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  WOODSTOCK

  AN HISTORICAL SKETCH

  BY

  CLARENCE WINTHROP BOWEN, PH.D.

  READ AT ROSELAND PARK, WOODSTOCK, CONNECTICUT, AT THE BI-CENTENNIAL
  CELEBRATION OF THE TOWN, ON TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 1886

  NEW YORK & LONDON
  G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
  The Knickerbocker Press
  1886

  COPYRIGHT BY
  CLARENCE WINTHROP BOWEN
  1886

  Press of
  G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
  New York


As a full history of Woodstock has been in preparation for several
years and will, it is hoped, be published in the course of another
year, this brief sketch is issued as it was read at the Bi-Centennial
Anniversary of the town.




CONTENTS.


                                                    PAGE

     I. INTRODUCTION                                   7

    II. THE SETTLEMENT OF MASSACHUSETTS BAY
          AND OF ROXBURY                               8

   III. THE NIPMUCK COUNTRY AND THE VISIT OF
          JOHN ELIOT TO THE INDIANS AT WABBAQUASSET,
          OR WOODSTOCK                                12

    IV. THE SETTLEMENT OF NEW ROXBURY, OR
          WOODSTOCK                                   20

     V. THE CHANGE OF THE NAME OF NEW ROXBURY
          TO WOODSTOCK                                28

    VI. THE GROWTH OF THE NEW TOWNSHIP--1690-1731      32

   VII. ECCLESIASTICAL AFFAIRS                        36

  VIII. THE TRANSFER OF WOODSTOCK FROM MASSACHUSETTS
          TO CONNECTICUT                              43

    IX. MILITARY RECORD                               46

     X. EDUCATIONAL MATTERS                           53

    XI. DISTINGUISHED CITIZENS                        55

   XII. CHARACTERISTICS OF WOODSTOCK                  58

  XIII. CONCLUSION                                    61

        INDEX                                         63




I.


The history of the town of Woodstock is associated with the beginnings
of history in New England. The ideas of the first settlers of Woodstock
were the ideas of the first settlers of the Colony of Plymouth and
the Province of Massachusetts Bay. The planting of these colonies
was one of the fruits of the Reformation. The antagonism between the
Established Church of England and the Non-Conformists led to the
settlement of New England. The Puritans of Massachusetts, at first
Non-Conformists, became Separatists like the Pilgrims of Plymouth.
Pilgrims and Puritans alike accepted persecution and surrendered the
comforts of home to obtain religious liberty. They found it in New
England; and here, more quickly than in the mother country, they
developed also that civil liberty which is now the birthright of every
Anglo-Saxon.


II.

The settlement of Woodstock is intimately connected with the first
organized settlement on Massachusetts Bay; and how our mother town
of Roxbury was first established is best told in the words of Thomas
Dudley in his letter to the Countess of Lincoln under date of Boston,
March 12, 1630-1:

    "About the year 1627 some friends, being together in Lincolnshire,
    fell into discourse about New England and the planting of the
    gospel there. In 1628 we procured a patent from his Majesty for
    our planting between the Massachusetts Bay and Charles River on
    the South and the River of Merrimack on the North and three miles
    on either side of those rivers and bay... and the same year we
    sent Mr. John Endicott and some with him to begin a plantation. In
    1629 we sent divers ships over with about three hundred people. Mr.
    Winthrop, of Suffolk (who was well known in his own country and
    well approved here for his piety, liberality, wisdom, and gravity),
    coming in to us we came to such resolution that in April, 1630, we
    set sail from Old England.... We were forced to change counsel,
    and, for our present shelter, to plant dispersedly."

Settlements were accordingly made at Salem, Charlestown, Boston,
Medford, Watertown, and in several other localities. The sixth
settlement was made, to quote further from the same letter to the
Countess of Lincoln, by "others of us two miles from Boston, in a place
we named Rocksbury."[1]

The date of settlement was September 28, 1630, and just three weeks
later the first General Court that ever sat in America was held in
Boston. The same year the first church in Boston was organized.[2]
Roxbury, like the other settlements of Massachusetts Bay, was a little
republic in itself. The people chose the selectmen and governed
themselves; and as early as 1634, like the seven other organized towns,
they sent three deputies to Boston to attend the first representative
Assembly at which important business was transacted. The government
of Roxbury, like the other plantations, was founded on a theocratic
basis. Church and state were inseparable. No one could be admitted
as a citizen unless he was a member of the church. Many of the first
settlers came from Nazing, a small village in England, about twenty
miles from London, on the river Lee. Morris, Ruggles, Payson, and
Peacock, names read in the earliest records of Woodstock, were old
family names in Nazing. Other first inhabitants of Roxbury came from
Wales and the west of England, or London and its vicinity. Among the
founders were John Johnson, Richard Bugbee, and John Leavens, whose
family names are well known as among the first settlers of Woodstock.
All were men of property[3]; none were "of the poorer sort." In 1631
the Rev. John Eliot, a native of the village of Nazing, arrived with a
company of Nazing pilgrims. Eliot, though earnestly solicited to become
pastor of the church in Boston,[4] accepted the charge of the church
in Roxbury, which was organized in 1632,[5] and was the sixth church,
in order of time, established in New England. Another name equally
prominent in the earliest years of the history of Roxbury was that of
William Pynchon, afterwards known as the founder of Springfield in
Massachusetts. Only Boston excels Roxbury in the number of its citizens
who have made illustrious the early history of the Massachusetts
colony.[6] Among the early settlers of Roxbury who themselves became,
or whose descendants became, the early settlers of Woodstock, were the
Bartholomews, Bowens, Bugbees, Chandlers, Childs, Corbins, Crafts,
Griggses, Gareys, Holmeses, Johnsons, Lyons, Levinses, Mays, Morrises,
Paysons, Peacocks, Peakes, Perrins, Scarboroughs, and Williamses.[7]

In 1643 the towns within the jurisdiction of Massachusetts had grown
to thirty, and Roxbury did more than her share towards the organization
of the new towns. In fact, Roxbury has been called the mother of
towns, no less than fifteen communities having been founded by her
citizens.[8] Among the most important of these settlements was the town
of Woodstock, whose Bicentennial we this day celebrate.


III.

A glance at the country about us previous to the settlement of the
town, in 1686, shows us a land sparsely inhabited by small bands of
peaceful Indians, without an independent chief of their own, but who
paid tribute to the Sachem of the Mohegans, the warriors who had
revolted from the Pequots. Woodstock was a portion of the Nipmuck[9]
country, so-called because it contained fresh ponds or lakes in
contrast to other sections that bordered upon the sea or along running
rivers. Wabbaquasset, or the mat-producing place, was the name of the
principal Indian village, and that name still exists in the corrupted
form of Quasset to designate a section of the town. Indians from
the Nipmuck[10] country took corn to Boston in 1630, soon after the
arrival of the "Bay Colony"; and in 1633[11] John Oldman and his three
Dorchester companions passed through this same section on their way to
learn something of the Connecticut River country; and they may have
rested on yonder "Plaine Hill," for history states that they "lodged
at Indians towns all the way."[12] The old "Connecticut Path" over
which that distinguished band[13] of colonists went in 1635 and 1636 to
settle the towns of Windsor, Wethersfield, and Hartford, passed through
the heart of what is now Woodstock.[14] This path so famous in the
early days of New England history, came out of Thompson Woods, a little
north of Woodstock Lake, and proceeding across the Senexet meadow, ran
west near Plaine Hill, Marcy's Hill, and a little south of the base of
Coatney Hill. For more than fifty years before the settlement of the
town, this historic path near Woodstock Hill was the outlet for the
surplus population of Massachusetts Bay and the line of communication
between Massachusetts and the Connecticut and New Haven colonies.
But the most noteworthy feature in the description of the Indians of
the Nipmuck country is that as early as 1670 they were formed into
Praying Villages. Evidently the instructions of Gov. Cradock in his
letter of March, 1629, to John Endicott had not been forgotten. In that
letter he said: "Be not unmindful of the main end of our plantation
by endeavoring to bring the Indians to the knowledge of the gospel."
In the heart of one man at least that idea was paramount. John Eliot,
the Apostle to the Indians, was not content to be simply the pastor of
the church of Roxbury for nearly sixty years. Amid his countless other
labors he preached the gospel to the Indians of the Nipmuck country.
The first Indian church in America had been established by him at
Natick in 1651; and, in 1674, he visited the Indian villages in the
wild territory about these very hills. As he found it, to quote his own
words,[15] "absolutely necessary to carry on civility with religion,"
he was accompanied by Major Daniel Gookin, who had been appointed, in
1656, magistrate of all the Indian towns. Maanexit was first visited
on the Mohegan or Quinebaug River, near what is now New Boston, where
Eliot preached to the natives, using as his text the seventh verse of
the twenty-fourth Psalm: "Lift up your heads, O ye gates; and be ye
lift up, ye everlasting doors; and the king of glory shall come in."

Quinnatisset, on what is now Thompson Hill, was the name of another
Praying Town. But a quotation[16] from the homely narrative of Major
Gookin is the best description of Eliot's memorable visit to Woodstock:

    "We went not to it [Quinnatisset], being straitened for time, but
    we spake with some of the principal people at Wabquissit.[17]...
    Wabquissit... lieth about nine or ten miles from Maanexit, upon
    the west side, six miles of Mohegan River, and is distant from
    Boston west and by south, about seventy-two miles. It lieth about
    four miles within the Massachusetts south line. It hath about
    thirty families, and one hundred and fifty souls. It is situated in
    a very rich soil, manifested by the goodly crop of Indian corn then
    newly ingathered, not less than forty bushels upon an acre. We came
    thither late in the evening upon the 15th of September, and took
    up our quarters at the sagamore's wigwam, who was not at home: but
    his squaw courteously admitted us, and provided liberally, in their
    way, for the Indians that accompanied us. This sagamore inclines to
    religion, and keeps the meeting on sabbath days at his house, which
    is spacious, about sixty feet in length and twenty feet in width.
    The teacher of this place is named Sampson; an active and ingenious
    person. He speaks good English and reads well. He is brother
    unto Joseph, before named, teacher at Chabanakougkomun[18]...
    being both hopeful, pious, and active men; especially the younger
    before-named Sampson, teacher at Wabquissit, who was, a few years
    since, a dissolute person, and I have been forced to be severe
    in punishing him for his misdemeanors formerly. But now he is,
    through grace, changed and become sober and pious; and he is now
    very thankful to me for the discipline formerly exercised towards
    him. And besides his flagitious life heretofore, he lived very
    uncomfortably with his wife; but now they live very well together,
    I confess this story is a digression. But because it tendeth to
    magnify grace, and that to a prodigal, and to declare how God
    remembers his covenant unto the children of such as are faithful
    and zealous for him in their time and generation, I have mentioned
    it.

    "We being at Wabquissit, at the sagamore's wigwam, divers of the
    principal people that were at home came to us, with whom we spent a
    good part of the night in prayer, singing psalms, and exhortations.
    There was a person among them, who, sitting mute a great space, at
    last spake to this effect: That he was agent for Unkas, Sachem of
    Mohegan, who challenged right to, and dominion over