EWGATE PRISON and the GRANNY COPPER MINES ilifornia ;ional ility ORIGIN AND EARLY HISTORY. BEING A FULL DESCRIPTION OF THE FAMOUS AND WONDERFUL SIMSBURY MINES AND CAVERNS, AND THE PRISON BUILT OVEU THEM. TO WHICH IS ADDED A RELATION OF ALL THE INCIDENTS, INSURRECTIONS, AND MASSACRES, COM- NECTED WITH THEIR USE AS A PRISON FOR THE TORIES DURING THE REVOLUTION, AND OTHERWISE; WITH INTERESTING SKETCHES OK THKIR SURROUNDINGS, IN (NOW) EAST GRAXI5Y. ALSO, AN ILLUSTRATED DESCRIPTION OF THE STATE PRISON AT WETHERSFIELD. BT RICHARD H. P HELPS. ENTERED according to act of Congress, in the year 1876, l>y the AMERICAN PUBLISHING CO., In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. PREFACE. During the Autumn of 1926, the undersigned purchased the historic Newgate Prison -property located at East Granby, Connecticut, at Public Auction from the Estate of Almon B. Phelps who had long been its owner. I also have discovered and purchased the electrotype plates used in print- ing the History of Newgate of Connecticut, by Richard H. Phelps. The last edition of this quaint and estimable work has become exhausted and I have, therefore, caused another edition to be printed and presented to the reader herewith. The fire-swept and time-ravaged ruins of Old Newgate form doubtless one of the most interesting relics of antiquity of which New England can boast. Surely, in Connecticut, no stone ruin can be found to compare with Newgate. Teeming, as this spot does, with tragic incident and historic lore, it cannot fail to impress the visitor, and ever remain an object of interest to the intelligent traveler. Underneath this site, the first chartered English Mining Company in America dug for copper. On this spot, the first Connecticut Colonial Prison was established. Here also, are the ruins of the first State's Prison in the State of Connecticut, and, in the abandoned Prison buildings, for a time after 1826, was manufactured the first safety fuse made anywhere in America. Surely, the story of this historic spot and the tales of its riots, in- surrections and massacres, is worthy of further preservation and dis- semination. CLARENCE \V. SEYMOUR. Hartford, Connecticut, April 1, 1927. 2012140 NE \VGATE OF CONNECTICUT. Origin of its Title Our Puritan Ancestors The Mines of Simsbury Granby and Copper Hill 13 MINING. Discovery of Copper The First Company Organized Three Clergy- men Appointed Smelters Their Unsuccessful Efforts The Pro- prietors are disgusted An Act passed to regulate the Mines King George's right to a Royalty Acknowledged The Work Abandoned. 14 liKANUY COPPICES. Coins made from Granby Metal Mr Iligleys's O; erations The Sledge- hammer and the Crown Colonial Bills of Credit Provision Pay Pronrpt Payment of the Colonial Bills 19 RECENT MINING. The Old Mines Re-opened The Phoenix Mining Co. The Connecticut Copper Company Depreciated Continental Currency Curious letter a Century Old Analysis of the Copper Ore Silliman's Survey of the Mines 23 IMPRISONMENT OF THE TORIES. The Mine transformed into a Dungeon Prison Discipline Whipping the Prisoners The Tories Incarcerated Troubles of the Revolu- tionary War The Committee of Safety The Reward of Loyalty Opinions of a Century Ago 26 THE FIRST KEEPER OP NEWGATE. Captain John Viets His Little Bill for a Year Conspiracy of the Prisoners Locking in the Janitor Flight and Pursuit Strength- ening the Jail 32 CONTEXTS. ANOTHi:U ESCAPE. Burning the Block-house Suffocated in Prison Carelessness of the Officers 35 A SCENE OP CONFLICT AND BLOOD. The Multitude of Guards Appointed The Tories become Desperate They Conspire to Escape They overpower the Guard, and all Escape Recapture of the Fugitives The Gazetteer of 1773 A Coteinporary Story The Prison buildings Destroyed 36 A TORY CLERGYMAN IN NEWGATK. He Preaches a Fiery Sermon Addresses Gen. "Washington Denoun- ces the Whigs Suggests the Assassination of Washington find the M. C's 41 THE GOSPEL FURNISHED BY THE STATE. Primitive Services Nail-shop Preaching Brother Jonathan Appealed To Gen. Washington sends some "Atrocious Villains" to the Mines Tory Misdemeanors ... 52 OLD NEWGATE PRISON. The "Stone Jug" Buildings Above-Ground Appearance of the Caverns Story of a Visitor Daily Routine More Escapes and Insurrections Interesting Anecdotes 58 CONNECTICUT STATE PRISON. The Building at Wethersfield Management and Discipline Condition of the Convicts Notorious Instances Facts and Statistics 88 HISTORICAL SKETCHES OF EAST GRANI'.V. Settlements on Farmington River Lands purchased from the Indians Trouble experienced by the Settlers Captivity of Daniel Hayes His Story The Red-Men Revolutionary Incidents The War of 1812 The Way to reach Copper Hill 116 NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. THIS is the name by which the prison was known in the time of the American Revolution, and it was so called after Newgate prison in England. It is well known that our forefathers, in giving names to their towns and rivers, and other objects of nature and art, by which they were surround- ed, drew freely upon those to which they had been accustomed in their ancestral homes; thus they endeavored to make their adopted country, in names at least, assimilate to their native land. So, in denominating this receptacle for their criminals after the world-renowned prison of London, they intended to endow it with all the terror which attached to that fearful 13 14 NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. abode of the depraved. The mines and prison buildings occupy an eminence on the western declivity of the Talcott mountain, which rises to a great elevation, and is here sur- mounted by lofty, precipitous and craggy rocks. This range of mountains extends through the whole length of the State, and terminates at the Eastlvock near IS'ew Haven. Towards the west and south, can be seen in the distance, bold and irregular outlines of mountains, interspersed with extensive valleys, forming a scene of impressive grandeur and sub- limity, seldom surpassed. Says a writer: "The appearance of this place forcibly reminds the observer of the walls, castles, and towers, erected for the security of some haughty lordling of the feudal ages ; while the gloomy dungeons within its walls, call to remem- brance a Bastilc, or a prison of the Inquisition." "A hundred legends cling about its walls. But silence reigns beneath its crumbling stone; No busy hand repairs the falling walls, Deserted now it wastes away alone ; The summer idler often passes by, Yet some there are who enter at the gate, To dream awhile, and, leaving, breathe a sigh, To see it mouldering in such fallen state. 1 ' The mines were formerly included in the limits of the town of Simsbury, and so remained until 1780, when a part of the town, including the mines and prison, was set oft' and incorporated under the name of Graiiby; hence the place was at that time known by the name of Simsbury Copper Mines, on Copper Hill. The town of Granby was subdivided in 1858, and the mines are at present included in the town of East Granby. If the State of Connecticut continues henceforth to increase her legislative ratio of representation by subdividing her towns, it will become difficult to trace the topography of some places within her borders, nor can it well be foreseen what town will have the honor of containing Simsbury mines at the next subdivision. MIXING. The period at which copper ore was first discovered at this NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. 15 place is not definitely known: but tlie first record relating * D to the mines, was in December 1705. when the town of Sims- bury appointed a committee to make search, upon a suggestion " that there was a mine, either of siJ ver or copper, in the town." The report of the committee is not recorded, but. from subse- quent results it was doubtless favorable. The first company for working the mines, was composed of land proprietor* of Sims- bury, in 17<>7. The association agreed to pay the town 'ten shillings on each ton of copper produced, of which two-thirds was appropriated for the support "of an able schoolmaster in Simsbury," and the other third to the " collegiate school." [Yale college] ; the residue of profits was to be divided among the partners_/>/vy rata* according to the amount of their respec- tive subscription shares. All the land on Copper Hill, and in that region, was cov- ered with the primeval forest, and occupied only as hunting ground by roving bauds of Indians; and as the land was unsold, and under the control of the original proprietors of the town, the association comprised chiefly all the inhabitants. The company concluded only to dig the ore. and the first year they made a contract with three clergymen, for smelting the same, viz: John Woodbridge, of Springfield, Dudley Woodbridge, of Simsbury, and Timothy AVoodbridge, Jr., of Hartford. Clergymen at that early period were regarded as the prin- cipal embodiments of science as well as theology, and as manv of them received their education in England, these v O contractors were supposed to possess the best facilities for obtaining information from foreign sources, in regard to the difficult process of smelting and refining. The theologians, however, did not understand the business, or at least failed to prosecute it to advantage; for in four years from their commencement, the proprietors appointed a committee to call them to account, and, if necessary, "to sue them for the ore that had been brought to them at divers times." The mines had at that time attained a good degree of celebrity, as appears by a public act passed by the colony : 10 NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. "Anno Hegni ANNA: Keginac V. Scptiino A. D. 1700." An Act relating io the Copper Mines at Simslury : " Whereas tliere liath lately been discovered a Copper mine at Symsbury. which hath been so improved as to give good satisfaction to conclude that a public benefit might arise therefrom; now for the better encouraging, directing, and enabling the proprietors and undertakers, or others that are or may be concerned therein, their heirs and assigns, to manage, carry on, and improve said mines to the best advantage," etc. The act authorized the appointment of three commissioners, William Pitkin, John Ilaynes, and John Hooker, who were to settle all controversies, and who were authorized to sum- mon a jury in disputes exceeding forty shillings in amount. The sessions of this court were held generally at or near the mines, and great numbers of business and litigated cases, were adjusted in a summary and economical way, for the space of more than sixty years. During that whole period, the company of proprietors worked the mines, either them- selves, or by leasing to other parties, who agreed to pay the company a percentage of the ore or metal produced. In their leases it was expressly stipulated, as folloxvs : "They also paying thereof to his Majesty, his heirs and successors, the fifth part of all gold and silver oar and precious stones, which from time to time, and at all times hereafter shall happen to be found, gotten, had and obtained within the aforesaid demised premises, or in any part or parcel thereof." Thus acknowledging themselves most loyal subjects of taxation and revenue to the crown of England. It is not ascertained what per cent, of profits was made on the investment in these mines, over and above the expenses of working them, but it is natural to suppose that if they were very profitable to the operators, all the applause usually attendant upon good luck, would not have remained forever hidden in oblivion from the world. Still the illusive charms of mining, had so much of novelty and hope for adventurers in the New "World, that new companies were formed successively at various periods. Some of the companies were composed of persons of great wealth and respectability. One company was formed in NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. 17 London, one in Holland, others in Boston, New York, and elsewhere. In 1714:, the records show that the use of the mines was purchased by Johnathan Belcher of Boston, (afterwards governor), Timothy Woodbridge Jr., and William Purtrige; and in 1721 they had miners from Germany employed, and were expending seventy pounds a month in the work, It appears that this Boston company ouerated the mines for a period of at least twenty-three years, and in a letter from Governor Belcher, dated 1735, he states that he had disbursed upwards of fifteen thousand pounds, or about seventy-five thousand dollars. In 1721 a division of the mining lands took place among the lessees, and each company worked at separate mines situated upon, and less than one mile from Copper Hill. At Iligley's mine, about one and a half miles south, are now the remains of old workings which were operated at a later period than the others. At the breaking out of the War of the lievolution, Edmund Quincy of Boston had miners working at that place, but the works were soon after abandoned. After 1778 the old Copper Hill mines were deserted for fifty-three years, until a new company began operations in 1831. The excitement in the colonies upon the business of mining, about that period, was very great, as it would seem from the following petition, copied from the records: " To the Honnell, the Gov'r Councill nnil Representatives in General Court assembled in Neic Haven, Oct. IGth A. D. 1733. "The Prayer of Joseph Whiting, of New Haven, Humbly Slieweth ; That your Suppliant has expended a considerable time and money in Searching after Mines, and lias made farther Discoveries perhaps than any other man in this Colony has before done, and having met with such incourgement as that I am willing to be at farther Expense in the Same Search but ready money being so absolutely necessary therein : I therefore Humblv pray this assembly will be pleased to lease me one thousand pounds of the money Granted last may to be struck, and now to be disposed of by this assembly upon double security in Lands and Bonds, for the payment of the interest every year; the principall to be lieturned at the Expiration of tea years," &c. Joseph Whiting." IS NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. A great deal of time and money without doubt was expended as the aforesaid petitioner says " in searching offer mines," for the evidence may be seen in the numerous pits and shafts which have been dug along the whole range of this mountain toKew JIaven. At that day, as in all previous time since the world began, and as is seen especially at t he- present day, the chief aim of many appeared to be to make fortunes by head-work b}~ speculation, and choosing rather to spend their time and risk their money in mining, and other uncertain projects than to dig upon the surface of srood old mother earth, for a sure and honest living. O ~ Upon the summit of the hill where the greatest excavations were made, and the largest quantity of ore taken, two per- pendicular shafts were dug principally through solid rock, for the purpose of raising the ore. One of them is nearly eighty feet deep, and the other thirty -five. At the bottom of these shafts we find the caverns, so termed, extending hi various directions, several hundred feet. P>y estimating the once solid contents of these subterraneous vaults, an idea can be formed of the great quantity of ore which has been taken out. The percolation of water through the crevices of rock, made it necessary to dig drains or levels to convey it oft'; but these either became obstructed, or the mines were sunk below them, which allowed the accumulation of water, and it became necessary to discharge it by working the pumps day and night. This was done by employing the people in the vicini- ty and from neighboring towns, and from the amount ex- pended for this service three hundred and fifty dollars per month it is believed that from twenty-five to thirty men were kept at work. The copper ore has somewhat the appearance of yellowish grey sandstone, intermixed with nodules of bluish sulphuret, and yellow pyrites, and is very hard and brittle. The vein is considered as rich, yielding ten to fifteen per cent, of pure copper, and some masses have been obtained yielding over forty per cent. The ore is of a character termed refractory, and the metal does not readily separate NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. 19 from the stone when pulverised ami washed, in consequence of the specific gravity of the stony particles. The mines would doubtless have been profitable to the operators at the price at which copper metal was at that time valued, had not the enterprise been shackled with various incumbraoces. A principal one was, the laws of the mother country prohibiting the smelting of it here. The rigid laws of Britain imposed penalties upon any who should attempt to compete with her furnaces and artisans at home, consequently the vast expense of shipping it across the Atlantic, crippled the success of all parties engaged in the business. Notwith- standing the enormous expense, several cargoes were sent to Europe. A large quantity was deposited about one mile east of the mountain, in East Granby, upon a spot now marked by an entire dearth of vegetation, owing to the poisonous qual- ities extracted from the ore. From there it was carried fourteen miles to Hartford, where it was shipped to New York, and thence to England. The owners were still further disheartened by the loss of two vessels with their cargoes of ore. One was seized and confiscated as a prize by the French who were then at war with England ; the other was sunk in the English Channel by shipwreck. In defiance of British restrictions, considerable ore was smelted by the companies. Buildings and furnaces for pounding, smelting, and refining, were erected in Simsbury upon a stream of water called Hop Brook, a few miles dis- tant, but safety required caution and secrecy in the works, which were for many years abandoned. The place where the smelting was carried on, was named by the German workmen, "Hanover," from their native place in Germany, which name it still retains. The mining-works at 'Hanover' were attached in 1725, and 1700 pounds of what was termed "black copper" (it not having been refined) was levied upon. GRANBY COPPERS. Coin was made from this ore in 1737 and 1739, by a Mr. Higley, and was in current circulation for many years. In 20 NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. describing these coins, a writer says: They were stamped upon plancliets of the purest copper, and, in consequence, were in demand by goldsmiths for alloy. The trade of a blacksmith, ever since Vulcan was engaged in forging thun- derbolts, has given to the world some very remarkable men, and it affords us great pleasure at this time to be able to contribute to the fame of one of the craft, who not only devised, but manufactured currency. We have seen it stated that Mr. Iligley, the author of these coppers, was an ingenious blacksmith who resided in the town of Granby ; hence the name "Granby Coppers" and that with all the notions of utility which he naturally derived from the anvil, he was ambitious of making a little reputation for himself besides. lie has certainly left evidence of having been an artist as well as financier, for the creations of his genius and skill were, for the times, well executed, and they also became a currency. Subsequently, we are informed, his cupidity led him into the hazardous experiment of illegally imitating the issues of other coiners, which, being discovered, deprived him of a portion of the laurels that had previously encircled his brow.* These coppers bear the symbols of their origin, with a due regard to royalty on some of them the sledge- hammers being surmounted by crowns, a something very apparent to the minds of the colonists, but which did not always command their sincere reverence. These coins grace but few cabinets, having been generally so impaired by wear, from being stamped upon unalloyed copper, as to be rarely found sufficiently perfect. We were, however, lately grati- fied by finding in New York city an electrotype which was perfect. Single specimens of this coin now command from fifteen to twenty-five dollars each. There appear to have * The impression that Mr H. was a counterfeiter does not seen] to be sustained by any recorded evidence. It is more probable, that owing, to the jealousy of England, which at that period crippled all such enterprises here, notice was served upon him that his embryo mint was regarded as an in- fringement upon the royal prerogatives, and he was for that reason obliged to suspend operations. NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. 21 been five different issues of them, of several devices; upon one is the figure of a broad axe, with the motto " I cut my lt/ through.'' 1 The engraving represents botli sides of a Granby copper, no\v in the Connecticut Historical Society, at Hartford, from which the above cuts have been engraved for this work. Xo public laws had been made by the colonists to authorize coinage of money, or to specify its value. Specie was very scarce in this country, and the coinage at this embryo mint, was regarded with great favor by the residents in the vicin- ity. The foreign trade of the country, which was chiefly confined to England, was principally controlled by her; the balance of trade was continually against us, which prevented the importation of -specie. The war between England and France, in 1745, turned the tide somewhat in our favor, and considerable quantities were circulated in the colonies by England in payment of war expenses. Owing to the scarcity of coin the colonists resorted to the use of Colonial Bills of Credit, the first issue of which was made by them in 1709, being the same year in which a public act was passed relating to the Simsbury mines. Previous tcT that time "Provision Pay" was the usual medium of ex- change, consisting of the common eatables and other products of the country. The appraised value of such commodities at that time, may be shown by the following extract from the records of the town of Simsbury, stipulating the pay of their clergyman in 1688. They agreed to pay him fifty pounds per annum "in good current pay, to wit: one third in good 22 NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. merchantable wheat at four shillings per bushel, one third in pease or rye, at three shillings per bushel, and one third in Indian corn or pork; the corn at two shillings and six pence per bushel, and the pork at three pounds ten shillings per barrel," besides other items, fuel, &c. At an ordina- tion nine years later, among the articles furnished on the occasion were the following, with their prices; '"Half a lamb of mutton, 2s. 6d. ; butter fid. per pound ; four pounds of sugar, 2s. 6d. ; half a bushel Indian meal, Is. 3d. ; two fowks 8d.; eighty-four pounds of beef, 15s. ; thirty pounds venison, 3s. 9d.; nineteen pounds of pork, 4s. 9d. ; nine pounds of mutton, 2s. ; two gills of rum, 9d." Valued by our currency at this day the price of beef was three cents per pound ; mutton three and a half cents, and vension two cents. In some instances it was stipulated that those who paid their rates in specie, should be allowed a discount of one third from the amount. Contracts between individuals unless specially stipulated to be paid in coin, were payable in the commodities of the neighborhood, and at prices established by the General Court. Taxes laid for military defence against the roving tribes of Indians, for building churches, and for ordinary public expenses, were also payable in produce. During a period of one hundred and forty eight years from the settlement of the colony to the peace of 1783, excepting the period of the French wars, the traffic among the people was carried on in part by barter and exchange. In 1709 it was enacted by the colony, that in order to assist in the ex- pedition against the French in Canada, "there be forthwith imprinted a certain number of bills of credit, on the colony, in suitable sums from two shillings to five pounds, which in the whole shall amount to 8,000 pounds, and no more." It w r as enacted that the bills should be received for dues and taxes, "at one shilling on the pound belter than money." Taxes were imposed providing for the redemption of the whole amount within two years. The promptness with which the colony met their own bills, is noticeable when contrasted with the unavailing efforts of the Continental NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. 23 Congress, to sustain the value of their paper money, which was issued in the Revolution.* RECENT MINING. The work at Siinsbury mines was carried on at various periods until 1773, more than seventy years, through wars and rumors of wars, and by a variety of forces ; by free labor, and by slave Jabor; by private enterprise, and by chartered companies; and, subsequently, by prison labor. Vast sums hud been expended in the business, and then they were abandoned for the space of about half a century, for prison occupation. In 1830, to the surprise of all, another resurrection of mineralogists was announced at the old prison mines. A company of gentlemen from New York, with Richard Bacon of Simsbury, formed the Phaem-c Mining Company, obtained a charter, and purchased of the State the whole prison property, including the mines, and about five acres of land, for the sum of one thousand two hundred dollars. They expended many thousand dollars in digging extensive levels, building furnaces, and constructing engines and machinery, to facilitate their operations in raising, pounding, and smelting the ore. They carried on the business for some time, but owing to a reverse in the financial affairs of the country and other causes, the mines were again abandoned. The old mines were suffered to repose again in quiet for about twenty years, when the note of preparation for working was once more heard. A n'ew company was formed in 1855, called the Connecticut Copper Company, which prosecuted the business for about two years. They found the average * To illustrate the ruinous depreciation of continental currency, I quote an extract from a letter written by Ifezekiah MvnseU of East Windsor. He says: " In 1781, in the months of Feb'y or March, I drove a team to Boston with a load, and brought one back for a merchant in Springfield, Mass. I had a five cattle team. Returning home I staid in Roxbury one night ; my team was fed. I had one meal and lodging; my bill in the morning was two silver dollars, and continental money had so depreciated that I paid it in the round sum of 140 for that single night's entertainment." 24 NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. yield of metal about ten per cent., and some masses of ore were taken out which produced over forty per cent, of copper. The deeper the descent, the richer appeared to be the quality of the ore. The chief obstacle to success appeared to be, not the lack of a fair percentage of metal, but in extracting it by the ordinary process of separating and fluxing; and for that purpose the company erected ten of Bradford's separators, at a great expense, and also two steam-engines for grinding, and for working the separating machines. The business has been suspended for about twenty years ; but it is believed by many that with the aids of science, improved machinery, and sufficient capital, it may yet result profitably, and that Copper Hill may at no distant day, share some of the fame of the mines of Lake Superior. The author has a specimen of pure copper extracted from the ore by Prof. Charles T. Jackson, formerly of Boston ; also his process of analysis made in 1825, and sent to Hon. Samuel Woodruff, of East Granby, at his request. "The Copper ore from East Granby, is composed of two distinct parts, the ore of a bright green color, which is the Carlonate of Copper : the other of a dark steel gray which is Antimonial Gray Copper. The specific gravity of the mass is 3.08. ANALYSIS. A. Two hundred grains, taken in equal quantities from each part of the specimen, were reduced to an impalpable powder and digested in a matrass repeatedly with two ounces of Nitro Muriatic Acid, until all the copper was dissolved ; the silex remaining, after being well washed and ignited weighed 103 grains. B. A pellicle which formed on the surface of the above solution proved to be sulphur, and weighed 4 grains. C. The solution of copper etc., in Nitro Muriatic Acid was then evapora- ted to dryness and the dry mass again dissolved in concentrated Sulphuric Acid, the solution diluted and decanted, a white precipitate was observed at the bottom of the matrass which, when collected proved to be Sulph. Antimony which, on being decomposed gave 2 grains of Metallic Antimony. D. The solution of copper in Sulphuric Acid was then poured into a proper vessel, and a polished cylinder of iron was introduced. In twelve hours the copper was precipitated in a metallic state around the cylinder. Collected, washed, and dried, the copper weighed 30 grains. The enclosed slip of copper weighs 23 grains 7 grains having been lost in fusing it into a button and drawing it into this form. CHARLES T. JACKSON." NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. 25 From the preceding analysis it appears that the specimen yielded fifteen per cent, of pure copper. PROFESSORS SILLIMAN'S SURVEY OF THE MINES. A geological examination of Newgate Mines, was made by Prof. 13. Silliman, four years ago, with a view to future working, and a report made to the Hon. Ezra Clark, the proprietor, from which the following extracts are made : "The vitreous copper is almost the only variety of ore of that locality, and is the only one of any economical importance. The yellow copper, the common Cornish ore, I have not seen here. The composition of the vitreous ore in 100 parts is in round numbers, Copper 80, Sulphur 20. The variegated ore yields G'J parts copper in 100, and the yellow copper 32 parts in 100. It will be seen therefore that Hie ore of your mine is one of the most raliialJe description. The extent to which openings have been made north and south is about 800 feet, and from cast to west from 250 to 300 feet. There are three parallel galleries from north to south, with numerous cross-cuts from east to west. These galleries have been made for the purpose of extracting the ore, but they embrace unbroken masses of the deposit which are now ready to be taken down by the miners. Of the extent of this deposit in depth, nothing can be known beyond the 250 to 300 feet now explored. Result of the assay of three samples taken from the mines. Best ore with seams of vitreous copper, . . . 20.319 per cent. Mottled ore in rusty sandstone, ..... 14.370 " " Granular rock with vitreous ccppcr. .... 8.100 " " Average of the samples, 14.029 " " The average of the Cornish ores, England, is 7 to 8 per cent." IMPRISONMENT OF THE TORIES. Can then the verdure of these blissful plains Conceal the Caves where penal Rigor reigns! Where the starved wretch, by suffering folly led To snatch the feast where pampered plenty fed ; Shut from the sunny breeze and healthful skies, On the cold, dripping stone, low, withering, lies ; Torn from the clime that gave his visions birth, A palsied member of the vital earth ! If the sweet Muse, with nature's best control, Can melt to sympathy the reasoning soul, 20 NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. She bids thee rend tliosc grating lars away, And o'er the dungeons break the beam of day : Give the frail felon with laborious toil, To pay the penance of his wasted spoil. Hear his deep groan, heed his repentant prayer, And snatch his frenzied spirit from despair; Nor let those fields, arrayed in heavenly bloom, Blush o'er the horrors of a liring tomb .'"" These caverns w^re first occupied as a place for the con- finement of Tories about the beginning of the American Revolution. What an astonishing train of events followed, and how distant from the thoughts of the British company of miners, the idea that they were actually hewing out prison cells, for the lodgement of their friends, the Tories of America ! The Colony of Connecticut first used the caverns as a permanent prison in 1773. A committee had been appointed by the general assembly to explore the place, who reported that by expending about thirty-seven pounds, the caverns could be so perfectly secured, that u it would be next to impossible for any person to escape." "Whether their opinion was well founded, the reader may judge by the subsequent escapes, insurrections, and massacres which are recounted in the following pages. The total expense of purchasing the property, with the remaining lease of the mines, and fortifying the place, amounted to three hundred and seventy-five dollars. An act was passed prescribing the terms of imprisonment. Burglary, robbery, and counterfeiting were punished for the first offence with imprisonment not exceeding ten years; second offence for life. The keeper of the prison was authorized to punish the convicts for offences, by " moderate whipping, not exceeding ten stripes, and by putting shackles and fetters upon them;" and it was intended to employ them at labor in the mines ; which they did, to a considerable extent. * Extract from a poem written by a lady of Boston, in 1797, after visiting the prison. It indicates the great notoriety and formidable character which Newgate had obtained, in the opinion of the benevolent and gifted poetess. NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. 27 At first the number of Tories confined in the caverns did not exceed five or six, and these were guilty of various crimes against the government. But as time developed events, the numbers increased to between thirty and forty. When the three hundred and forty -two chests of tea were thrown into the sea at Boston, in 1773, and that port closed bv an Act of Parliament, so great was the excitement, and so indignant were the people, particularly in Massachusetts and Connecticut, on account of British oppression, that the use of tea and all commodities imported in British vessels and subject to duty, was prohibited. The duty on tea was so particularly obnoxious, that it was considered a contraband article of household comfort. True, the contrast in the times may appear rather curious, for at this day, a housekeeper would be judged by common consent deserving incarceration in the mines, or some other place, for not allowing the article to be used. Our ancestors knew no half-way policy, and seldom adopted dilatory measures to carry their points. Tea-vessels, if then kept at all, were kept out of sight; tea- pots were run into musket-balls, and they were the kind of currency with which the people dealt with old England. The following incident from Dr. Stiles's History of Ancient Windsor, shows the marked spirit of the times : " At an early period in the Revolutionary struggle, and before tlie war had fairly commenced, some of the Tories (of whom there were a few in Windsor) happened one day to come across Elihn Drake, then a lad about eight years old, and partly in earnest, and partly in a joke, endeavored to compel him to say, God sai'c the Kin;). Failing of success, they tried to intimidate him by threatening him with a ducking in the river. But the boy still stoutly refused. Becoming somewhat enraged at the young rebel, they carried their threat into execution, and thrust him under water, but as they pulled him out spluttering and choking, the only exclamation which he uttered was a fervent God d n the King. Again, and again was the little martyr thrust under, but each time the same reply was all they could extort from him, and they were obliged to release him with many hearty curses for his stubbornness. At the age of twelve, this young hero accompanied his father into the war, in the capacity of waiter." The following from the Connecticut Journal, in 1775, fur- ther illustrates the spirit of animosity against the Tories: 28 NEWGATE OF CONNECT I UT. " The Riflemen on their way from the Southern colonies through the coun- try, administer the new-fashioned discipline of tar and feathers to the obstinate and refractory Tories that they meet on their road, which has had a very good effect here [in New Milford]. Those whose crimes are of a more atrocious nature, they punish by sending them to Gen. Gage. They took a man in this town, a most incorripiUt-Tory, who called them d d rebels, &c., and made him walk before them to Litchfield, which is 20 miles, and carry one of his own geese all the way in his hand; when they arrived there, they tarred him, and made him pluck his goose, and then bestowed the feathers on him, drummed him out of the company, and obliged him to kneel down and thank them for their lenity." Public opinion in some of the colonies against those who favored the mother country was very rigid, authorizing any person even to shoot them if they were found beyond the limits of their own premises, and one was shot in the town of Sims- bury, another was hung publicly in Hartford and the gallows was left standing for some time to intimidate other Tories. Those who possessed not the hardihood thus summarily to dispatch a neighbor when he declined to fight for the conn- try, or for purchasing foreign goods, adopted the inure humane expedient of applying to the Committee of Safety"" in the town, who penned them up in the caverns where they could at least leisurely examine the evidence of British labor, though not allowed the blessed boon of being governed by British laws. The following extract is from the biography of the celebrated Bishop Griswold : " As an instance of the manner in which not only the clergy but others of the church were watched, I will here insert the account given me on my visit to Simsbury, of the proceedings against Bishop Griswold's father. For a time this worthy man was arraigned almost daily before the Commit- tee of Vigilance, and straightly questioned as to the most common actions of his life; but as nothing was actually found against him, the committee contented themselves with forbidding him to go beyond the limits of his own farm. This, however, as his farm was something of a little terrritory, gave him space for exercise, particularly as he was a home-keeping man, and sel- dom left his farm save of a Sunday for church. *In some towns they were termed Committee of Inspection. They constituted what we should call a Committee of Vigilance, and their duties were of a very peculiar and delicate nature "a patriotic and searching espionage into the principles, actions, and private affairs of every member of the community, without regard to station, profession, or character. It was NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. 29 His uncle (Rev. Roger Viets), however, being a public man and more closely associated in public opinion with the interests of the royal cause, was not only more closely watched, but also more rigorously treated. He was naturally of a very kind and charitable disposition, and to the suffering was ever ready to extend relief. It happened that, at midnight one time, some men who it afterwards appeared were endeavoring to elude pursuit, called at his house and asked for charitable aid. Lodging he dared not give them. Food he could not refuse. Of this charitable deed some circum- stances led the authorities into a suspicion, and being accused of it he would not deny what he had done; and for that act of benevolence, which, as he believed, the law of God required, he was condemned to be imprisoned, and was many months confined in jail at Hartford." We cannot for a moment doubt the noble intentions of the American patriots in the severity of those measures, for the results are now universally acknowledged, and generally appreciated. If at the commencement of their struggles for liberty, they had permitted those cmmissaries to raise a ques- tion as to the right of independent government, and had suffered them to prowl about unmolested, spreading the fuel of disaffection, a civil, instead of a national war must have followed. The proud eagle of Liberty would not so soon have risen over this land of plenty, and the reveille of Brit- ish soldiery would have told misfortune's tale, a government of force. Well would it be for us their descendants if like them we could appreciate the blessings of liberty, of our happy form of government, and the value of mutual peace and union of this great confederacy of States! necessary to know how each man stood affected towards the war whether his feelings were enlisted in his country's behalf, or whether secretly or pub- licly he was aiding the enemy." If any individual fell under suspicion of the people, the committee were immediately notified, and they forthwith repair- 'ed to the person and demanded an avowal of his sentiments. If found to be lukewarm or indifferent to the liberal cause, he was closely watched. If a Tory in sentiment, he was remanded to Newgate. The dividing line of principle was positive and distinct. On the royal side, the British officials proclaimed those to be outlaws who favored the cause of the rebels, and pronounced free pardon to such as ceased their resistance, or espoused the cause of Royalty. Besides this it is said they gave secret protection-papers to those applying for them on the score of friendship. These acts of the British impelled the colonist to take the most rigorous measures in self- defense. 30 NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT.. At this day, it seems to us hardly possible that any con- siderable number could have been found so indifferent to the possession of liberty as to oppose their countrymen in arms, struggling for freedom, and the inalienable rights of man. We are prone to regard them as inhuman, deluded beings, unworthy to live. But let us pause a moment, yield a little to our charity, and consider the state of the country at that time, and some of the influences by which they were surrounded. The Tories were aware that in the history of the world, every people who had attempted the experiment of a free representative form of government, although in some cases for a while successful, yet in the end had most positively failed in their hopes and plans ; their struggles had only ended in loss of power by the many, and usurpation of it by the few. From the history of the Republics of Greece in early Europe, through the long vista of twenty-four cen- turies, the plebeian people had striven through toil and blood, only to bend their necks at last to the yoke of some powerful chieftain in war. The colonists and their ancestors had suffered and bled in the Indian wars, afterwards in wars with the French, and with French and Indians combined; and their mother England had been an ally who had assisted them in their defence, and to whom they still looked for aid in emergency. Many also, were bound by the ties of near kin- dred to friends across the ocean. Those in civil power received their authority direct from England, and many of the clergy were commissioned by the Church of England, from which also they received their chief support. All of them, doubtless, were inclined by early education and prejudice, to prefer a kingly to a republican government, and they dreaded the troublesome responsibility of beginning the contest for a change, well knowing that an ignominious death awaited them in case their experiment failed. In the words of our Declaration of Independence, "all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed." NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. SI On the other hand, they are censurable for opposing in- dependence, because the oppression of British tyranny had planted them or their fathers upon the inhospitable shores of a new world. They had generously expended their blood and treasure for the maintenance of the Crown, and had obeyed its mandates by assisting in the war against France, which resulted in the acquisition of a vast territory to the English nation. Their trade had been monopolized by her ; then, when prudence would have dictated a relax- ation of authority, the mother country rose in her demands, and imposed heavy taxes to pay off a national debt of more than $700,000,000. The idea should have been discarded, that a small island, more than two thousand miles distant, should hold in bondage, without representation, a territory on this continent, large as the whole of Europe, and destined to equal it in population. They should have remembered too, that citizens of the early Republics, pos- sessed not our advantage of historical experience of other Republics, to point out the faults of free government by which they could avoid their errors, and adopt their benefits; and no well-defined system of confederated states, with a constitution limiting the just powers of government, had ever been devised. The masses in early ages were ignorant, superstitious, and heathenish ; they were crammed into dense cities and villages, which are the hot-beds of vice and corruption ; while on the contrary, the inhabitants of America could glean wisdom from the history of past ages, and commune with the great and mighty dead. They possessed abundance of territory for all; plenty of room in which to develop their free energies, and afford to all uneasy spirits a medium in which to expend their surplus gas, in the moral atmosphere of a continent. They could realize the sentiment: " No pent up Utica contracts our powers, For the whole boundless Continent is ours." A writer says : 'Of the Tories who engaged actively in the war against American 32 NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. independence, their subsequent history was for the most part a melan- choly one. Probably not more than half of those who fled the coun- try ever returned, and those who did were mostly broken-down men reduced to poverty, laden with the odium of having made war upon their country, and in many cases stained with vice and adicted to habits which sent them to an early grave. It was one of the questions which most impeded the negotiations for peace between the States and Great Britain in 1783, What should be done with these Tories. Several thousand had removed to Canada, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia, and most of whom were in circum- stances of extreme destitution. It was, at first insisted by the British negotiators, that Congress should grant pardon to all political offenders of this sort, restore their confiscated estates, and remunerate them for the losses they had suffered. This was refused, on the ground: First; that Congress only had authority under the articles of Confederation to recommend measures to the several States. Secondly ; that these men had encouraged the British to prosecute the war, and many of them had personally engaged in plundering and ravaging the country, and ought rather to be made to render compensation, than to receive it. Thirdly; that the the confiscated estates of the Tories had been sold and re-sold, often divided and could not now be restored without endless litigation. And finally, that in the impover- ished condiiion of the country, it was impossible to pay its own meritorious soldiers. The matter was finally compromised by inserting three articles into the treaty, to the effect that the loyalists (or Tories) should not lie debarred from collecting debts due them before the war; that Congress would recommend to the States to restore confiscated property as far as possible, and that no future confiscations should be made or prosecutions begun. These terms were at length reluctantly agreed to by Great Britain, The recommendations of Congress to the States were, however, ineffectual, as it was probalhj expected they would be. Connecticut would not consent to restore the property of such as has been engaged in burning Danbury, Fairfield, and other sea-coast towns. The same was true in other states, Let England, they said, pay us for the wanton injuries she has inflicted, before she asks compensation, for the traitors by whom it was done. Failing thus in securing relief from the States for her refugees, Parliament undertook the duty for themselves. A commissioner was appointed by England to ascertain the losses incurred by their friends, and about fifteen and a half million dollars was appropriated for their compensation." Besides this, many of the loyalists of America received subsidies and pensions from the British government during their lives, some received large grants of lands, and some half -pay as military officers. THE FIRST KEEPER OF KKWGATK was Capt. John Yiets, who resided near by, and who supplied NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. 33 them daily with such food and necessaries as were required. His bill, as recorded for one year, in 1774, is as follows: " Captain John Viets, Master, as per his bill for services, boarding workmen and providing for prisoners, &c., 29Z. 5s. lOd." At that time no guard was kept through the day, but two or three sentinels kept watch during the night. There was an anteroom or passage, through which to pass before reach- ing their cell, and the usual practice of Oapt. Viets, when he carried their food, was, to look through the gates into this passage, to observe whether they were near the door, and if not, to enter, lock the door after him, and pass on to the next. The inmates soon learned his custom, and accordingly prepared themselves for an escape. When the captain came next time, some of them had contrived to unbar their cell door, and huddled themselves in a corner behind the door in tiie passage, where the}' could not easily be seen, and upon his opening it, they sprang upon him, knocked him down, pulled him in, and taking the key from his possession, they locked him up and made good their escape. What were the captain's reflections on his sudden transition from keeper to that of prisoner is not stated, but he probably thought, with Falstaff, " discretion is the better part of valor," and that he must adopt, in future, more prudent measures. His absence was soon perceived by his family, who came to his relief. Tiie inhabitants around rallied immediately, and gave chase to the absconding heroes, and finally succeeded in capturing nearly the whole of them. Several were taken in attempting to cross the Tunxis or Farming-ton lliver, at Scotland Bridge, a few miles south ; sentinels having been stationed at that place to intercept them. Some Santa Anna like took refuge upon trees, and there met with certain capture. An aged and respected matron, then a child and residing but a few- rods from the prison said to the author that, " the news of their escape and capture spread as much terror among the children in the neighborhood as if they had been a band of midnight assassins." Although the prison was considered impregnable, the first 34 NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. convict which had been put there, John Ilinson, had escaped. He was committed, Dec. 2d, 1773, and escaped after a confine- ment of eighteen days, by being drawn up through the mining shaft, assisted, it is said, by a woman to whom he was paying his addresses. On the 26th of Feb. 1774, three prisoners were received; one of them escaped on the 9th of April following, and the two others on the 23d. One committed on the 5th of April took sudden leave on the 9th, having been confined jnstfour days! After the general escape and recapture, the following report was made by the overseers: To the Honorable General Assembly now sitting at Hartford: "We, the subscribers, overseers of Newgate Prison, would inform your Honors, that Newgate Prison is so strong and secure that we believe it is not possible for any person put there to escape, unless by assistance from abroad; yet it so happens that one John Hinson, lately sent there by order of the Honorable the Superior Court, has escaped by the help of some evil minded person at present unknown, who, in the night season next after the 9th inst., drew the prisoner out of the shaft; and we believe no place ever was or can be made so secure but that if persons abroad can have free access to such prison, standing at a distance from any dwelling house, the prisoners will escape; we therefore recommend it to your Honors, that some further security be added to that prison in order to secure the prisoners : what that security shall be, will be left to your Honors ; yet we would observe to your Honors that the east shaft where the prisoner escaped, is about 70 feet to the bottom of the prison, the whole of which is through a firm rock, except 10 feet at top, which is stoned up like a well; we therefore propose that the upper part down to the rock be lock'd up, and stones about 15 or 18 inches square and of suitable length, be laid across said shaft about eight inches asunder e. And as to the west shaft, which is about 25 feet deep, secured with a strong iron gate, about six feet below the surface, we propose that a strong log house be built of two or three rooms, one of which, to stand over this shaft to secure it from persons abroad, and the other rooms to be for the miners, &c. AH which is submitted by your Honor's most obedient Humble Servants." Erastus Wolcott, Josiah JJisstU, Hartford Jan'y 17th 1774. Joh'n Humphrey. Connecticut at that period held each year two sessions of her Assembly, and at the next session, four months after, the following report was presented by the overseers : NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. 35 To the ITon. the Gen'l Assembly now sitting at Hartford : " We the subscribers hereto, overseers of Newgate Prison, beg leave to represent to your honors, That soon after the rising of the assembly in Jan'y last, three delinquents were committed from Windham, and two others from New London county, whereupon, notwithstanding the severity of the season, we immediately set about making those further securities that your Honours directed, and have built a strong log house 36 feet in length and 20 feet in width, with timbers 10 inches square, divided into two rooms, one of which includes the west shaft, and in the other, which is designed for the miners to lodge in, &c., we have built a chimney, and compleated the whole except the under floor, the planks for which are not yet sufficiently ilryed and fit to lay, and some ceiling to secure the miners from the cold winds, which otherwise will pass betwixt the timbers. We have also secured the east shaft where the first prisoner escaped, with iron and stone, and every other place where we thought it possible for any to escape ; and we apprehend that said prison is now well secured and fitted to receive and employ those offenders that may be sent there. An account of our disburse- ments, &c., we have ready to lay before your Honours or Auditors, to be ap- pointed as your Honours shall direct. Your Honours must have heard that the prisoners have all escaped that prison ; it would be long, and perhaps difficult, in writing, to give a particular and distinct account how this was done ; your Honours will excuse us if we only say that they effected their escape by the help of evil minded persons abroad, before the necessary and proposed securityes could be compleated. We would further inform your Honours, that we had engaged two miners to assist the prisoners at work, who were to have been there about the time the prisoners escaped, and one of them actually left his business and came there a few days after the escape ; him we have retained, and to this time principally employed in compleating the securities to the prison; the other we gave intelligence of the escape before he left his business, and prevented his coming; but have engaged him to attend when wanted. All which is submitted to your Honours, by your Honours' most obedient and humble servants." Hartford, May Hth, 1774. ANOTHER ESCAPE was attempted by the prisoners, in 1776, by burning the block-house over the shaft. A level had been opened from the bottom of the mines through the hill westward, for the purpose of draining off the water, and the mouth of this level was closed by a heavy wooden door firmly fastened. They had by degrees collected sufficient combustibles, and with a piece of stone and steel they kindled a fire against the door, which burned as well as damp fuel in a damp dungeon naturally would ; but instead of making their escape from 36 NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. the prison, they all nearly made their final escape from the world ; for the dense smoke and bine flame soon filled the apartment and almost suffocated all of them. Search being made, one of them was found dead, and five others were brought forth senseless, but finally recovered. They were afterwards placed in a strong wooden building, erected for the purpose above ground, in 1777. They set this building on fire the next year, and burned it to the ground. Nearly all escaped, but several of them were after- wards retaken. In 1780, the block-house, so called, was rebuilt; but prudence by the officers in the management was disregarded. Had they been more careful in adopting safeguards for themselves and the prisoners, they might have avoided the dreadful scene which was soon to follow A SCENE OF CONFLICT AND BLOOD ! It appears that the overseers relied for security upon the number of guards rather than upon their proper discipline, as they appointed a lieutenant, one sergeant, one corporal and twenty-four privates, while the number of prisoners was only thirty thus providing the very liberal complement of about one soldier to each prisoner. The guards were armed with loaded muskets and fixed bayonets, and the officers with cutlasses and pistols. As the war with England now raged with fury, the animos- ity between the Whigs and Tories had grown in proportion, and the seal of distinct party was in many places stamped with vivid impression, so that at this period the number doomed to the prison had amounted to thirty, and many of them were Tories. They were a desperate set of men and scrupled at no means of escape. On the night of the 18th of May, 1781, the dreadful tragedy occurred which resulted in the escape of all the prisoners. A prisoner was confined, by the name of Young, and his wife wishing to be admitted into the cavern with him, she was searched, and while two officers were in the act of raising the hatch to let her down, NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. 37 the prisoners rushed out, knocked down the two officers, and seizing the muskets of nearly all the rest who were asleep, immediately took possession of the works, and thrust most of the guards into the dungeon, after a violent contest. One of them, Mr. Gad Sheldon, was mortally wounded, fighting at his post, and six more wounded severely. Said a venerable old lady now deceased : " It was a dreadful sight to see the wounded guards, as they were brought into our house one after another, and laid upon the floor, weltering in their blood ! When I came into the room, the faithful Sheldon sat on a bench, his body bent forward, and a bayonet dripping with blood lying before him, which he had just drawn out of his breast it was a deadly stab ! " Many of the prisoners were wounded ; some of them were assailed and gashed by their comrades through mistake, while lighting in the dark- ness of the conflict. Nearly all made their escape; some from their wounds were unable to flee. One was taken on a tree in Turkey Hills, east of the mountain ; and a few others were found in swamps and barns in the neighboring towns. The foregoing is corroborated by a paper just received, as this work was going to press. It is copied from Riving- ton's "Gazetteer? a Tory weekly paper printed in New York, in 1773. In Nov. 1775, the paper was mobbed by a party of Connecticut men, but when the British gained possession of that city, in 1777, the paper was revived. Rivington styled himself " Printer to the King." It appears by the following statement that the men were tory privateers, who had been commissioned by the British to plunder the Connecticut towns on the borders of L. I. Sound. It says: "June 6th, 1781. This day arrived in New York, Ebenezer Hathaway and Thomas Smith, who on the IGth of May last made their escape from Sims- bury Mines after a most gallant struggle for their liberty. These men declare that they were two of eight belonging to the privateer boat Aventure which was duly commissioned; that they were taken in Huntington Bay, Long Island, on the 7th of April by seven rebel whale-boats manned with seventy-three men, and that night carried across the Sound to Stamford, in Connecticut ; that the next day they were carried to what they called head- quarters, before Gen. Waterbury, who, with the air of a demagogue ordered 38 NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. them to Hartford Gaol, and told the guard they had his liberty to strip them even to the clothes remaining on their backs ; but the captors had left them so bare that all they had about them now was not an object even to a Yankee soldier ; there they lay until the 27th following when their trial came on before the superior court; that they were brought before the court and directed to plead not guilty and offered for counsel Colonel Sention, one of the justices, then on the bench, in order that they might by law bring them in guilty ; but aware of their knavish tricks, they declared themselves British subjects and refused to plead either guilty or not guilty, therefore they were ordered to Newgate Gaol, or rather to that inquisition, Simsbury Mines, which from the following description exceed anything among their allies in France or Spain. These poor unfortunate victims, relate that they were taken from Hart- ford Gaol and marched under a strong guard to Simsbury Mines distant .about seventy -four miles. In approaching this horrid dungeon they were first conducted through the apartments of the guards, then through a trap- door downstairs into another upon the same floor with the kitchen, which was divided from it by a very strong partition door. In the corner of this outer room, and near the foot of the stairs, opened another large trap-door, covered with bars and bolts of iron, which was hoisted up in two guards by means of a tackle, whilst the hinges grated as they turned upon their hooks, and opened the jaws and mouth of what they call Hell, into which they descended by means of a ladder about six feet more, which led to a large iron grate or hatchway, locked down over a shaft of about three feet diameter, sunk through the solid rock, and which they were told led to the bottomless pit. Finding it not possible to evade this hard, cruel fate they bade adieu to the world and descended the ladder about thirty-eight feet more, when they came to what is called the landing; then marching shelf by shelf till descending about thirty or forty feet more they came to a plat- form of boards laid under foot, with a few more put overhead to carry off the water which keeps continually dropping. Here, say they, we found the inhabitants of this woful mansion who were exceedingly anxious to know what was going on above. We told them that Lord Cornwallis had beat the rebel army and that their money was gone to the d 1, with which they seemed satisfied and rejoiced at the good news. They were obliged to make use of pots of charcoal to dispel the foul air, which in some degree is drawn off by the means of a ventilator or auger hole which is bored from the surface through at this spot, said to be seventy feet perpendicular. Here they continued twenty days and nights, resolved, however, to avail themselves of the first opportunity to get out, although they shonld lose their lives in the attempt. Accordingly on the 18th, eighteen of them being let up to the kitchen to cook, found means to break the lock of the door which kept them from the foot of the ladder leading to the guard-room. They now doubly resolved to make a push should the door be opened ; which fortunately was the case about ten o'clock at night, (to let down a prisoner's wife who had come there and was permitted to see him.) NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. 39 Immediately they seized the fortunate moment and rushed up, but before any, except one, got out, the door was slammed down on the rest, and he, the brave Captain Hathaway, who commanded the adventure, scuffled with the whole of them for a few minutes and was wounded in three different places when he was nobly assisted by his trusty friend, Thomas Smith, and afterwards by the other eight They then advanced upon the guard con- sisting of twenty-four in number, and took the whole prisoners. This waa no sooner accomplished than they brought their companions out of the bottomless pit and put the guard down into their room, then marched off with their arms and ammunition, but were soon afterwards obliged to disperse." A Committee was appointed by the Assembly, then in session, to repair to Newgate and inquire into the facts respecting the insurrection. They reported the evidence in the case, some of which it is curious to notice in their own words, as follows : "Jacob Southwell was awakened by the tumult, took a gun and run out of the guard-house, and durst not go back for fear they would hurt him. N. B. A young man more fit to carry fish to market, than to keep guard at New- gate. Nathan Phelps was also asleep wak'd but could do nothing, the prisoners having possession of the guard-house (a small lad just fit to drive plow with a very gentle team.) He went to Mr. Viets's and stayed till morning (poor boy) ! Alagail, the wife of Jno. Young, alias Mattick, saya that the first night she came to prison, she gave to her husband 52 silver dollars her husband told her after he came out that he had given Sergt. Lilly 50 of them in order that he may suffer the prisoners to escape that he told her the Sergt. purposely left the door of the south jail unlocked that Sergt. Lilly was not hurt that she borrowed Ihe money of a pedler that she heard Lilly say, it was a great pity such likely men should live and die in that place." Nov. 6th, 1T82, the wooden buildings of the prison were again destroyed by fire, and doubtless by design, in order to aid the escape of the Tories in confinement. This was the third time the prison buildings had been burned in nine years, since its first inauguration, and more than one-half of the whole number of convicts had escaped by various means. The authorities probably by this time began to change their opin- ion that "it would be next to impossible for any person to escape," and that as a Yankee once said, it was "dangerous being safe." The following is too rich in orthography to be omitted. It is recorded as written in 1T83 : 40 NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. To the Ifon. General Assembly, The humble petishen of Able Davis whare as at the honerable supene court houlden in Hartford in December last I was conficted of mis Deminer on the count of newgate being burnt as I had comand of said gard and was orded to bee confind 3 month and pay fourteen pounds for disabaing orders, I cant read riten, but I did all in my power to distingus the flame, but being very much frited and not the faculty to doe as much in distress as I could another time and that is very sinaul, what to do I thot it was best to let out the prisners that war in the botams as I had but just time to get the gates lifted before the hous was in flames, and the gard bein frited it twant in my power to scape them. I now pray to be Deflehaned from further in prisment, and the coust of said sute as I hante abel to pay the coust, or give me the liberty of the yard as I am very unwell as your pitishner in duty bound wi 1 for ever pray. Abel Daveis. Hartford Goal, January 14th, 1783. The struggles at this prison to subdue Toryism, were doubtless greater than at any other place in any of the Col- onies. Many of those in confinement were men of talents, spirit, and wit ; and they occasionally indulged their pro- clivities by making poetry in derision of the measures which were carried on by the patriots against England. The following is a part of some rhymes (referring to the patriots) composed by them, and sent to their keeper : " Many of them in halters will swing, Before John Hancock will ever be king." John Hancock, being one of the most ardent friends of the Revolution, was particularly obnoxious to the British, and a price was set on his head ; this raised the spirit of the col- onists, and they at once elected him President of Congress, which drew upon him the special odium of the Tories. The following is from the original now in the possession of the author : " Mr. Viets: If you have any meet cooked, you will much oUidge me by sending a dinner, for I suffer for want. " Peter Sackett." This man was one of the thirty who were engaged in a bloody contest with the guard, and he made his escape at that time. The imprisoned Tories were not without sym- pathizers, and spiritual comforters. The Rev'd Roger Viets, an Episcopal clergyman, a resident of Simsbury, and previ- ously alluded to, occasionally expounded the gospel to them, NK\VI;ATE OF CONNECTICUT. 41 and taught them the gospel precept, " Honor the King." His reverence was a noted good liver among the people, and besides what was given him in donations, he received annually forty pounds from the established Church of England. After Independence was acknowledged by Great Britain, the salaries of the clergy were discontinued, but the Church "Propagation Society" of England offered to continue the stipends to such of the American Clergy, as would remove to the British dominions where parishes were assigned them. Mr. Viets among others, considered it prudent to accept the offer, and emigrated to Nova Scotia, where his descendants now reside in respectable circumstances. A TOBY CLERGYMAN IN NEW T GATE. The choicest specimen of black-hearted treason under the cloak of priestly sanctity, was exhibited in the person of a Tory of the name of Simeon Baxter, who was confined in the caverns. From which of the thirteen colonies he was sent, is not ascertained, but he must have been regarded by the people as a real champion of Toryism. He preached a sermon to his companions in prison, in 1781, which was printed in London soon after. On account of its novelty of conception, acrimony of spirit, ability, and pungency, it is here published entire, with its title in full, as it was printed. It will be observed that the text, as he quotes it, varies from the precise phraseology of the scriptures; the words "having descended" being surreptitiously employed, probably because he considered them an improvement on the scriptures as applicable to his situation, he being com- pelled to descend into the caverns. Whatever may be thought of his sentiments, the ability with which the dis- course was written proves its author to have been a man of powerful intellect and of considerable research, zealously determined to incite his companions to deeds of blood. It is indeed wonderful that Gen. Washington or the Continental Congress escaped assassination, when such vindictive charac- ters boldly advised a resort to the dagger in order to exter- minate the friends of liberty. 42 NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. " Tyrannicide proved Lawful, from the Practice and Wri-ings of Jews, Heathens, and Christians : A Discourse, delivered in the Mines at Symsbury, in the Colony of Connecticut, to the Loyalists confined there by Order of the Congress, on September 19, 1781, by SIMEON BAXTER, a Licentiate in Divinity, and voluntary Chaplain to those Prisoners in the Apartment called Orcus : Having descended, he preached to the Spirits in Prison. 1st Peter, iii, 19. Regnabit sanguine multo ad Regnum quisquis venit ab Exilo. Whoever comes to his kingdom from exile, he will rule with much blood. Suetonius' s life of Nero. 1'rinted in America; London, Reprinted for S. Blandon in Pater-Noster Row, MDCCLXXXII." " To General Washington, and the Congress styling themselves Governors and Protectors of Thirteen Colonies belonging to the Crown of England : " Gentlemen, That you may have the honour of dying for the people, instead of their dying for you and your allies, was the design I had in preaching and publishing this discourse; and should it produce the desired effect, I shall think myself paid for all my trouble and expence. If you can bestow one generous deed on your ruined country, adopt the act of Suicide to balance the evils of your lives, and save the virtuous citizens of America the glorious trouble of doing justice on you. "Remember Judas was not a patriot till he hanged himself for betraying his Saviour and his God. Go thou and do likewise and you will prove yourselves real Saviours of America, and like him, hold a place in the temple of everlasting Fame. Should your courage or your virtue fail in so meritorious a deed, sacred Religion stands on tiptoe to inspire all her children by some hidden thunder or some burnished weapon, to do it for you, and to save themselves from Nimrod's paradise. When you are dead, your grateful countrymen will not let your Honours lie in dust, but will raise you to some airy tomb between the drooping clouds and parching sands : then your exaltation will make islands glad ; Peace with new-fledged wing, shall fly through every state, and echo happiness to weeping willows ; nay, the mourning doves shall forsake the wilderness to chant your praises; and the mope-eyed owls, in open day, shall view with wonder your patriotic virtues. The Author." "To the Protestant Rebel Ministers of the Gospelin the Thirteen Confederated Colonies in America : " Gentlemen The bloody part you have acted in obedience to your cred- itors, the merchants smugglers, both in the pulpit and the field, with your spiritual and temporal swords, entitles you to the second class of patriots, who disgrace religion with hypocrisy, and humanity with barbarity. Spec- tators with great justice have decided, that you are the successors of him who went to and fro seeking whom he might devour, and not of him who went about doing good. Inasmuch as you began rebellion because your Ring would not persecute, but tolerate his faithful catholic subjects in NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. 43 Canada, and to support your rebellion, you have since joined yourselves unto idols, and made alliance with the Papists of France to root up the protestant religion,* for which our fathers bled and died, inasmuch as you have out-acted the Pope, discarded and abjured your rightful king, neglected to visit those in prison, and forbid the exercise of that charity to the miser- able, which hides a multitude of sins, I must take leave of you in the words spoken to your predecessors by the Saviour of all penitent sinners, 'Go your way for I know you not.' The Author." SERMON. Then three men of Judah went to the top of the rock Etam, and said to Samson, knowest thou not that the Philistines are rulers over us? and what is this that thou hast done unto us ? And he said unto them : As they did unto me, so have I done unto them. Judges xv. 11. "In the beginning of this chapter we are told that the children of Israel again did evil in the sight of the Lord, for which they were delivered into the hands of the Philistines forty years ; a heavy judgment to fall under the power of any people without law, justice, or mercy ! yet God has considered such a calamity as due to idolaters, and the enemies of common sense. Whatever nation is governed by a set of men like the Philistines, without any fixed rules of right, is controlled by a set of beasts, with sharp horns, arrogance, and pride. Israel being thus in bondage, God raised up Samson to deliver them, who went down to Timnath, and took a wife of the Philis- tines, of whom he was unjustly robbed, without hopes of any legal redress. After this outrage, Samson had a just opportunity to make war upon them, which he did, though unassisted and opposed by his servile countrymen. The men of Judah, like modern politicians, were alarmed at the war whi-.h threatened them, and sought peace with the Philistines by joining against their deliverer, and accosted him in the words of the text. "What is this that thou hast done unto us? " Samson answered, and justified his conduct upon the law of nature : "As they have done unto me so have I done unto them," a good defence against the Philistines, who acted upon private principles, and trampled under foot the laws of God and civil society. Had the case been otherwise, Samson, who judged Israel twenty years, and whom the Lord blessed, would have sought justice from the decision of an impartial judge, instead of redressing himself by the natural law of retalia- tion. There are but two way of deciding differences ; the one is by law, the other by force. The first is the rule of men formed into civil societies ; the second of men and beasts in the state of nature. Kings of civil societies, in a just war, have recourse to the state of nature, and use their last arguments, when justice cannot be had for injuries received. Cicero, one of the luminaries of the heathen world, asserts that " war is supported by us against those of whom we can obtain no law." Grotius, the great oracle of Christians, saith that "the law forbids me to pursue my right but by a course of law." This is a good law in civil society, * He probably refers to our treaty of alliance made with France. 44 NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. where justice is administered according to the laws of right, where the innocent are protected against oppressors; but in a state of nature, where no law but that of power doth exist, the maxim of Grotius is not applicable, unless the nature of law is to support the tyrants, and oppress the afflicted. Moses, the legislator of the Jews, knowing that men were partial to themselves, unjust to others, and unfit to be their own judges, ordered their controversies to be decided according to the law : but whilst Israel was in Egypt, law and justice had no place ; whereupon Moses, to point out the law of nature, set an example to be followed by all men on proper occasions ; he saw his brethren oppressed, an Egyptian smiting an Hebrew, and knowing lie could obtain no legal satisfaction, erected an high court of justice, and smote the Egyptian, which proves we may revert to the law of nature, and repel force by force, and do justice for ourselves when no legal justice can be had. If this be not the case, law is a scourge to the oppressed, and a protection to tyrants, which is contrary to the spirit of all laws, which always provide remedies for slaves against their cruel masters. Since the law of God and man takes care for slaves, and protects them from the injuries 'of their masters, how unreasonable is it, that the free people of America, who have only God for their master, should find no redress against the oppressions of a barbarous set of usurpers and tyrants, who have laid waste our once happy country, and murdered our friends and relations before our eyes ; who, to calm our complaints of misery, either hang us upon trees, or cast us into some darksome prison, where their midnight assassins launch us out of time. Merciful God! if our wives and children have the privilege of starving in the streets, we are taught to reverence the favor as an act of lenity in Congress and its associates ! Since we live in an evil time, when all laws of civil society are repealed, "the whole head sick and heart faint," the people crouching beneath their burdens and crying, " let us alone that we may serve the Egyptians," while the Levites from their pulpits, like the men of Judah from the top of Etam, are proclaiming " know you not that the Congress are rulers over us? and is it not better to serve them than to die by the hand of Saul or the bitter water of Marah ? " Since this is not the voice of wisdom, but of Athalia, of Mattan and his priests who were slain at the horse-gate and the altar, according to the law of retaliation, let us return to our natural right, and act the magistrate upon those usurpers who have shut up the course of justice. For our encouragement we have for our example the prophet Samuel, who performed justice upon Agag with his own hand, saying, "as thy sword has made women childless, so shall thy mother be childless among women," a very proper punishment for tyrants, who advance themselves above the reach of all justice, except the prayers of the people, and the dagger of an Ehud. Providence and Nature have ever united devotion and a javelin in the hands of a Judith, and a Jael, to bring down an Holofernes, and a Sisera ; because tyrants are such devils as cannot be cast out by prayer and fasting, unless aided by the workman's hammer. Those weapons unite Heaven and Earth to govern such men as will not be governed by civil laws, NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. 45 that every man might, agreeable to the Gospel, reap what he sows, and receive the same measure which he has meted out to others. We may complain with Jeremiah and say, " Why do the wicked prosper and the treacherous wax fat? How long shall the land mourn, and the herbs of the field wither? " We may add, that America resembles the state of the Jews upon the rivers of Babylon; for she has long hung her harps upon the wil- lows, and forgot the mirth of Zion : " her children are gone forth, and are not ; each one is crying, Woe is me, for I am hurt; my wound is grievous, and I must bear it; her pastors are brutish, their work is the work of errors, the land is in mourning ; her spoilers are seated upon high places to keep peace from all flesh ; " and no Moses, no Ehud, no Samuel, no Samson, no Jehoida, no Jael, nor Judith, hath appeared witli a patriotic dagger, to do justice upon our tyrants, and save a sinking country! Surely this is not for want of patriots, but for the want of truly understanding the laws of God, nature, and civil society, which permit all-men to kill thieves, breaking up houses in the night, lest they should escape justice by the help of darkness. Tyrants are worse robbers than the midnight thieves, for they hold themselves above justice, and the laws of civil society, which renders it necessary to repel force by force, and restore perfect liberty, the genuine fruit of law. If this is not the case, if laws of society bind us to submit to the usurpers acting opposite to law, a solitary life in the state of nature is preferable to civil society ; but experience has taught the world, that there is no protection out of civil society, and in a state of nature we are all Ishmaels, whose hands are against one another. Men enter into civil societies, but not barely to exist, which they might do dispersed as other animals, but to live happy and agreeable to the dignity of human nature. To effect this noble view, men agree to submit their passions and appetites to the laws of reason and justice ; and whenever lust, avarice, and ambition, are not, and cannot be regulated by the laws of the state, social liberty ceases, and natural liberty revives, wherein every man is a soldier, a Moses, a Samson, and may with- out incurring the guilt of murder, kill those uncircumcised Philistines with a javelin or any other weapon. By thus doing, men act upon the first law which is self-preservation, against thieves, tigers, and beasts of prey, a law which is above all political precepts and rules, and superior to every opinion of the mind. Since it is lawful to use any means in destroying tyrants, let us act gloriously in so doing, and free our country of the noxious Congress, under whose usurpations thousands have been murdered, and tens of thousands have been plundered. Having thus briefly touched upon the laws of God, of nature, and of nations, respecting the freedom and the rights of men, I shall, 1st. Enquire whether Congress are usurpers and tyrants, or a legal body of men. 2nd. Prove it the duty of all Protestants to do justice on them as Samson did on the Philistines. 3rd. Point out the benefit and necessity of so doing. As to the first head, we shall find that Congress may claim with great justice and little 46 NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. honor, the dignity of being both usurpers and tyrants. The civil law describes him to be an usurper who governs without any right; and the tyrant is he who governs contrary to the laws. My business is to show who have a right to govern, and what makes the power just. Fathers have a natural right to govern their wives and children, because they defend and support them ; and in return the wives and children owe and pay subjection and obedience. Civil society is made up of several independent families by general consent, or by the command of God. Nature and revelation point out the necessity of having some to rule, and others to obey the rules and laws appointed by God, or the people, who alone have the power to alter natural liberty, and establish civil societies. The rulers are to be obeyed so far as they command according to the laws, and no farther; and the great body of the people are the judges to determine when the rulers govern by the laws, and when they do not; for the people are the legislators, and subjects of their laws, and not subjects of their magis- trates. Notwithstanding this, a servant by the laws of God may say, I will not be free, and can bind myself to serve forever. Ex. xxi, 5. And the same power is vested in every society, as appears from the history of Saul and David. It is very true, that God appointed Saul to be king over the people, to punish them for their ingratitude, which rendered Saul's power absolute, and passive obedience and non-resistance of divine authority ; but Samuel anointed David king, who after Saul's death was confirmed by the elders of Israel at Hebron. 2 Samuel xi. 3. Those elders were the deputies of the people, authorized to limit David's kingly power ; for before his inaugura- tion, they obliged him by compact to govern justly, i. e. to protect the good, and to execute wrath upon the evil. Thus David became a minister of God to rule for the good of his people. Hence it is plain that all just power of government originates from God or the people ; therefore, all who arrogate to themselves the power of governing, and cannot produce a commission from God or the people, are usurpers and tyrants, who may oppress but cannot govern. To such a power, people may be subject for wrath, but not for conscience sake. After what lias been suggested, have we not reason and a natural right to ask Congress, " who made you rulers over us? If God, why have not you published your commission? If the people, where was the place that we assembled? when did we give our consent? who were our elders to confirm your mighty power? "* *True it is that near one hundred persons convened at Wethersfleld, according to an advertisement signed by one Thomas Seymour, a lawyer, and chose a member to repre- sent in Congress the County of Hartford, containing above sixty thousand souls. But it is presumed that previous to the choice of members of Congress, the question whether there should be a Congress, ought to have been put to the vote. That, however, was artfully evaded; a vast majority of the people were thereby divested of their weight in the Colony, as it would have been In the highest degree absurd and nugatory to have voted for members of a Congress which did not exist, and which they would not have suffered to exist, had a fair opportunity been given for their votes on that point. This NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. 47 Whenever Congress shall answer these important and natural questions, and prove their authority to be from heaven or of men, I will gladly quit my chains, and submit to their dominion. Until these questions are duly answered, I will view my dungeon as my palace, and continue to say, if changing the government established by our ancestors, without our consent, or that of the king, or the nation of which we are a part; if dissolving char- ters, oaths, laws, and establishing iniquity by the bayonet; if taking away men's lives, liberty, and property, by Committees of Safety, the Inquisition, and Star Chamber Court in America ; if maintaining rebellion by force and fraud to the benefit of a junto, and to the destruction of the people, of prop- erty; if these things denote what is tyranny, Congress cannot, with all its impudence, but own itself composed of the greatest tyrants that ever dis- graced human nature. Congress having done all this, and commanded themselves to be prayed for as the supreme authority of America; they have left us in the state either of David to pray for deliverance from cruel and unreasonable men. or to pray like the woman of Syracuse for Dionysius. I shall now add some outward marks given of ancient tyrants, to show the violence and deceit of Congress. "Tyrants" says Tacitus, "subvert laws and government under color of defending the rights and liberties of the people ; and when they have got sufficient power, they rob the people of all their rights." Plato says, " Tyrants practice contrary to physicians, who purge us of our evil humors, but they, of our purest blood." Machiavel says, " Tyrants provide for ministers, when they flatter and torture Scripture, to prove usurpers lawful governors." Aristotle says, "The most successful art of tyrants, is to pretend great love for God and Religion." In these things we know Congress have excelled St. Oliver, and taught us that in godliness is great gain ; and that preaching and praying lead to other king- doms besides that of heaven; we are also taught that its arms are not carnal, but protestant; for they have overcome the church in defiance of all her prayers and tears. Had not modern Christians preferred the honor of being governed by a Protestant Congress they might have had preaching for their tenths, instead of paying life, liberty, and property. To their comfort be it spoken, Congress manages the spiritual and temporal sword with as much dexterity as the Pope of Rome. Further evidence need not be produced of the tyranny of Congress, unless to such men as have great faith and little understanding; therefore since we both see and feel the merciless power of those beasts of prey, I shall proceed, secondly, to prove it the duty of all Protestants to do justice on Congress, as Samson did on the Philistines. Among us are two sects of Christians who daily pray to be delivered from the tyranny of those uncircumcised Philistines, but conscien- tiously differ about the mode ; the one expects the Lord to remove them ; was the case throughout most of the Colonies. The Congress once formed in that unfair manner, decreed that members in future should be elected only by the trnefriends of America; that is, such aa should abjure their king and sign the league and covenant; go that three-fourths of the Colony of Connecticut have never given a vote even for a Member. 48 NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. the other expects that deliverance will be given by a Samson, armed with the jawbone of an ass. The Tories believe patience to be the only lawful cure, when under the power of usurpers and tyrants ; the Whigs believe the safety of the people to be the first law, and laws to be above all rulers ; and that kings and governors are accountable for their conduct at the bar of the community. Here is the creed of those two sects touching lawful rulers ; but I must remind them, without condemning either, that no people of sober sense ever gave up justice and liberty in duty and conscience, to usurpers and tyrants, who are Ishmaels, and wholly excluded all human protection, because they are enemies to societies, subverters of laws, and murderers of individuals ; it is for this reason justice dispenses with her forms, and leaves tyrants and usurpers in the number of those savage beasts who herd not together, but defend themselves by their own strength, and prey upon all weaker animals. Would our Whigs and Tories reflect a few moments upon the nature ot civil society, and upon what Tully says of laws, magistrates and people, they would discover laws to be above magistrates, as they are above individ- uals. It follows, that, when the depravity of men's wills renders them unfit to live in human society, it is murder in the community to let them live. If, then, in the land of peace, legal rulers degenerate into tyrants, weary people, and merit death, what deserve usurpers and tyrants, who. like the swellings of Jordan, sweep the world of safety by their iron rods? Since we know that usurpers hold themselves above all justice but the stroke of some generous hand, we are to consider laws of civil society in regard to them as cobwebs, and no longer act like the Athenians, who punished only little thieves. If we were beasts, we should have a right to protect ourselves against our enemies; and as men and Christians, we can- not have less by entering into civil society. Let us, then, awake from slumber, and convince those men who shun justice in the court, that ilieij shall meet it in their beds; for they are armed against all, and all may lawfully arm against them. Nothing is more absurd than to kill thieves, vipers, and bears, to prevent their cruel designs, and at the same time preserve Congress from acting much worse than the others intended. No one can any longer doubt of the lawfulness of destroying public robbers, whenever prudence points out the way, since the laws of God and men make it lawful to extirpate private robbers. Let us live in constant faith that Heaven will soon sanctify some patriotic hand, armed with some sacred weapon, to bring down that bloody and deceitful house, which holds its existence not only to the misery, but to the everlasting infamy of Protestant America. The action is not only lawful, but glorious in idea, and immortal in its reward ! Were not these sentiments supported by the wise and grave among the ancients, and the Jesuits and Protestants of the last century, I should not have preached them in this dreary abode. But to wipe all doubts from your minds, I will produce some authorities to support what has been said. NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. 49 Tertullian says, " Against common enemies and traitors to the rights and majesty of the people everything is lawful." Xenophon says, " The Grecians erected in their temples among their gods, statues for those that killed tyrants." It was enacted by the Valerian law, that "whoever made themselves rulers without command from the people, were tyrants, and might be killed." Plutarch says, " It is lawful to kill usurpers without trial." Polybius says, " Men of the greatest virtues conspired against and killed tyrants." Cicero applauds Brutus for conspiring against Julius Caesar, " What action, O! Jupiter, more glorious, more worthy of eternal memory?" At Athens, according to Solon's law, "death was decreed for tyrants and their abettors." Plato says, " When tyrants cannot be expelled by law, the citizens may use secret practices." The reason is, community must be preserved from the rage of tyrants, who can receive no injustice, either by force or fraud. Thus you have the opinions of the ancients ; while the history of Rome, Christian and Germanic States and England teaches us the same doctrines and practices. The Jesuits, in Spain and France, have ever held the knife of justice as a law for tyrants. Our fathers in the last century erected a high court of justice for a tyrant, his reverend and right reverend abettors. Congress and the governors of our respective States, have sufficiently proved by their practices, that the killing of tj'rants and their adherents is not murderous, but truly Christian, upon which priciple, America armed against her rightful king; and, for the same reason, we that love our country may destroy iht self-created Congress, which sits in Caesar's chair, above citation, or a court of justice. What Whig or Tory will be content with formal remedies which are far off? what justice can we expect from malefactors who have the power to hang and assassinate their rightful judges? Consonant to what been said about tyrants and usurpers, stands the law of God, viz : " He that acts presumptuously shall surely die." In sucli a case, every man is judge and executioner. By this law, Moses slew the Egyptians ; Ehud slew Eglon ; Samson, the Philistines; Samuel, Agag; and Jehoida, Athaliah. By parity of reason, every Cicero and Brutus may smite hip and thigh, the Congress, its Mattans and Janizaries, for they have presumptu- ously smote our children and countrymen with whips of brass, fed them with passive obedience, and clothed them in prisons with famine, nakedness and death. It cannot be infamous to destroy them by whom all America is oppressed ; because Moses is immortalized in the records of God, for killing an individual who oppressed another. This we may depend on, that what- ever was lawful and right in Moses, Ehud, and Samson, is lawful and right for Whigs and Tories in America; for the laws of retaliation and justice, are the same here as they were in Jewry. Some people object, and say that these examples taken from Holy Scrip- ture, were of men sent by God to kill those several tyrants, and have we 50 NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. not the like commission. Milton, of immortal fame, has answered this objection. Says he, " If God commanded tyrants to be killed, it is a sign that tyrants ought to die." Besides, we read that all the people of the land rejoiced, and the city had rest after Athaliah was slain with the sword ; that the people obeyed Jehoiada as king for the good he had done, and buried him among their princes ; which was but half the reward given to this patriot, for the divine historian has recorded his generous deed in the book of God, where the last man that lives shall read his eulogies, and the just command which he gave, to kill the followers of Athaliah ; a proper warning to our Protestant Levites, our generals and committees of safety, to repent, lest they likewise perish with their masters, by the workman's hammer. But the objection supposes what in fact is not true ; for Samson and those other worthies who killed tyrants, never alleged the command of God for what they did, but defended themselves on the plea of retaliation " As they did unto me, so have I done unto them." God had not appeared to Moses in the bush prior to his smiting the Egyptian ; and Jehoiada had only the call which is common to all men to do natural justice when legal can- not be had. Some people pretend to believe Congress are not usurpers and tyrants, because traffic and appeals are carried on under their dominion, which argues a tacit consent of the public. To prove these men mistaken, I need only say, that commerce and pleading were carried on in Rome under Caligula and Nero, yet those who conspired against them were not deemed rebels, but were eternized for their virtue. Having pointed out the marks and practices of tyrants and usurpers, and shown the lawfulness and glory of killing them, I shall now, in the third and last place, hint the benefits and necessity of doing it. What is our present condition? Are we not slaves and living instruments of Congress, Washington, and the Protestant Ministers, and their Romish allies? Poor wretches, indeed, are we! Cozened out of peace, religion, liberty, and property ; robbed of the blessings of Judah ; and cursed with the spirit and burden of Issachar, by a set of men without virtue, or .the generous vices attending greatness? It is no wonder that slaves should lose their courage with their virtue, for who can fight for Cassar* that despises them, or for Nero, when every victory gained for him confirms their bondage, and adds a new rivet to their chains. Thus we are compelled to live, or not to live at all ; deliverance is not to be hoped for from our patience, because usurpers are never modest but in the hour of weak- ness : nor was any government ever managed with justice, that was gained by villainy. Liberty and bondage are now before us ; those who * The American Loyalists have little reason to confide in the mercy of the British army and navy, who have uniformly for seven years treated them much worse than they have the Rebels; and should they judge the English nation by the severity of its military forces, which have killed and plundered more Loyalists than Rehele, no nation could censure them if they, like Congress, should buy their good will, at the expense of their allegiance. NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. 51 choose liberty, are to kill the uncircumcised Congress. Yet I find some men scruple to Kill their oppressors with a dagger in the dark, although they allow it lawful to destroy a thief that comes unarmed to rob; those men seem to forget the law of self-preservation, the danger of open force, and that tyrants are such devils as rend the body in the act of exorcism. How can it be lawful to kill oppressors in an open field, prepared to rob the men they mean to murder, and unlawful to kill such villains in the dark, without hazard to the patriot or to the commonwealth? If it is expedient to lance an imposthume to save a life, it is lawful to lance the Congress to save the liberties of our country ; for those boars of the wilderness have broken down the walls of the vineyard, and destroyed the vintage with unlimited power, which always subverts civil society, and turns a Cicero into a Caligula. Our religion, and all we call valuable, are in danger. Despotism is now predominant ; and America, once the asylum of Protestants persecuted beyond the seas, is sold to the mother of harlots, and will soon be cursed with the Inquisition to establish Congress and its generals, as the hereditary lords of the land. Tyranny and oppressions have increased with the age of Congress, and our deliverance depends upon the virtuous spears of an injured people, or upon the generosity of our tyrants by hanging themselves. But since we know they lack this virtue, nothing remains for the patriots but to do justice upon well-erected gibbets. Whatever Congress may think of this proposed exaltation, they may depend upon it, that eight-tenths of the people would rejoice at the sight, and the children yet unborn would be happy under their rightful king. Some serious Whigs who have lost their courage with their fortunes, groan under their present burdens and say, "we fear the consequence of destroy- ing " Congress." I answer, could we be in a worse condition by a change, the bare desire of a change would be a sign of madness. Common sense forbids me to undergo certain misery, for fear of contingent evils ; or to let a fever rage because there is danger of taking physic. I am now in prison, where I must infallibly perish if I am not relieved ; and shall I refuse deliverance from this darksome dungeon for fear of being confined in some other place? Heaven forbid such madness! Let us remember the rock from whence we were hewn. Had we not ancestors in the last century who preferred liberty and religion in this howling wilderness, to despotism and persecution in Britannia's fertile fields? Are we so far degenerated as to bow down to tyrants and usurpers? Our fathers resisted lions, and killed tyrants without committing murder and shall we submit to wolves and beasts of prey to let usurpers live? No ! let the examples of Ehud, Samson, Moses, and Cromwell, lead us back to glory, virtue, and religion. If America can produce no such heroes, we must exclaim with the children of Israel, " Would to God we had died in the land of Egypt, where we sat by the flesh- pots, and did eat bread to the full ; " for then, as Cicero says, "the quality of our master would have graced our condition as slaves." We have rights of civil society to restore ; we have honor, virtue, and religion to maintain ; let us therefore take the first prudent opportunity to revenge our wrongs, and 52 NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. kill those tyrants who are Jurking in every corner to spy out our motions, and murder the innocent. Their motto is to destroy or be destroyed. Therefore, let safety rouse us into action, let Fame reward the sacred hand of him that gives the fatal blow ; let his name live forever witli Cato, and with Brutus. O, how I long to save my country by one heroic immortal action! but alas! my chains and dreary mansion, where the light of con- science reigns without the light of the sun, of the moon, or the stars ! * To you, my virtuous countrymen, who are free of the chains with which I am loaded, I conclude my address. It is now in your power to circumcise, to put down those uncircumcised tyrants, and to restore yourselves to your social rights. You know the action that will do the business, and which shall register your names among the Gods and bravest men. Patriotism warms your souls, and thousands are burning with ambition to join and save your country from Romish bondage. Make haste ! for the spirit of understanding causeth me to speak in the language of Zophar. " Let death and destruction fall upon" Congress "because they have oppressed and forgotten the poor; let a fire not blown, consume them; if they escape the iron weapons, strike them through with a bow of steel, for knowest thou not this of old, since man was placed upon earth, that the triumphing of the wicked is short, and the joy of the hypocrite but for a moment." And although the devils are come down in great wrath, with power in their mouths, and in their tails; although their heads reach the clouds, and though they do hurt with their tails; yet their murders, their fornication, and their thefts shall be revealed, and the earth shall rise against them, "to feed them with the poison of asps. The vipers tongue shall pierce them through, and their greatness shall be chased away as a vision of the night. " This is the portion of the wicked." Finis. N. B. The notes on pp. 46, 50, and 52, are by the author of the sermon. THE GOSPEL FURNISHED BY THE STATE. A few years after the establishment of the prison by legislative act, provision was made for religions services one- half of each Sunday by uniting with the society at East Gran by, in paying a stipulated salary to the clergyman officiating. For many years the services were held in the nail-shop, the most refractory of the prisoners being chained to their nail blocks. The seats of the general audience were upon the level ground (without floor) while the elevated platform used by the guards, was improvised as a pulpit, and the choir was * Vide the History of Connecticut, page 175. published by J. Bew, Pater Noster Row; where is a just description of the internal prison at Symsbury, 40 yards below the surface of the earth. NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. 53 composed of any neighbors who felt disposed to volunteer for the occasion. It can reasonably be supposed that the nail-shop preaching was a wonderful contrast to the proceeding discourse of the Rev. Licentiate Baxter ; but Baxter's Tory audience in the dungeon considered his preaching sound and reliable, no doubt, notwithstanding any slight discrepancies in text or argument. A comfortable chapel was subsequently built, where, each Sunday, the guards with their long muskets, the citizens and the prisoners all assembled in the same room. No Sunday- school nor library for the prisoners' use ever enlightened the dismal precincts of old Newgate; those blessings were reserved for the new prison at Wethersfield. In 1781 Congress applied to Gov. Trumbull of Connecticut (known by the appellation of "Brother Jonathan "), for the use of the mines as a prison "for the reception of British prisoners of war, and for the purpose of retaliation." The Governor laid the matter before the Assembly, who agreed to the proposition, and requested him to furnish Congress with the estimates, but as a termination of the war was anticipated soon, the negotiation ended. This place won a reputation for strength and security throughout the country, though there was more strength in its name than in reality. Six years previously, Gen. Wash- ington sent several prisoners 1o be confined in tlie dungeon, whom he regarded as "atrocious villains." The following letter from him will be read with interest. It is directed to the Committee of Safety at Simsbury : CAMBRIDGE, Dec. 7th, 1775. Gentlemen : The prisoners which will be delivered you with this, having been tried by a court martial and deemed to be such flagrant and atrocious villains, that they cannot by any means be set at large, or confined in any place near this camp, were sentenced to Simsbury, in Connecticut. You will therefore be pleased to have them secured in your jail, or in such other manner as to you shall seem necessary, so that they cannot possibly make their escape. The charges of their imprisonment will be at the Continental expense. I am, &c., GEORGE WASHINGTON. 54 NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. The vindictive cruelty of the Tories is shown in Barber's Historical Collections of Connecticut. The narrative is substantially thus: On the night following the 14th of March, 1T80, the house of Capt. Ebenezer Dayton then residing in the town of Bethany, was broken into and robbed by seven men, who were Tories, and headed by a British officer, Alex. Graham* from Long Island. Mr. Dayton's house was situated nearly opposite where the first meeting-house in Bethany was erected, about half a mile south of the present Congrega- tional church, and about ten miles northwest of New Haven. The particulars of this robbery were obtained from the Rev. Mr. Dayton, son of Capt. Dayton mentioned above. Mr. Dayton, who belonged to Long Island, was, on account of his attachment to the American cause, obliged to leave that island, and bring his effects with him to Bethany. A number of men, some of his neighbors, were obliged to leave the island for the same cause, and brought a considerable quantity of money with them, and for a while resided in Mr. Dayton's house. With these facts the robbers appear to have become acquainted. At the time of the robbery, Mr. Dayton was absent on business at Boston, and the men who had been staying in the house had left the day before, so that there was no one in the house but his wife, Mrs. Phcebe Dayton, three small children, and two colored servant children. About midnight, while they were all asleep, the window in the bedroom where Mrs. Dayton was sleeping, was burst in at once; seven armed men rushed in, passed through the room, and immediately rushed into the chambers, expecting (it is supposed) to find the men who had left the day before. While they were upstairs, Mr?. Dayton went to the front part of the house, raised the window, and endeavored to alarm the neighbors. Mr. Hawley, the minister of the parish, * Graham, it was afterwards ascertained, was a deserter, from the American army and also held a commission from the British general, Howe, to recruit Tories for the British army. On searching him the commission was found in his pocket, to which also he made confession. NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. 55 and Dr. Hooker, the physician of the place, both lived within twenty rods distance, both had lights in their houses at the time, and both heard the alarm, but did nut know from whence it proceeded. The robbers, hearing Mrs. Dayton, came down, and tearing a sheet into strips, tied her hands behind her, made her sit in a chair, and placed her infant (about six months old) in her lap, while one of the robbers, placing the muzzle of his gun near her head, kept her in this position for about two hours, while the house was thoroughly ransacked from top to bottom. As Mr. Dayton had been a merchant and peddler, a large quantity of goods were found and the most valuable packed in sacks and bundles. Most of the articles were of foreign production, worsted goods, coats, cloaks, ladies' gowns, silk and linen handkerchiefs, various kinds of linen goods, silver shoe- buckles, a spy-glass, two muskets and their accoutrements, four halberds, (a pike with hatchet near the point), etc., besides four hundred and fifty pounds in gold, silver, and copper coin, and two hundred Continental paper-dollars. To appease their hunger, they ordered the servants to place upon the table in the kitchen the best which the kitchen and pantry afforded; which orders were obeyed in silence under close surveillance of the robbers. Some of them secured a light and went into the cellar, where they found abundance of liquors which they let out upon the ground after supplying their own needs. What they could not conveniently carry off they wantonly destroyed, breaking in pieces all the crockery, furniture, etc. The whole amount of property carried off and destroyed, including bonds, notes, etc., amounted to five thousand pounds. The robbers left the house about two o'clock, and went to a place in Middlebury, called Gunn-Town, where they were secreted in a cellar by a family who were friendly to the British cause. While they were on their way to Gunn-Town, they met a young man by the name of Chauncey Judd,* of The biographer of Chauncey Judd, in describing the sufferings he 56 NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. Waterbury, on a bridge, who had been to see a young lady he afterwards married. Fearing he might discover them they took him along with them. In the cellar kitchen where they were all secreted there was a well. Into this well 'they talked of putting young Chauncey ; but the old lady of the house begged they would not think of it, as it would spoil the water ! They stayed in the house a number of days : afterwards they went to Oxford, where they were secreted for several days longer in a barn ; from thence they went to Stratford, took a whale-boat, and crossed over to Long Island. The people at Derby, having received information of their passing through that place, two whale-boats and crews, commanded by Capt. William Clarke and Capt James Harvey, pursued them to the Island, and were fortunate enough to catch all of them but one, just within the British lines, and recover their booty. They were brought back, tried, and condemned. Graham the ringleader was executed and the others were sent to Newgate ; they, however, broke prison, and some of them fled to Nova Scotia. Among the robbers who plundered Mr. Dayton's hoiu-e, was a Tory by the name of Henry Wooster, who was sentenced by the Superior Court of New Haven county, to pay a fine of fifty pounds, and to be imprisoned four years in Newgate. From an interesting account written of him by an acquaint- ance of the family, it appears that after his confinement in pricon, he made a key which would unlock his fetters in the cavern, being careful, of course, to replace them before endured while in the hands of the banditti says: "lie had endured hard- ships which were enough to crush one much stronger than he. Indeed he was for several days partially insane. The shock to his nervous system from the repeated imminent prospect of death increased by his severe bodily sufferings had completely broken him clown. Often would he awake from a sort of stupor and cry " Hurrah for King George ! " (having been compelled to say so by his captors). During their flight down the river and across the Sound he had been wholly unprotected from the wind, and had almost perished from the cold, his hands had been frost bitten, and some of his fingers remained crippled for life. He never recovered from the effects of his hardships, but continued in delicate Iifalth until his death. NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. 57 going up to his work each morning. The writer says: " One of the first things he attempted was to make thorough exposition of the caverns, to see if there was any possible way of escape. For this purpose lie forced himself into one of the drains which discharged the waters of the mine. This, after the use of the mines as a prison, had been carefully built up with stone and mortar, leaving only a narrow channel which was supposed to be thoroughly secured by iron bars. Watching opportunities, he contrived to conceal in his clothes, fragments of nail rods, and carry them below. With these he picked out little by little, bits of mortar, until the bars were loosened so as to permit their removal ; in the same way he enlarged the drain in some of its narrowest places, and after many weeks of hard toil, found himself near the outer orifice. Redoubled exertions followed, in which he was aided as far as possible by other convicts who had the use of their hands. It was a hard and dangerous task. At one time while far within, he gave himself up for lost. A stone overhead which he had partially loosened fell into the drain behind him, effectually closing the passage and debarring his return. Unable to turn round or reach the stone with his hands, he concluded that his last hour was come, and that he must perish in his terrible prison ! His cries for help could scarcely be heard by the other convicts, and if heard, it was doubtful whether they could relieve him. With great effort, however, he found he could push the stone a little with his foot. But would it pass the whole distance? for if there was one single place in the passage too small, he would be inextricably shut in. By bracing himself against the sides and pressing with all his strength, he succeeded at length in pushing the stone to a hollow spot, which would permit him to pass over it. With desperate energy he crowded himself by, and at last emerged into the cavern just before the daybreak bell sounded to call the prisoners to their labor. He had been in the drain all night, and came forth bleeding and nearly exhausted. He was obliged to conceal his suffering condition from t he- guard, otherwise it would lead to a search and exposure ; so replacing with the help of his comrades his irons aud clothing, (for he had gone into the drain naked) he dragged himself up the ladder to his work. If his bruised and haggard condition was noticed at all by the officers, it excited no remark, the evidences of fighting and sleeplessness being too common among the prisoners to awaken any suspicion. "A few nights afterwards, having somewhat recovered from his bruises and sufferings, it was deemed practicable to escape, and Woosterwith several others who were able to unfasten their fetters succeeded in crawling through the passage and fled to the woods an hour before day. Their escape was soon dis- covered and the alarm given. Nearly all were re-taken and brought back to prison. Wooster more tricky, hid himself in the top of a dark hemlock upon the mountain until the next night, when he began his flight, and finally succeeded in reaching the coast near New London, and made his way on board an English vessel, where he enlisted in the British service. ****** Four years after the termination of the war, one day in the dusk of the evening, a traveller came to the house of Henry Wooster, Sen., in Derby, and asked permission to lodge there that night. He was weary and footsore, he said, and could go no further. Hospitality in such cases wr.s a habit of New England, and his request was granted. Mrs. Wooster was then engaged in preparing a kettle of hasty-pudding for the family supper, and at her invitation the traveller partook of tlie repast, in the course of it, he contrived to turn the conversation upon 58 NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. her own family, and especially of her absent son. She recounted with a mother's partiality his amiable qualities, his manly strength and agility. Won by the interest he seemed to manifest in her story, she bewailed the sad occasion of his falling in with a stranger who had persuaded him to go off on a foolish expedition as slic said, against a piratical Yankee, and that in consequence, he got into Newgate prison, but after a while he with others broke out, since which she had heard nothing from him and presumed he must be dead. " At length, after hearing the sad s( ory of the good woman the travellerassumed liis natural speech and manner and announced himself as her missing son ! At first she was incredulous, and unable to recognize him, till opening the bosom of his shirt he showed her a mark on his breast. This well-remembered mark convinced her of his identity. She fell on his neck and like the father of the prodigal, wept tears of joy over her long-lost boy." OLD NEWGATE PRISON. " With flickering candle down the dread descent, To darkest depths I slowly make my way; The aged ladder creaks from many a rent, And spirit-voices of a former day In murmuring whispers warn of dangers there; Of unseen Furies who with silent tread Will lead me on to labyrinthal snai c Where none escape, but number with the dead." Newgate was at this time used by the State for the con- finement of criminals, and they were kept chiefly at work in making wrought nails. It was not until 1790 that it was established permanently as a State prison. It is said to have been the design to employ the convicts in working the mines, which for a while was practiced, but it was soon found that they must necessarily have for that work, precisely the right kind of tools for digging out, and they several times used them for that purpose. This reason, with the consequent necessity of keeping so strong a guard, both day and night, finally induced them to abandon the employment. In 1790 an act was passed constituting Newgate a permanent prison, and providing for the erection of the necessary buildings. The expense was limited by legislative act to seven hun- dred and fifty pounds. The overseers were authorized to make the works very secure ; to appoint a keeper and a guard not exceeding ten persons which number was afterwards increased to seventeen. After this a better system of management was pursued until the convicts were removed to the new prison at Wethersfield. NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. 59 A wooden palisade, mounted with iron spikes, was con- structed, inclosing half an acre of ground, within which, workshops and other buildings were placed, and a deep trench was opened on the western side. The wooden enclosure remained until 1802, when a strong stone-wall twelve feet high, was laid in its place, which is now standing. A brick building was erected in the centre of the yard for the officers and privates, in the rear and lower part of which a stone apartment was afterwards constructed directly over the month of the cavern, and in this room the most quiet pris- oners were occasionally kept. This was denominated the " stone jug." About the year 1815, a building nearly fifty feet long, was erected on the southeast corner of the yard. The lower story was occasionally used for cells, and the upper one for a chapel, where services were usually held once a day on Sun- days. Another building adjoining next west, the lower story of which was used as a cooper shop, hospital, and kitchen, and the upper as a shoemaker's shop. In the northeast corner of the yard, another building was used as a wagon-shop. Eight or nine years later a large building of stone and brick was put up on the west side of the yard, and a tread-mill, for grinding grain, was constructed in it, principally by labor of the convicts. Cells were provided in this building for female prisoners, and rooms for officers, &c. The passage down the shaft into the caverns, is upon a ladder fastened upon one side, and resting on the bottom. At the foot of this passage commences a gradual descent for a considerable distance, all around being solid massive rock or ore. The passages extend many rods in different direct- tions, some of them even leading under the cellars of the dwellings in the neighborhood. In two of the passages are deep wells of water, one of which is eighty feet from the surface ; they served for a free circulation of air to the inmates of this gloomy place, and were sometimes used for shafts tli rough which to lift the ore, when the business was carried on. On the sides and niches of the cavern, cabins were 60 NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. built of heavy planks, -within which straw was placed for their beds. The prisoners were locked in them each night, but frequently in their carousals, they would break or un- fasten the locks and tear their cabins to pieces. The horrid gloom of this dungeon can be realized only by those who pass among its solitary windings. The impenetrable vastness supporting the awful mass above, impending as if ready to crush one to atoms: the dripping water trickling like tears from its sides; the unearthly echoes responding to the voice, all conspire to strike the beholder aghast with amazement and horror. These caverns and their precincts, from their antiquity, and the dramas which have been performed in and around them, will long be considered a classic place. The caverns have generally been extremely favorable to the health and longevity of the occupants, which is attributed to some medical quality in the mineral rock. It is a curious fact, that many of the convicts having previously taken the itch, or other loathsome diseases, while confined in the coun- ty jails, which were very filthy, on being for a few weeks kept in the caverns at night, entirely uncovered ; and it is perhaps still more strange, that those who came apparently in health, generally had for a short time cutaneous eruptions, which appeared to work out of their blood. A writer upon the subject observes : "From the various win.lings and other causes, it is not cold there, even in the severest weather; and strange as it may seem, it has been satisfactorily ascertained, that the mercury ranged eight degrees lower in the lodging apart- ments of the prisoners in the warmest days of summer, than it does in the coldest in the winter. This phenomenon is attributed to the circumstance of the cavities in the rocks being stopped with snow, ice, and frost in the winter, which prevents so free a circulation of air as is enjoyed in the summer. On the lyth of January 1811, at eight o'clock A.M., the mercury stood in the cavern at fifty-two degrees ; and in the open air, as soon after as it was practicable for a person to get up from the cavern (which could not have exceeded five minutes), it fell to one degree below 0." A newspaper correspondent relates his adventures in the caverns as follows : "The wall with its brick bastion and guardhouse, 6x6, and 12 feet high, the latter seated like a marten-box on the former, peeped through the trees suddenly. It has stood almost three-quarters of a century. On the stone above the gate NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. (ft that look* east at the black curtain of the mountain, are engraved the syllables, "Newgate, 1801." The sentry-box and bastion 1 have described project so as to command the grated windows in the south wall. The enclosure is square and contains about two acres. It stands square with the sun. On the west the mountain is terraced up to the prison, yielding three precipices of 25 feet in height, and rendering escape possible only by three desperate break-neck leaps after scaling the main wall. On the west a deep moat doubles the danger. To the south wall clings the long stone building occupied by the guards and the workshops, whose guns commanded the whole length of masonry on the cast. The wooden roof and the floors are warped and shrunken, but the iron rings and staples in the wall have rusted very little since desperate men set them clanking with every stir of their ankles. Sam and 1 stood tor halt a minute peering down into the dark, and said noth- ing. Sam tested the wooden ladder with his hand. "I'll try it first, I'm the lighter," said 1, dropping down out of sight with a leap. "Stay here till 1 call." After descending about fifty feet 1 found myself at the bottom of the shaft with Sam's face peering in at the top like a portrait set in a square frame. "Solid ground," I shouted up the ladder. The tight was shut out suddenly, and Sam began the descent. Lighting the candles and leaving one of them in a crevice at the foot of the shaft, at Sam's instance, 1 took the other and led the way down a series of stone steps, thirty or forty in number, dipping away to the east under the mountain. The roof was very low, and the candle gave so little light, that I was compelled to feel my way forward with my walking-stick. Here, after following several galleries till they ended in solid rock, I finally struck the right one, and groped forward twenty or thirty feet into the caverns an irregular series of galleries, where the prisoners used to sleep, and where old Prince the negro who had once been servant to an officer under Gen. Washington, died shackled to the wall, and rotted where, he died. The old man was too decrepit to work, and was hence not looked after by the prison officials.* A considerable excavation has taken place at this point, resulting in a central cavern bristling with nooks in the rock of somewhat irregular depth. These were used as sleeping-places by the prisoners, and still exhibited the re- mains of bunks. Striking a gallery leading northeast, and still dipping: under the mountain, I followed on, candle in hand, bumping my head against the roof, now and then, and feeling my way step by step with my walking-stick. The water dropped from the root; the floor tipped on the east until the water was more than ankle- deep ; the candle burned dimly and spluttered. A single drop of water might at, any moment have extinguished it. By and by, gleamed in the distnnce something like watoi with the light falling upon it from above, and Sam and I staggered on, expecting at every step to get a ducking, and liable to it with the merest unlucky slip of the foot. A slimy ooze covered the floor on the west side of the iralli-ry, and our feet squashed at every step and clung to the mud like plasters. After crawling about thirty feet in this way, our progress was barn-d by a sheet of water about twenty feet in breadth. Sounding it with my walking-stick, and finding it too deep to be * Prince never was shackled, but was a harmless old ncjjro, and during all the last years of his life enjoyed the freedom of the prison. (52 NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. waded, I took ray bearings and retraced my steps, with a view to find the hun- dred-foot shaft, famous in traditions of the prison as the spot where the tory in revolutionary days, tried to eseape by climbing out on a rope, and fell nearly a hundred feet from the top to the bottom. He had spent his last $50 in bribing a neighbor to unfasten the trap there was no wall in those days with what avail they tell you as an evidence that God strongly disapproved of lories. Once more in the main cavern, after testing several galleries of from ten to thirty feet in length, I finally worked east and down until my walking-stick, with which I felt my way like a blind man with his staff, encountered no floor, and the faintest possible glimmer of light filtered in from above. Here was a perpendicular jump of ten Jeet, and a bar upon which the prisoners were in the habit of swinging themselves down into the gallery leading away to the southeast. This shaft is round, and terminates at the top just within the gate by the east wall, twenty feet from the workshop. It is a trifle over a hundred feet deep, I should say, and was formerly furnished with a rope and windlass for lifting out the ore. The rope still dangles loosely from the top, but the remaining appur- tenances have been removed. As it was impracticable to drop into the gallery at this point, Sam suggested that the exploration should be abandoned; but, having retraced twenty feet or more. I detected a gallery pushing to the southeast at an acute angle, and turned into it, Sam consenting to wait at the corner till I came back. This tunnel strikes the one out of which the main shaft opens about twenty feet to the south, by a gradual but exceedingly rapid and risky descent. So I found myself at last at the deepest point in the mine, in the tunnel terminating in that fatal drain, whore stilllie the bonesof prisoners who tried to esc;ipe by that desperate route, and died at dead of night away under the mountain, self-buried, but coffined in solid rock.* I followed this tunnel, which was a trifle higher in the roof than the rest, till the water was too deep t& admit of penetrating further. Water dripped from the roof, from the walls. As I turned a drop struck the wick of the candle, and it spluttered and went out, leaving me in a perfect darkness such as a man never experiences above ground. A little nervous I groped back, feeling for the first gallery to the left with my walking-stick, and stricken with a sudden fear, that I might have passed others unconsciously on my route, and might turn into the wrong one on my way back. It did not occur to me to shout to Sam, who was waiting for me not twenty rods off, till a sharp " come on ! " away to the south- west enabled me to take my bearings and calculate my distances. "Yes, directly; but my candle's out," I shouted, groping forward for ten or fifteen minutes, till my walking-stick indicated a break in the wall at the left. Here I shouted again, and was answered almost at my ear, Sam having felt his way down the gallery almost to its junction with the tunnel. It was impossible to sit down, so our council of war had to be held standing. There were still difficulties to be encountered, and not the least one of them was imaginary. The candle at the foot of the ladder could not last many min- utes longer, for an hour at least must have elapsed since our descent. To the left, then to the right, then to the left again, in the general direction of the gallery into which I had just turned, was agreed upon in council as the nearest * Another fable, having a very slight foundation in tho fact that several convicts did escape by that route; but they al! took their own bonus with them. NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. 63 way out, but in a route encumbered with abandoned galleries, there was no knowing how many might have to be tried before hitting the right one. How- ever, it was useless to dawdle over that question, when the candle at the foot of the ladder might be going out. So, taking the front, I laid my walking-stick horizontally against the wall, faced myself by it at right angles so as to look straight ahead, and groped along, muttering to myself that this must have been a rare place for a state prison, and conjuring up German stories of cobolds ; or if, as the mining ballad runs, " The ghosts of mining men Revisit earth again,' And make old mines their den," imagining spectral miners, and converting the trickle of water from the roof into the click of invisible implements. A thud of my shoulder against something hard shook me out of my reverie or my reverie out of me, and putting out my hand 1 found it to he a wooden prop supporting the roof. I hnd noticed three or four of them in the main cavern or congeries Of galleries terminating in a central space and this re- assured me. Asking Sam to keep exactly in my tracks by putting his hands on my shoulders, I started due north as near as' I could, waving my walking-stick to and fro in front of me, so as to develop any obstacle in the way before I bumped against it; for it was now impracticable to follow by the wall without doubling at least half a dozen abandoned galleries varying in length from ten to thirty feet, while, by stumbling directly across the central cavern the entrance to the gallery leading westward and upward to the foot of the ladder would be intercepted, and if the candle had gone out, it was possible that light enough might sift down through the fifty-foot shaft, though enclosed at the top, to furnish a clue to its position. So Sam and I stumbled on, hoping to get out in a few minutes, but a little nervous and shaky in our voices with the possibility of having to stay under ground. And I, for one, was growing a little drowsy for want of oxygen, and a trifle hungry besides. I had nearly passed the entrance to the upward dipping tunnel, when Sam called attention to a kind of cloud of light at its end. The candle was out ; but now the route was direct, and if the kind of cloud indicated the bottom of the shaft, there was an end to all apprehension. I turned and blundered up an in- clined plane till my foot struck a stone step, succeeded by another, as I ascer- tained with my walking stick. It grew momentarily a little lighter, and fancies of cobold and miner's ghost flitted from my brain as stealthily as they had come. It would be poetic perhaps, to sny that they folded their tent like the Arabs in Mr. Longfellow's ballad, and silently stole away, were it not that ghosts and cobolds are not reputed to live in tents, though very nomadic in their habits. "So this was the Connecticut state prison from 1774 to IS'27," quoth I, as I scrambled up the ladder after Saui haa disappeared above ground. Among the accidents which have occured to visitors, was that of Mrs. Christia Griswold of Poqnonock, who while standing at the mouth of the shaft leading down into the cavern, accidentally stepped off, and fell the whole depth, striking on f he rocky bottom. The buoyancy of her clothes, 64 NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. or some other cause, saved her life, though she received inju- ries from which she never recovered. A prisoner afterwards fell at the same place, fetters and all, without appearing to injure him, it is said, in the least. A few years since a party of students were on a visit to the mines, when one of their number stepped into the shaft, and fell to the bottom, receiving injuries which caused his death in a few months. The descent upon the ladder is now accomplished by any one, and the trouble is well repaid by the interesting relics below. When Newgate was in full blast, it was a very popular place of resort for travellers and pleasure parties, as from a report of the overseers in 1810, it appears that about 5,400 persons visited the place annually. The original manuscript of that report is now in possession of the author, written by Judge Samuel Woodruff, in 1810, he at that time being one of the overseers; and the following are extracts from some of his replies to certain questions propounded by a legislative committee : " Ans. to question 2nd. Health generally good when committed. A few afflicted with chrome complaints and perhaps one in nine or ten sorely afflicted with the veneral disease. One-third or more of the latter class have been cured. * * * With respect to cleanliness ; when committed, the greater part come dirty, and at least one-fifth part covered with vermin. Much paius is taken to clean them of the vermin which could and would be effected were it not for the frequent recruits from the county prisons. Ans. to question 3rd. The price of a ration isOcts. 5m. The component parts of a ration, lib. of beef or 3-41b. of pork at 4cts 5m.; lib. of bread or flour, nt Sets.; 3 gills of peas or beans, or 21bs. of potatoes, and 3 pints of cider at 2its. In the summer the prisoners are supplied occasionally with greens, collected by the guard without expense to the State. The prisoners for two or three years past were fed with soup as often as one day in four, but on account of their universal dislike to it, they have been fed on soup for the last year, but one clay in seven. This soup is composed of a ration made of 3 41b. of beef 2 Ibs. potatoes with a suitable quantity of Indian meal to thicken it. Ann. to question ^th. The winter clothing for prisoners consists of 2 check flannel shirts, a short coat, 1 pair pants of homemade cloth, 2 pairs of woolen stockings and one pair shoes. Their summer clothing consists of a change of tow-cloth frocks and trousers, with stockings and shoes. Their shirts, summer frocks, trousers, and stockings, are shifted nnd washed once a week, aud are boiled in strong lye made of ashes which effectually destroys the vermin. Ans. to question 5th. The prisoners are lodged in huts or cabins made in the cavern. They are built on a floor elevated three feet above the ground, and are ranged on each side of a space which lies between them. The roofs and outer sides of these cabins are made close and tight with boards. The berths in these NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. (55 cabins are plentifully supplied with blankets, and generally with straw when the prisoners wish it. The straw is shifted as often as is necessary. An*, to question 6th. The prisoners are secured by iron fetters round their inkles. WLile at work a chain fastened to a block is locked into these fetters, or round the ankle. For the more daring and refractory, heavier chains are occasionally used. Ans. to question W/i. No allowance is made to those prisoners who do more than their daily task. Formerly an allowance, of one penny on each pound of nails over the daily task, was allowed. But this practice for several years past h;is been discontinued ; it was found this allowance induced them to slight their work, and to steal nails from each other at the forges." It further appears by the above report, that the number of prisoners at that time was forty-six. The description of the rations as given would not indicate a very high state of cul- inary art ; but however unsavory the qualities of that " soup," the cider was probably deemed a sufficient compensation for both that and the vermin. By some, this place has been compared to the ancient Bastile of France, but the comparison is far from being cor- rect, except in the frightful emotions which this dungeon i,s calculated to inspire. The floors and the roof of the Bastile were made of iron plates riveted upon iron bars. The walls were of stone and iron several feet in thickness; the whole being surrounded by walls, and a ditch twenty-five feet deep. The entrance to each cell was through three consecutive doors, secured by double locks. The scanty food, and the silent, unavailing grief, endured by the wretched victims of that dreadful abode, often reduced them to idiocy; besides, they were taken from those deathlike cells each year, and sub- jected to the horrible torture of the rack, which often dislo- cated their joints or crushed their bones, and all this perhaps for merely uttering a sentiment averse to some political party in power ! The soldiers and officers also of the Bastile, except the governor, were prisoners in everything but in name. When they entered the walls of that prison, it was for the term of their lives, and a wish expressed even to go out, was instant death. Newgate would not in any respect, bear a similtude to the Bastile. Indeed, the treatment of the prisoners and discipline of the guard was often too 5 66 NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. lenient, although for disobedience, punishment was some- times inflicted in the severest manner. The criminals confined here after the year 1800, varied in number from forty -five to sixty, but in 1827, upon their removal to Weth- erstield, they numbered one hundred and twenty-seven. DAILY ROUTINE. A description of the daily management at Newgate, will at this day be found both interesting and amusing. The hatches were opened and the prisoners called out of their dungeon each morning at daylight, and three were ordered to " heave up " at a time ; a guard followed the three to their shops, placing them at their work, and chaining those to the block whose tempers were thought to require it. All were brought out likewise in squads of three, and each followed by a guard. To those who never saw the operation, their appearance cannot be truly conceived, as they vaulted forth from the dungeon in their blackness, their chains clanking at every step, and their eyes flashing fire upon the bystanders. It resembled, perhaps more than anything, the belching from the bottomless pit. After a while their rations for the day were carried to them in their several shops. They consisted for each day of one pound of beef or three-fourths of a pound of pork, one pound of bread, one bushel of potatoes for each fifty rations, and one pint of cider to every man. Each one divided his own rations to suit himself some cooked over their own mess in a small kettle at their leisure, while others disregarding ceremonies, seized their allowance and ate it on an anvil or block. The scene was really graphic, and might remind one of a motley company of foreign emigrants on the deck of a canal-boat, during their visit to the Far West. They were allowed to swap rations, exchange commodities, barter, buy, and sell, at their pleasure. Some would swap their rations for cider, and often would get so tipsy that they could not work, and would "reel to and fro like a drunken man." " Old Guinea," an aged convict, was frequently com- missioned by them to go abroad and purchase the good NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. 67 creature for them, and would often return laden with two or three gallons. Sometimes, by taking his pay out of the cargo on the road rather freely, his ship would get becalmed, when he would cast anchor by the wayside for the night, making the consignees doubly glad upon his safe arrival in the beautiful morning." Lieutenant Viet's tavern, a tew rods from the prison, was an especial accommodation, not only for travellers, but for the better sort of convicts. He who could muster the needful change, would prevail on some one of the guard to escort him over the way to the inn of the merry old gentleman, where his necessities and those of his escort were amply supplied at the bar. Many an un- fortunate fellow, after his release from bondage, has " cast a longing look behind" to the old temple of Bacchus, and appreciated the sentiment of the poet : "Of joys departed never to return, How painful the remembrauce." All were allowed to work for themselves or others after their daily tasks were finished, and in that way some of them actu- ally laid up considerable sums of money. A little cash, or some choice bits of food from people in the neighborhood, procured many a nice article of cabinet ware, a good basket, a gun repaired by the males, or a knit pair of stockings by the female convicts. The writer, when a boy, was often -re- warded for a pocketful of fruit with miniature ships, boxes, brass rings, bow and arrows, and the like ; all being more valuable for having been made at Newgate, and all showing the particular branch or handicraft to which each had been accustomed. During the day the guard was changed once in two hours, at the sound of a horn, and in the night a guard entered the caverns every hour and a half, and counted the prisoners. The punishments inflicted for offences and neglect of duty were severe flogging, confinement in stocks in the dungeon, being fed on bread and water during the time, double or treble sets of irons, hanging by the heels, &c., all tending to inflame their revenge and hatred, and seldom 68 NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. were appeals made to their reason or better feelings. Most of them were placed together in the night; solitary lodging, as practiced at this day, being regarded a.s a punishment, rather than a blessing to them. Their employment consisted in making nails, barrels, shoes, wagons, doing job-work, farming, and working on the tread mill. A building for a tread-mill was erected, about the year 1824, for the purpose of grinding grain for prison use, and occasionally for the neighboring inhabitants. A large wheel, between twenty and thirty feet long, was fur- nished with horizontal flanges as steps, upon which the prisoners trod, and their weight causing the wheel to revolve, furnished the motive power to propel the machinery. Of all labor required of the prisoners, the tread-mill was dreaded the most, and the most stubborn were put to this employ- ment. In extreme cases, one of the lady birds was put on the wheel among the men as a punishment, and that was generally sufficient to subdue the most refractory in a very short space of time.* The tread-mill proved however, to be an unprofitable investment for the State. The following is from Kendall's Travels in the Northern Parts of the United States. He visited Newgate prison in 1807, and says: "On being admitted into the gaol yard, I found a sentry under arms within the pate, and eight soldiers drawn up in a line in front of the gaoler's house. A bell summoning the prisoners to work had already rung ; and in a few moments they began to make their appearance. They came in irregular num- bers, sometimes two or three together, and sometimes a single one alone ; but whenever one or more were about to cross the yard to the smitherj, the soldiers were ordered to present, in readiness to fire. The prisoners were heavily ironed, and secured both by handcuffs and-fetters; and being therefore unable to walk, coul 1 only make their way by a sort of jump or a hop. On entering the smither}', some went to the sides of the forges, where collars, dependent by iron chains from the roof, were fastened round their necks, and others were chained in pairs to wheelbarrows. t The number of prisoners was about forty; and when they were all disposed of in the manner described, sentries were placed within the buildings which contained them. After viewing thus far the economy of this prison, I left it, proposing to visit the cells at a later hour. * Female convicts were formerly sent to the county jails, but a law was after- wards passed authorizing their commitment to Newgate, t Only the most dangerous and refractory were thus heavily ironed. NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. (Jlace. Very soon, however, the usual alarm was spread, and a force was raised sufficient to make pursuit. Immediate effort was made to relieve the captive, arid punish the ag- gressors ; and notice of the calamity having been sent to Windsor, a larger force came to the rescue from that town. The route taken by the Indians was found and traced, and at times the marks of their tracks appeared so fresh, that strong hopes were entertained of overtaking them. But their supe- rior cunning in such exploits, with their fleetness in passing through the wilderness enabled them to avoid their pursuers, and escape with their prisoner. In the meantime Hayes, knowing that any symptoms of lagging on his part would probably cost him his life, and supposing, moreover, that in no event would his captors, if closely pursued, suffer him to live, exerted himself to keep up with them. And he soon found he could do this without much fatigue, for he was robust, and accustomed to such travelling. On one occasion during this journey, when his companions wished to test his fleetness, he outstripped them so far that they were on the point of shooting him to stop his progress. He might then have escaped, as he afterwards said, " if he had had his thoughts about him." On the first night after his capture, the party encamped at the foot of Sodom mountain. Hayes was secured during the night, by being placed upon his back with each arm and ankle strongly fastened to a sapling, and with sticks so crossing his body as to be lain upon by an Indian on each side. He passed most of the nights bound in this manner, during his long march to Canada. On the second day the party crossed Connecticut river, by fording and swimming, and spent the ensuing night at the base of Mount Holyoke. In this manner they proceeded from day to day, up the valley of Connecticut river and through the wilderness, on NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. 1Q7 their route to Canada. Many incidents occurred which Hayes used to relate. One evening, the little savages belong- ing to a village where the party had stopped, annoyed him by tickling his feet as he lay before a fire with his arms pinioned as usual. Bearing this annoyance as long as his patience would allow, he attempted to get rid of his torment- ors by using his feet in self-defense during which process some of them were kicked into the fire. lie expected noth- ing short of death for this aggression, but was agreeably surprised when the fathers of the burnt children, instead of offering violence, patted him on his shoulders and exclaimed "boon!"'* They were nearly thirty days on this journey, during all which time the sufferings of poor Hayes were excessive, and almost without intermission. Subjected to hard toil through each day, with no sustenance save what the forests and rivers furnished, and deprived at night of rest by the man- ner of binding his limbs, he had that to sustain which in most cases would have brought the sufferer to the grave. But Hayes if he must be a victim, determined that he at least would not voluntarily contribute to hasten the sacrifice. He possessed that happy faculty of making at all times, the best of his condition. His cheerfulness, though assumed his ability to endure fatigue and hardships and his apparent stoical indifference to his fate, secured the good opinion of his comrades, and tended to lighten his burdens, and possi- bly, to prolong his life. Indulgence in despondency could bring no relief, and would as he well knew, but render more bitter the cup of his afflictions. He very wisely therefore made up his mind "to make a virtue of necessity," by sub- mitting with the best possible grace to that fate which he too well knew awaited him. The Indians told him, on the journey, of their lying about *lf tliis word is correctly handed down, it was intended probably, for the French word boil, and used on this occasion to express approbation. The northern Indians, at this time were in the habit of using a few words derived from the French. 108 NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. his house on the night before he was taken, and of overhear- ing the conversation relating to his intention to proceed, on the next morning, into the wilderness to find his horse ; which information, thus obtained, induced them to lie in wait at Stoney Hill in order to capture him. When they arrived at the great Indian encampment on the borders of Canada, the prisoner was delivered over to the council of the nation, to be disposed of as they should adjudge. By their decision, he was doomed to undergo the painful 'ordeal of "running the gauntlet." Being stripped to his skin, and annointed according to custom, he commenced the course; and after many flagellations and hard knocks received, when approaching near the end of the line, being exhausted and faint, he bolted from the course to avoid a blow from an upraised war-club, and sought safety by fleeing into a wigwam, ut the door of which sat a superannuated and infirm squaw. lie was pursued, but the squaw proclaimed the house sacred, and its inmates protected from injury. By her intercession, and especially by the deference paid to a place thus sanctified according to the rites of Indian supersti- tion, " the appetite of the savage for blood was stayed." The squaw, whose husband and only son had fallen in war, claimed the captive, and adopted him as her son. She was destitute, and so infirm as to be unable to walk. Haynes, in addition to minor duties, was compelled to provide for her sustenance and fuel. He administered to her wants, and devoted to her the kindest attentions, and she, in return, evinced her gratitude, by calling him her son! He lived in this family about five years: and although, during this time, he fared better, perhaps, than most Indian captives, yet existence, in his then condition, had for him but few charms, and the future unveiled to his view no cheering prospect, He was in bondage, compelled to adopt the customs and modes of life of savages, and was deprived of almost every comfort deemed necessary by civilized people. Besides, he could entertain no reasonable hope of being restored to his home and kindred and more than all, his life was at the mercy, whim, or caprice, of savage masters. NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. 1Q9 One of the tasks imposed upon him in the winter season, was to draw upon a sled his Indian mother to such places as she wished to visit, and especially to the feasts and council assemblages of her tribe. Upon occasion of a " dog feast," which by the usages of her people, all were expected to attend, he proceeded with her, in this manner, until, ascend- ing a hill which was steep and slippery, he found his strength, when put to its utmost power, barely adequate to make any headway. By perseverance and exertion, however, he was enabled to reach nearly the summit of the hill, when he slipped and fell ; and either by design, or inability to hold on, left the sled, with its mortal load, to find the bottom of the declivity without a pilot secretly wishing, no doubt, that her appetite for riding would be cured by this trip. In this perilous adventure, the sled struck a stump near the foot of the hill, which capsized the squaw, who was severely injured by the fall. Whether an accident or not, Hayes professed much sorrow for the disaster, and managed the affair so adroitly, that he escaped every imputation of blame, and continued to retain the confidence and good opinion of the Indians. Shortly after this event, he was sold to a Frenchman in Montreal, through the agency, it is said, of a Papist priest. His new master was very kind, and allowed him many of the necessaries, with some of the luxuries, of life, of which he had been so long deprived. Learning that Hayes was by trade a weaver, he started him in this business, and by allowing him a share of the profits, Hayes was enabled, in the course of about two years, to earn money enough to purchase his freedom. The good Frenchman not only emancipated him, but supplied him with clothes, provisions, and a half-breed guide to conduct him safely through the warring tribes on his journey homeward. The guide pro- ceeding with him as far as Mount Holyoke, pointed out to him the smoke of his friends, " the pale faces," wished him a happy return to his family, and departed in another direc- tion to wend his way back to Canada. In about twenty-five 110 NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. days after leaving Montreal, Hayes had the happiness to reach his home, and to exchange hearty greetings and con- gratulations with his friends, to whom he appeared almost " as one raised from the dead." Thus, after an absence of about seven years, the captive was restored to freedom, a home, and a happy circle of relatives and friends. He had heard nothing from his family since his capture, nor had they received any tidings of him, though they either knew, or had good reason to suppose, that he had been taken and carried off by the Indians. His friends had flattered themselves, for a long while, that he would be spared to return to them, but his long absence had extin- guished every vestige of hope, and he had for some time been given up as lost. With buoyant spirits, renovated courage, and unshaken resolution, he set himself to the task of making up for the lost time he had spent with the Indians. His constitution, naturally robust, had suffered nothing by his long captivity, and his ambition had lost none of its tire. He married, settled down upon a farm, and within a short time, became a thriving agriculturist. In 1720, he built a house on the east side of Salmon Brook Street, in the lower or southern part of the street, which was standing until within a few years past. In this house religious meetings were held during some four or five years before the erection of the first meet- ing-house of that society, in 17-13. Mr. Hayes became a prominent citizen, was often employed in civil affairs, and during many years, was a pillar in the church at Salmon Brook, of which he was a member at its organization. He lived to see the infant settlement, so long exposed to Indian barbarities, a populous village, with no crafty enemy to disturb its repose, and strong enough, had danger existed, to protect its inhabitants from plunder or capture. But, long before his death, all Indian difficulties had ceased. He died, 1756, at the age of seventy-one, and was buried in the cemetery at the north end of the village. A red free- .NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. stone monument marks the spot of his last resting-place, on which is inscribed the following epitaph : HERE LIES YE BODY OF MR. DANIEL HAYES, Who served his Generation in steady course of Probity and Piety, and was a lover of Peace, and God's Public Worship ; And being satisfied with Long life, left this world with a Comfortable Hope of life Eternal, Sept. 3d, 1756, in ye 71 year of his Age. In Oct. 1713 the General Assembly of the Colony voted as follows : "Upon consideration of the petition of Daniel Hayes of Symsbury, having been taken by the Indian enemy aud carried captive to Canada praying for some relief: Tkis Assembly do grant unto the petitioner the sum of seven pounds, to be paid him out of the public treasury of this Colony." The Red-Men who, for unknown generations, roved among the forests and occupied the fine fisheries of Massaco are now departed forever. " Slowly and sadly they climb the distant mountains and read their doom in the setting sun," while the Pale-Faces follow in their wake, and transform their hunting-grounds into peaceful and pleasant abodes of a hap- pier civilization. " 'Tis not two centuries since they The red-men traversed here ; And o'er these pleasant hills and vales Pursued the bounding deer. Yet of their moral weal or woe No trace is left to-day, For, like the foam upon the wave, They all have passed away ! " Some fifty or sixty years ago a straggling Indian and squaw were occasionally to be met with in this vicinity, depending mainly upon selling a few baskets and mats, or upon the charity of the inhabitants, for support. In the vicinity of Copper Hill and other parts of East Granby, and in neigh- boring towns there are often dug up Indian relics, such as arrow-heads, stone axes, stone pots, mortars and pestles for pounding corn, and rude weapons of war. REVOLUTIONARY INCIDENTS. East Gran by 's limits furnished in proportion to her then 112 NEWGATE OF CONNECT1UT. sparse settlement a full quota of patriotic soldiers for the War of the Revolution, and also for the war of 1812. Some thirty soldiers volunteered or were drafted in the He volu- tion, and a number of them served during the entire war. Colonel Andrew Hillyer, a native of East Granby, and father of General Charles T. Hillyer, of Hartford, was a sergeant in the Indian war and was at the siege of Havana, thirteen years before the Revolution. He then enlisted in that war was a lieutenant, afterwards captain of dragoons, and served eight years. After the war he was colonel of the militia. He died at East Granby in 1828, aged 86. One of the notables of East Granby was the Honorable Samuel Woodruff. At the age of 17, while at Yale College, hearing of the efforts of the Americans to capture Bur- goyne's army at Saratoga, he with several other students hastened with all possible speed to the scene of conflict, arriving there in time to participate in that decisive battle, and to witness the ceremonies of the surrender. He was for some years a judge of the court of Hartford county, and one of the overseers of Newgate prison. In 1828 he was ap- pointed a commissioner to distribute supplies to the suffering Greeks after their war with the Turks, and at the age of TO crossed the Atlantic and accomplished that misson of charity. His remarkably retentive memory, stored with a fund of historic facts, together with his ready application of anec- dote and sallies of wit and humor, made his society instruct- ive and agreeable to all classes. He died at East Granby, in 1850, aged nearly 91. Lemuel Bates was a captain during the Revolution, and par- ticipated in several battles. For many years Captain Bates kept a tavern in the north part of East Granby, in the house where his grandson, "Win. II. Bate?, now lives. The merry old gentleman was fond of fighting his battles over again by relating his reminiscences of those interesting times. After the surrender of Burgoyne, with his once splendid army of 10.000 men, at Saratoga, several detachments of the British prisoners of war were marched through East Granby, NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. H3 and a portion of them bivouacked on the premises of Captain Bates. " The British had plenty of money," said Cap- tain Bates, " to pay for the best we had ; and my folks were kept busy in distributing pitchers and pails of cider among them. At night all, the floors in my tavern were spread over with them." Another portion of the British captives encamped on the premises of Captain Roswell Phelps,* near the centre of East Granby. These prisoners of war were an interesting sight, and excited an inspiring curiosity in all this region. At one time several teams laden with specie, en route from Boston to Philadelphia, halted for the night at Captain Bates's. The specie had been borrowed from France ; which nation was then fraternally aiding us in our struggle. It was enclosed in strong plank boxes, drawn by thirteen teams, well guarded ; and amounted to several millions of dollars. Among those captives in Burgoyne's army was one by the name of Charles Stevens. He belonged to one of the com- panies of grenadiers who were selected as being the tallest and most martial in appearance of the British troops. He was about 6 feet in height, according to the author's recol- lection of him. In that connection he used to remark, "I was among the short men in my company, and so was placed on the left of the line." It came to pass that Stevens took to himself a wife and settled in East Granby. Being under the necessity of "turn- ing his sword into a ploughshare and his spear into a pruning hook," he served as a day laborer for fanners in the neigh- borhood, lie was particularly expert in digging ditches, and usually went by the name of u the ditcher." Two maidens of the neighborhood meeting him one day innocently saluted him with "Good morning, Mr. Ditcher." The old veteran turned upon the damsels with flashing * Captain Phelps went into the service at the a<^e of 16. His son, Roswell II., now lives upon a part of the same farm, at the a^e of 88, in robust health, and brings down the scales at 261 ; and his son f the author of this work) is the sixth generation that has resided on a prt of euid premises. NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. eye and informed tiiem that lie did not acknowledge that title, exclaiming with a haughty look " I am a grenadier of General I>urgoyne's army and was a big man before yon were born ! " One of East Granby's sons who rose to distinction was the lion. Walter Forward.* When at the age of 2<>, his father removed with his family (in 1803) to Ohio; and young Forward, on foot, drove an ox-team laden with household goods, as was the custom of travelling then. He afterwards removed to Pennsylvania, where he engaged in the practice of law, became a Member of Congress, Secretary of the United States' Treasury, and Minister to Denmark. At the time of his death he was Chief Judge of the court in Penn- sylvania. He died at the age of 69. The following is a list of those from East Granby who were engaged in the Revolution, and in the War of 1812 though there may have been others whose names are not herein enumerated : REVOLUTIONARY SOLDIERS. Col. Andrew Ilillyer, Hon. Samuel Woodruff, Capt. Isaac Owen, Capt. Lemuel P>ates, Capt. Matthew Griswold, Capt. Roswell Phelps, Sergt. Richard Gay, Joel Clark, Reuben Clark, Zopher Bates, John Forward, Hezekiah Holcomb, John Cornish, Asahel Holcomb, Thomas Stevens, Jesse Clark, Joseph Clark, John Thrall, Luke Thrall, David Eno, Reuben Phelps, Samuel Clark, Joseph Dyer. WAR OF 1812. Dan Forward, Joseph Cornish. Appollos Gay. Orson P. Phelps, Calvin Holcomb, Alex. Hoskins. Win. K. Thrall, Eratus Holcomb, Gurdon Gould, Petiltha Clark. Uriah Holcomb, Elihu Andruss, John G. Munn, Alex. Clark, Abiel Clark, Chandler Owen, Sardius Thrall, Charles Buck, Elihu Phelps. Ephraim Shaylor, William Rockwell, Jesse Clark, Jr. * A sister of his. Mrs. Hannah Clark, now resides in East Granb.v. at the venerable an?e of 91 beins the oldest person in town and iu fair enjoyment of her naturally strong mental (acuities NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. H5 SOCIETY MATTERS. The "Society of Turkey Hills," in East Granby, was formed in 1736, and comprised, at the time, forty -six families. The first church was built in 1738, the site having been previously fixed by a committee appointed by the General Assembly. There had been for several years previously such a bitter controversy over the formation of societies and location of sites for churches in Granby, and the societies had become so much disorganized that the Assembly refused to appoint any Justices of the Peace in the town for three years 1731 to 1734. The old church remained in a rough condition for about half a century when, in 1794, it was thoroughly repaired and a steeple built. In 1830 having stood for ninety-two years, it was taken down, and a hand- some one, built of stone, was erected on a new site, in 1831. For several years previous to the removal of the prison from Newgate, the State united with the society of Turkey Hills in employing a chaplain to preach a part of each Sun- day in the prison chapel, where all who desired were allowed to assemble in the same room with the convicts. It is interesting to look over the ecclesiastical records of East Granby just one hundred years ago, and note the prevailing habits and customs of those Revolutionary times. In 1776 it appears that Rev. Aaron Booge was settled* as a minister in that society, and the following is on the society records. "Oct. 22d 1776 Voted to give Mr. Aarou Booge Two hundred Pounds as a settlement, to be paid in four Equal payments, to be paid in four yes after set- tlement. Also voted to give Mr. Booge as a Sallery, Fifty Pounds a year for ye first four yes, and then to rise to Sixty pounds, and it is to be understood that ye people of s' 1 Society shall have Liberty yearly, to Pay the one half of s a Sellery in Wheat, Rye, & Indian Corn, or either of them, at ye common market Price. Voted also to give ye s a Mr. Booge, Twenty Seven Cords of good Siseable Wood a year, yearly ; and it is to be understood that Less answering the end, then the whole is not to be Required, and it is to be understood That the above Payments are to be equivalent to the Present Lawful money of the State of Coneecticut; Silver being Six Shillings and eight Pence to the ounce, or to be p d in bills of *As a fit preparation for the day of ordination the society voted to appoint setvnleen tavernkeepers! 116 NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. Public credit, & grain as above mentioned equivalent thereto." Two years later the price of Wheat was voted by the society " at 5 3 , Rye at 3", and Corn at 2-6 a bushel." This Rev. gentleman after\vards distinguished himself in the War of 1812, as Chaplain in the army under Gen. Jack- son. He was an enthusiastic admirer of the old hero, and was fond of relating his adventures while in the army. THE WAY TO REACH CoPPKR HlLL. As the old caverns and vicinity will continue to be a place of classic interest, the tourist and visitor will ask how to reach there. The N. Y., N. H. & Hartford R. R., Shelburnc Falls Branch, passes about one mile west, and the nearest station on that road being at Granby, two and one-fourth miles southwest. The Central New England R. R. passes through Tariffville about three miles south, and also East Granby, one and one-fourth miles distant, this being the nearest railroad station of any. Windsor Locks, seven miles east, is on the N. Y., N. II. & Hartford R. R. From either of these places, teams can be had to convey travellers to the mines. There can be seen most of the old prison buildings, the guardhouse, treadmill, and several of the workshops &c., all bearing marks of decay and dilapidation. The old stone- wall enclosure surmounted with watch-towers is standing, and the moat or ditch, once fourteen feet deep, still yawns above the subterraneous excavations. Were this weird place with all its eventful associations located in Europe, it would be a special and marked object for description in the writings of tourists; and the wonder is that people, even in this State know so little of the classic features of Newgate. Says Nordhoff, "There have been Americans who saw Rome before they saw Niagara." Upon the craggy rocks which overhang it on the east, there is a bold, magnificent view, of great scope to the north, south, and west, and if a few forest- trees \vere cleared away on the eastern slope of the ledge, a splendid panoramic view of great extent and beauty would be unfolded, the whole equalling, if not surpassing, the NEWGATE OF CONNECTICUT. 117 elebr;iied Wads worth tower. The ascent to the cliff, a little south of it, is not difficult, aisd with little labor a more convenient flight of steps could be made out of the quanties of stones and rock, lying loosely along its sides and base. The caverns, only about one hundred rods distant from the ledge, will remain for ages to come, and continue to grow in interest during the flight of years. Some of the buildings now falling to decay, could be repaired and preserved, and the old guard-house made a place for entertainment. If put in proper condition, the place would attract a large number to explore the mines, to view the romantic scenery in the vicinity and surrounding country, and enjoy the invigorating benefits of the pure mountain air. The piscatorian could indulge his sportive pastime at Southwick ponds, lying about four miles to the north, and comprising hundreds of acres in extent, where a -small steamboat is employed during the summer, for the use of the numerous pleasure parties who meet there for fishing, clambaking, dancing, etc. University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed. R EC'0 ID-UN- |f jij Universi South* Libn