that were owned just before the war began in 
 1775 ; at the close of warlike operations in 1781, this number 
 had dwindled to one solitary vessel, so that the return of pros- 
 perity had been rapid in this branch ; most of those now owned 
 were built here or in the immediate neighborhood. There was 
 at least one line of packets carrying both passengers and 
 freight to New York weekly during the open season ; and 
 another weekly line running to New London and Norwich. 
 The collector of customs for the United States Government 
 was Jonathan Fitch, a son of Governor Fitch, of Norwalk, 
 and a Yale graduate, who had married early a step-daughter of 
 President Clap and had served for a generation before the war 
 as steward of the college. 
 
 The central government was also represented by the post-
 
 60 CENTENNIAL OF NEW HAVEN. 
 
 master, Ellas Beers, whose office was next the store of his elder 
 brother, Isaac Beers, on the College street side of the corner 
 now occupied by the New Haven House. Post-riders took 
 letters twice (or in severe weather, once) a week to New York, 
 doing a large commission business, to the benefit of their own 
 pockets, by the way. The return mails from New York 
 divided at New Haven, one going each week via New London 
 and Providence to Boston, the other taking the inland route 
 to the same destination by Hartford and Springfield, and by 
 each route there was a return mail weekly ; the branching of 
 the post-routes at this point into two eastward routes, as to this 
 day of the railroads, is of course a reminder of the historical 
 position of New Haven as the first settlement on the direct 
 road between New York and Boston, and thus from the first 
 the point to which all travel for New York from the eastward 
 converged. 
 
 A stage for Hartford and Springfield left here every Wed- 
 nesday ; and another left on Saturday, which connected at 
 Hartford with one leaving for Boston on Monday morning, 
 which going by the most direct route (Somers, Brookfield, and 
 Worcester) did not reach the journey's end until Thursday 
 evening ; the post-riders, however, moved more rapidly than 
 this. 
 
 The New Haven post-office was the receiving-office for all 
 the inland region not served by the Hartford, New York, and 
 New London offices ; thus, not only all letters for such near 
 points as Cheshire, Wallingford, and Waterbury, but all for 
 towns as far off as Litchfield and New Milford were left here, 
 to be delivered to any one bound for those parts ; if not soon 
 called for, they were advertised in the New Haven newspaper, 
 and after three months from that date, were sent to the Dead 
 Letter department of the General post-office at Philadelphia, 
 which was in charge of Ebenezer Hazard, Postmaster-General.
 
 NEW HAVEN IN 1T84. 61 
 
 The post-office adjoined Isaac Beers's store ; and this in- 
 troduces us to what was, after the College, the intellectual 
 center (in a sense) of New Haven. The store was a part of 
 the proprietor's house, which was also an inn, and he sold be- 
 sides books general groceries, and the best of gin and brandy. 
 Of books he was, I think, one of the largest direct importers 
 in the United States ; and very remarkable are the lists of his 
 latest acquisitions which he publishes now and then in the 
 weekly newspaper, covering sometimes an entire page. 
 
 Besides this, there was at least one other general book- 
 store, of less pretensions, that of Daggett and Fitch ; and one 
 specially devoted to school-books, kept by Abel Morse, the 
 teacher of a select school for girls; Goodrich and Darling, 
 druggists, also dealt in books. The office of Thomas and 
 Samuel Green, who printed the newspaper and such pam- 
 phlets as the divines and politicians of the neighborhood 
 furnished for publication, was over Elias Shipman's store, 
 which was directly opposite the post-office, on College and 
 Chapel streets, the site of Townsend's Block ; but they, I sup- 
 pose, sold little but their own publications. 
 
 The newspaper was the Connecticut Journal, begun by the 
 same publishers in 1767, and continuing under various propri- 
 etors until 18#5. . It appeared every Wednesday on a sheet of 
 four pages, about fourteen by nine or ten inches in size, and 
 was poorly edited, even for that day ; so that we may not 
 wonder that an early evidence of progress in the new city 
 should have been the establishment, in May, 1784, of a second 
 paper, the Xew Haven Gazette, price eight shillings a year, to 
 edit which Josiah Meigs resigned his College tutorship. 
 
 In connection with the local publishing business may be 
 mentioned the name of Abel Buell, the ingenious mechanic, 
 at various times in his life, engraver, type-founder, coiner, and 
 goldsmith, who advertises in March, 1784, a map of the
 
 62 CENTENNIAL OF NEW HAVEN. 
 
 United States, the first ever compiled, engraved, and finished 
 by one hand ; and also the name of Amos Doolittie, the 
 earliest copper-plate engraver in America, whose shop for 
 sign-painting and the higher branches of his art was on the 
 present College square, fronting the Green. 
 
 Passing to the political and social condition of the city, we 
 are to remember that the whole country had just come out of 
 an exhausting war ; and New Haven had suffered her full 
 share, much beyond the most of New England. A sermon 
 just preached by the Rev. Benjamin Trumbull, of North 
 Haven, at the celebration on the news of the Definitive Treaty 
 of Peace, estimates the loss of New Haven in soldiers and 
 seamen on the American side during the war at 210 ; and the 
 loss of property by the raid of the British troops on this town 
 was reckoned at over 30,800, in a depreciated currency. 
 
 But peace was now secured, and the general sentiment 
 among the leaders of opinion in the town was hopeful of 
 brighter days than ever ; although the town taxes were four- 
 pence on the pound, or nearly two cents on the dollar, double 
 the usual rate before the war, and this high, figure was supple- 
 mented moreover by state taxes of three shillings and twopence 
 (sixteen cents on the dollar). 
 
 The fullest picture of our modern daily life is the news- 
 paper ; but for 1784 The Con-necticut Journal is a poor help. 
 It is guiltless of anything so direct as an editorial, and almost 
 equally guiltless of contributions from correspondents ; the 
 local editor and the interviewer are alike unknown. In other 
 words, the entire paper is made up of selections from other 
 sheets, of foreign news (usually about ten weeks old), of very 
 scanty items from New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and a few 
 other prominent places, and of advertisements. The selections 
 bear largely at this date on the novel situation of the United 
 States, just formally acknowledged as independent. They
 
 NEW HAVEN IN 1784. (53 
 
 feed the popular interest in subjects which we know were 
 under discussion elsewhere, such as, preeminently, the 
 approval or non-approval of the so-called Commutation Bill, 
 recently passed by the Congress of the Confederation, for com- 
 muting the half-pay for life, previously voted to Kevolutionary 
 officers and soldiers, into five years' full pay in one gross sum ; 
 the change was really a shrewd piece of economy for the gov- 
 ernment, and yet was most unpopular, especially in New 
 England ; a convention met at Middletown, in December, 
 
 1783, to record Connecticut's dissent from such a creation of a 
 moneyed aristocracy. 
 
 Another timely subject, of far-reaching consequences, was 
 the question of giving Congress the right to levy moderate 
 import duties on specified articles, for meeting the interest on 
 the public debt; the principle of Federal government was 
 involved ; approval of the impost meant adhesion to the theory 
 of a strong central government as necessary, while disapproval 
 was a preference for the existing Confederation, already on its 
 downward career to powerlessness and contempt. 
 
 In these twin disputes, the Connecticut Legislature com^ 
 mitted itself to the policy of narrowness and conservatism by 
 resolving in 1783 that the requisitions* of Congress were not 
 valid until after the approval of the State ; and in January, 
 
 1784, they voted down (69 to 37) the impost recommended by 
 Congress, the New Haven representative voting with the 
 majority. At the next election, however, the people repudia- 
 ted the action of their deputies ; and Pierpont Edwards and 
 James Hillhouse, of New Haven, concurred with the great 
 majority of the new General Assembly in granting Congress 
 the desired authority to raise this slender revenue. 
 
 The current advertisements show the great confusion of 
 the time in respect to financial standards. Goods are on sale 
 for cash, for bank notes, for Morris's notes, Mr. Hillegas' notes,
 
 64 CENTENNIAL OF NEW HAVEN. 
 
 Pickering's certificates, soldiers' notes, State money, all kinds 
 of lumber, grain, oxen, cows, potash, country produce, etc., 
 etc. Bank notes were the issues of the bank at Philadelphia, 
 the only institution of the kind in the Union ; Morris's notes 
 were the issues of treasury-notes by Robert Morris, superinten- 
 dent of finance of the United States; Hillegas was the treas- 
 urer of Congress, and Pickering was Quartermaster-General; 
 soldiers' notes were the interest-bearing certificates entitling 
 the army to their half -pay for life, or to full pay for five years ; 
 and State money meant the outstanding bills of credit or paper 
 money issued in the early years of the war by the State govern- 
 ment, at convenient denominations, from two pence to two 
 pounds. By cash was meant at that date, before Gouverneur 
 Morris's system of decimal currency (which we now use) had 
 been adopted by Congress, and a mint set up, a miscellaneous 
 foreign coinage, mainly English and Spanish, with a few 
 coppers of local origin ; it was through familiarity with the 
 Spanish currency, that the term dollar was already in general 
 use. 
 
 Socially, the characteristics of New Haven were much the 
 same as throughout New England. The population was still 
 of pure English descent, and a homely familiarity of inter- 
 course prevailed ; while the adventuring spirit of commercial 
 life, traversing the seas, tended to widen views, and the 
 presence of the College was felt as a cultivating influence, 
 bringing hither a constant succession of intelligent and famous 
 visitors. The specially cold winter of 1783-4 was not a 
 favorable season for travel, but President Stiles's diary records 
 the entertainment, among others, of Major General John 
 Sullivan, of New Hampshire, of Mr. Gay, a son of the poet, of 
 Ira Allen, a brother of Ethan Allen, and one of the founders 
 of Yermont, and of John Ledyard, the distinguished traveler. 
 
 I have not time to dwell on details of the social life of a
 
 NEW HAVEN IN 1784. 65 
 
 century ago : if it was not the hurried and feverish life of the 
 present, no more was it the ascetic and constrained life of a 
 century earlier; there was abundance of gaiety of a simple 
 sort ; and the shopkeepers publish prompt advertisements of 
 the arrival of fresh invoices of " gentlemen and ladies' dancing- 
 gloves for the City Assembly," of " chip-hats of the newest 
 taste," of " new figured, fashionable cotton chintz and calicoes, 
 proper for ladies' winter dress," of " elegant figured shauls," 
 of " ladies' tiffany balloon hats," and so on ad injvnitum, 
 showing that human nature had the same kind of interest then 
 as now. 
 
 As one part of their social life, we must remember this as 
 the time when domestic slavery was general in New Haven. 
 The importing of slaves was forbidden since 1774, but the 
 papers have occasional, not frequent advertisements for the 
 sale of likely negroes, or it may be a family of negroes, in 
 respect to whom " a good title will be given ;" sometimes it is 
 for a term of years (perhaps till the attainment of legal 
 majority, when by the will of some former owner freedom 
 was to be given), and sometimes it is noted that, in the lack of 
 ready money, rum and sugar will be taken in part payment. 
 The relations of masters and slaves were in most cases here the 
 best possible ; yet sensible men were uneasy under the incon- 
 sistency of the system, and President Stiles writes in his diary, 
 in December, 1783: "The constant annual importation of 
 negroes into America and the West Indies is supposed to have 
 been of late years about 60,000. Is it possible to think of this 
 without horror ?" 
 
 I pass on to the special circumstances which made New 
 Haven a city. 
 
 The origin of the movement it may be difficult to trace. 
 Certainly we cannot adopt the earliest date that has been 
 assigned for such an origin ; for that would commit us to the 
 9
 
 66 CENTENNIAL OF NEW HAVEN. 
 
 acceptance of a statement by the notoriously inaccurate Samuel 
 Peters, who in giving in his History of Connecticut (1781) the 
 story of the Phantom Ship, which sailed from this port in 
 1647, says that she carried a request for a patent for the 
 colony and for a charter for the city of New Haven ; this part 
 of his tale is a pure fabrication. 
 
 The first step which I can fix in the genealogy of the 
 charter is a vote in town-meeting, December 9, 1771, in these 
 words : " Whereas a motion was made to the town that this 
 town might have the privileges of a city, and that proper meas- 
 ures might be taken to obtain the same, it is thereupon Voted 
 that Roger Sherman " [and seventeen others] " be a Committee 
 to take the same into consideration and judge of the motion 
 what is best for the town to do with regard to the same and 
 report thereupon to the town at another town-meeting." This 
 committee never reported, so far as the records show, nor do 
 the public prints of the day refer to the matter. Roger Sher- 
 man, the chairman, then fifty years old, and for ten years a 
 resident of New Haven, was already eminent in the regards of 
 his fellow-townsmen, a Judge of the Court of Common Pleas, 
 and a member of the Governor's Council, or Upper House of 
 the Assembly, though still keeping a small country-store oppo- 
 site the College on Chapel street. 
 
 Ten years passed without further sign, until in December, 
 1781, the town was obliged to take cognizance of efforts which 
 had lately been gathering strength, for the creation of new 
 towns from the more distant parts of New Haven. At a 
 town-meeting of this date, a committee was therefore appointed 
 to report a plan for the division of the town into several 
 distinct townships; and this committee reported the same 
 month in favor of setting off the portions which afterwards 
 became Woodbridge, East Haven, and North Haven. These 
 towns were not in fact incorporated until after the city of
 
 NEW HAVEN IN 1784. 67 
 
 New Haven ; but the one movement was a complement of the 
 other. 
 
 At the close of the Revolution the two most prosperous 
 centers of population in this country were Philadelphia, with 
 nearly 30,000 inhabitants, and New York, with a little under 
 25,000. Both were cities : New York having received a 
 charter from James II. in 1686, during the spasm of liberal 
 zeal which marked the beginning of his reign ; and Philadel- 
 phia having been similarly endowed in 1701 by the proprietor 
 of Pennsylvania, the ardent friend and quondam political 
 mentor of James II. Besides these, I do not recall any other 
 incorporated cities in the Union at this date, except Albany, 
 which was chartered at the same time and under the same 
 circumstances as New York, but was now of less population 
 than New Haven, and Richmond, incorporated in 1782, but 
 only a small village in point of numbers. 
 
 The prosperity and size of Philadelphia and New York 
 were, however, objects of emulation ; and there is some evi- 
 dence that it was from an ambition of rivaling their prominence, 
 that a charter was desired for New Haven. This may have been 
 especially in view of the long occupation of New York by the 
 British, and a consequent interruption of the previous depen- 
 dence of our dealers on New York merchants for imports from 
 England and for the return of remittances thither ; New York 
 had just been evacuated, and might not the two places begin 
 new careers more on an equality, if New Haven were elevated 
 to the dignity of a city ? 
 
 To recur to President Stiles's diary, we have this entry on 
 October 20, 1783: "Sign'd a petition to the Assembly for 
 incorporating New Haven as a city." The Assembly was then 
 holding its regular fall session in New Haven, and so continued 
 until November 1, when it adjourned to meet again in January 
 in a special session, for the purpose of revising the laws of
 
 68 CEXTEXXIAL OP NEW HAVEN. 
 
 the State. The October session was made memorable by the 
 announcement of Governor TrumbulFs determination to retire 
 from public life at the next election, on account of his advanced 
 age (73). 
 
 The petition referred to by Dr. Stiles is on file (with 214 
 signatures) in the State Library. It bases the desired action 
 on the hindrances to an extension of commerce, which '' arise 
 for want of a due regulation of _ the internal police" of the 
 town. Specifically, "it is matter of no small importance that 
 wharves, streets and highways, be commodious for business, 
 and kept continually in good repair ;" and such a result can- 
 not be attained, unless the memorialists have a jurisdiction of 
 their own. Hence the petition, that the inhabitants within 
 specified limits " be made a corporation," with power to enact 
 by-laws, and that a Court be constituted for the same jurisdic- 
 tion. A bill brought in in accordance with this petition was 
 passed at the same session by the Upper House ; but the 
 Lower House insisted that it be referred to the adjourned 
 session for their consideration, and it was so referred. 
 
 On the 21st of November, Dr. Stiles writes : "Examining 
 the Act or Charter proposed for the City of New Haven." 
 This interval of examination resulted in making the final draft 
 of the charter quite different in details from that presented in 
 October. 
 
 The Assembly was to meet in New Haven on Thursday, 
 January 8, 1784 ; and on Monday, January 5, at a town-meet- 
 ing, with Roger Sherman in the chair, a resolution was passed, 
 " requesting the representatives in the Assembly," who were 
 Captain Henry Daggett and Captain Jesse Ford, "to exert 
 themselves that the Act for incorporating a part of the town 
 be passed with all convenient speed." 
 
 Owing to unusually bad traveling, the adjourned session 
 did not open until Tuesday, January 13. The presiding officer
 
 NEW HAVEN IN 1734. 69 
 
 of the Upper House was His Excellency Governor Jonathan 
 Trumbull, of Lebanon, who, as was his custom, lodged at the 
 house of President Stiles ; while the Speaker of the Lower 
 House was the Hon. Colonel William Williams, also of Leb- 
 anon, well known as a signer of the Declaration of 1776. 
 
 As usual, all Acts passed by the Assembly are dated as of 
 the first day of the session, and as usual the weekly newspapers 
 give none of the interesting details of legislative proceedings ; 
 so that it is only from the unprinted pages of Dr. Stiles's Lit- 
 erary Diary that we gain the exact knowledge of the day when 
 the charter was finally passed. 
 
 The next week's Connecticut Journal, however, contains 
 the notification of the first meeting of the city, to be held on 
 February 10; and in the Journal of February 4 appears an 
 advertisement by the selectmen of the town, announcing that, 
 in accordance with a paragraph in the act of incorporation of 
 the city, an opportunity will be given on Thursday, February 
 5, for any who are qualified to become freemen of the State, 
 but have not yet taken the freeman's oath, to appear and be 
 admitted, so as to participate in the first city election. 
 
 On the day appointed, Dr. Stiles was among those taking 
 the oath ; and he records that the total number in the city 
 who are qualified to become freemen, as now certified by the 
 selectmen, is three hundred and forty-three, of whom fifty-five 
 (about one-sixth) are college graduates ; eighty-two of the 
 three hundred and forty-three (about one-fourth) have not 
 taken the freeman's oath, some being absent, some disabled, 
 some indifferent. The full list, which he appends, is of great 
 interest, and might instructively be compared, on the one hand, 
 w r ith the roll of original planters, in 1640, and on the other hand 
 with the roll of our voters to-day. In 1784 the families most 
 largely represented in the voting population were, Austin (a 
 name introduced in the generation after the settlement, not
 
 70 CENTENNIAL OF NEW HAVEN. 
 
 among the first-comers) and Trowbridge, the name which has 
 multiplied beyond any other in the original company ; next 
 followed Atwater, Bishop, Hotchkiss, Munson, Bradley, Mix, 
 Thompson, and Townsend. 
 
 Dr. Stiles further judges that there were about six hundred 
 adult males living within the city limits, showing that nearly 
 every other man was disfranchised, either by the operation of 
 the qualification limiting suffrage to those holding real estate 
 which would yield a rental of 2 per annum, or personal 
 estate worth 40, or else disfranchised by their loyalty to Great 
 Britain in the late war. 
 
 The election of city officers was appointed for February 10 ; 
 and as the General Assembly was still in session, the third 
 story of the State House w r as the place of meeting. Of the 
 261 freemen who had qualified, over 250, says Dr. Stiles, 
 attended at the opening of the polls, but only 249 votes were 
 recorded on the first ballot, that for mayor ; of these just the 
 number necessary for a choice, 125, were cast for Roger Sher- 
 man, 102 for Deacon Thomas Howell, and 22 for Thomas 
 Darling. 
 
 Mr. Sherman was now in his 63d year, and was unquestion- 
 ably the most distinguished resident of the new city. That he 
 did not carry a larger vote may have been due to his personal 
 characteristics; that aristocratic, chilling reserve of manner 
 which his juniors have reported of him, may well have stood 
 in the way of popularity. Moreover, there were undercurrents 
 of feeling, as we shall see, that would have prevented a cordial 
 uniting on any one. It is an evidence of Mr. Sherman's 
 acknowledged merits that at the time of this election he was 
 absent, in Annapolis, where he had been for a month in attend- 
 ance as a member of Congress, which had migrated south- 
 wards, pending the expected establishment of a capital near 
 the falls of the Potomac.
 
 NEW HAVEN IN 1784. 71 
 
 * 
 
 Sherman's chief competitor for the mayoralty, Deacon 
 Howell of the First Church, now in his 65th year, was chosen 
 Senior Alderman, and thus in the Mayor's absence became the 
 active head of the government ; it is remarkable that neither 
 of the two was of old New Haven stock, Sherman being a 
 native of Massachusetts, and Ho well's father having immi- 
 grated from Long Island. 
 
 The other aldermen were Samuel Bishop, previously iden- 
 tified with the town-clerk's office for forty years, and brought 
 into wide notoriety at the end of his long life as President 
 Jefferson's appointee to the collectorship of the port ; Deacon 
 David Austin, of the White Haven Church ; and Isaac Beers, 
 the bookseller. The interest in the election of twenty common 
 councilmen, which was not completed till the third day, 
 dwindled so rapidly that the total number of votes for the last 
 places was only about one hundred. At the conclusion of the 
 election (February 12) all the new officials except the absent 
 mayor were sworn in, and the city government was finally 
 organized. 
 
 Dr. Stiles's valuable diary gives an inside view of the 
 election, under date of February 13, when he says : " The city 
 politics are founded in an endeavor' silently to bring Tories 
 into an equality and supremacy among the Whigs. The 
 Episcopalians are all Tories but two, and all qualified on this 
 occasion, though despising Congress government before ; they 
 may perhaps be forty voters. There may be twenty or thirty 
 of Mr. Whittelsey's meeting added to the~se. Perhaps one- 
 third of the citizens," that is, I suppose, one-third of the 261 
 who had taken the freeman's oath, "may be hearty Tories, 
 one-third Whigs, and one-third indifferent. Mixing all up 
 together, the election has come out, Mayor and two Aldermen, 
 Whigs ; two Aldermen, Tories. Of the Common Council, 
 five Whigs, five flexibles but in heart Whigs, eight Tories.
 
 72 CENTENNIAL OF NEW HAVEN. 
 
 The two Sheriffs," Elias Stilwell and Parsons Clark, "and 
 Treasurer," Hezekiah Sabin, "Whigs; the first Sheriff firm, 
 the other flexible." 
 
 From these hints it would appear that the so-called "Tory" 
 element had been concerned in the entire movement for a 
 charter. I may add that at a meeting held on March 8, on 
 the motion of Pierpont Edwards, a committee of eight was 
 appointed, " to consider of the propriety and expediency of 
 admitting as inhabitants of this town persons who in the 
 course of the late war have adhered to the cause of Great 
 Britain against these United States, and are of fair characters, 
 and will be good and useful members of society and faithful 
 citizens of this State." In their report, made the same day, 
 this committee deduced from the independence of the several 
 States and the spirit of peace and philanthropy displayed in 
 the " Recommendations " of Congress based on the treaty of 
 peace, that it was in point of law proper to admit such as 
 are above described, but not any who were guilty of unauthor- 
 ized plundering and murder. As for expediency, they sug- 
 gested that no nation is truly great unless it is also distin- 
 guished for justice and magnanimity ; and argued that it 
 would be magnanimous to restore these persons, and especially 
 that the commercial future of New Haven made it desirable 
 thus to increase its inhabitants. The report was at once 
 accepted and approved by the town. Such an ardent patriot 
 as Dr. Stiles dismisses the unpalatable theme with this curt 
 entry in his diary : " This day town-meeting voted to re-admit 
 the Tories." 
 
 b 
 
 The question of the treatment of the loyalists had for 
 months previous been under heated discussion all over the 
 Union ; and not least in New Haven, where the argument was 
 strongly urged that a sound commercial policy dictated the 
 invitation hither of some of the numerous gentlemen of large
 
 NEW HAVEN IN 1784. T3 
 
 property and influential connections in business, who had been 
 dislodged from their homes and would gladly begin life anew 
 among a congenial people. Attempts had been made to mould 
 public opinion by newspaper appeals ; and twice or thrice with 
 special ingenuity by printing extracts from letters said to have 
 been received from friends in Europe ; one such, for instance, 
 in the Journal of January 7, represented that Dr. Franklin 
 and Mr. Jay, now abroad for the negotiation of peace, were 
 much hurt at the harsh measures adopted toward loyalists. By 
 such means and by more direct arguments, the way was quietly 
 prepared for a popular amnesty, which was thus voted in 
 March, 1784, just a year after a former town-meeting, when 
 the New Haven representatives were solemnly instructed by 
 their constituents " to use their influence with the next General 
 Assembly in an 'especial manner, to prevent the return of any 
 of those miscreants who have deserted their country's cause 
 and joined the enemies of this and the United States of Amer- 
 ica, during their late contest :" a striking instance of rapid 
 conversion. 
 
 I add before closing a reference to two peculiar provisions 
 of the charter. It was enacted that the mayor's tenure of 
 office should be "during the pleasure of the General Assem- 
 bly," which was equivalent to a life appointment, and so proved 
 in practice ; for Mayor Sherman retained the position until 
 his death in 1793, when Samuel Bishop succeeded, continuing 
 till his death in 1803 ; the third incumbent, Elizur Goodrich, 
 held office till his resignation in 1822, and his successor, 
 George Hoadly, till his resignation in 1826, when by vote of 
 the city a request was preferred to the Assembly, which 
 resulted in the substitution of an annual election. 
 
 Another provision of the charter which needs comment is 
 the proclamation that power is conferred on the city to 
 exchange the upper part of the Green, west of the line of the 
 10
 
 74 CENTEXXLM, OF NEW HAVEN. 
 
 churches, for other land, for highways, or another green else- 
 where. I do not know that auy exchange was ever proposed 
 or attempted ; but the insertion in the charter of express 
 authority for the purpose, was perhaps meant to intimate that 
 the city had the State government at its back in asserting 
 authority over the public green, as against the claims preferred 
 by the " Proprietors of Common and Undivided Lands in 
 New Haven."* 
 
 The city government thus organized was immediately put 
 into operation. The example was contagious ; ]^ew London 
 asked for and received a city charter at the same session of the 
 legislature, and Hartford, ^Norwich, and Middletown, at the 
 succeeding one. It was the era of upbuilding and of prepara- 
 tion, they hardly knew for what ; yet we may doubt if in 
 their proudest dreams the citizens of 1784 anticipated the 
 growth which has come to pass. Certainly we know that 
 public sentiment had been incredulous, when Dr. Stiles in the 
 last election sermon had announced it u probable that within 
 a century from our independence the sun will shine on fifty 
 millions of inhabitants in the United States." But the century 
 has gone by ; and the prophecy has very little exceeded the 
 truth. We can at least learn the lesson, not to underrate the 
 progress which is possible in the century to come, knowing 
 that the present is as full of fruit and of promise as the past, 
 and that the resistless tide of time which sweeps down individ- 
 uals and generations in its ' ceaseless current," only enlarges 
 and deepens the hold of institutions which subserve useful 
 ends and are wisely and justly administered. 
 
 * As an instance of these claims it may be mentioned that the loca- 
 tion of the Fair Haven meeting-house (represented at present by 'the 
 United Church) on the Green in 1770 was by a vote of the ' ' Proprietors. "
 
 
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