It is a subject of hope that someone—perhaps he is already cooing in his
cradle and smiling in response to the wondering faces that bend over
him—will be inspired to embody in imperishable epic, the adventurous
deeds of the Puritan and Pilgrim Fathers in the New World. He must be a
child of the Muses. He must have insight to sound the deeper currents of
human motive and action, the instinct for dramatic situations, a feeling
for the concrete in choice and act, and for the individual man. When
that epic appears some cantos of it will relate to the settlements of
the Connecticut valley, and among these old Windsor, to the ancient
church in which place this brief article relates.
We are fortunate in having a memoir of Captain Roger Clapp, a young man
of the company, written expressly for his own descendants, with glowing
religious purpose, but in more than one particular illuminating upon the
history and spirit of that early enterprise. Mr. Clapp’s own case is a
fine exhibition of the process of selection and unification by which a
party was made up of such as were fitted to undertake together the
peculiar task of making a new community in the wilderness. One would
readily guess that the relations of the individuals of such a company
must be somewhat other than those secured by formal agreements and
contracts on paper. They must be bound together by the finest of
affinities, by mutual esteem, by the strength of commanding leadership.
Add to this, of course, a rugged sense of the call and providence of
God. Something of this sort would be essential to business success, not
to say social happiness in the communal life of a new settlement; and if
what Mr. Clapp says of himself is at all representative, such was
actually the case. When a youth, evidently wishing to be
self-supporting, he asked leave of his father to live “abroad,” and went
to live on trial, three miles from Exeter (England). In his own
language: “We went every Lord’s-Day into the City, where were many
famous preachers of the Word of God. I then took such a liking unto the
Revd. Mr. John Warham, that I did desire to live near him: So I removed
(with my Father’s consent) into the city, and lived with one Mr.
Mossiour, as famous a Family for Religion as ever I knew; ... I never so
much as heard of New England until I heard of many godly Persons that
were going there, and that Mr. Warham was to go also.”
Through Mr. Clapp’s personal history we can see in his account of the
organization of the church, how here and there the preparatory process
had been going on in individual lives, and often unconsciously to
themselves men had been getting ready for this joint venture into the
New World. I give his account of the organization somewhat fully: “I
came out of Plymouth in Devon, the 20th of March, and arrived at
Nantasket the 30th of May 1630. Now this is further to inform you, that
there came _Many Godly Families_ in that ship: We were of Passengers
many in Number (besides Sea-men) of good Rank: Two of our Magistrates
come with us, viz., Mr. Rossiter and Mr. Ludlow. These godly People
resolved to live together; and therefore as they had made choice of
these two Revd. Servants of God, Mr. John Warham and Mr. John Maverick
to be their Ministers, so they kept a solemn Day of Fasting in the New
Hospital in Plymouth in England, spending it in Preaching and Praying:
where that worthy Man of God, Mr. John White of Dorchester in Dorset was
present, and Preached unto us the Word of God, in the forepart of the
Day, and in the latter part of the Day, as the People did solemnly make
choice of, and call those godly Ministers to be their Officers, so also
the Revd. Mr. Warham and Mr. Maverick did accept thereof, and expressed
the same. So we came, by the good Hand of the Lord, through the Deeps
comfortably; having Preaching or Expounding of the Word of God every Day
for Ten Weeks together, by our Ministers.”
This little Israel, which came over the waters, one hundred and forty
strong, in the good ship _Mary and John_, a craft of 400 tons, were
forced by Capt. Squeb, contrary to his agreement, to disembark in a
forlorn place on Nantasket Point. A place of settlement was soon
selected and named Dorchester. Attracted by the rich Connecticut
meadows, five years later Mr. Warham and the larger portion of his flock
made the difficult overland journey thither, and settled in the
beautiful region which was afterwards called Windsor by “order of the
court.” Thus the First Church of Christ in Windsor goes back beyond
Dorchester to Plymouth in Old England, and has had a continuous
existence from March 20, 1630, to the present as a Congregational Church
of what may be called, for lack of a better term, the orthodox or
Trinitarian variety—a fact that can be affirmed of no other
Congregational Church on the American Continent.
To speak of the members of this church and their numerous descendants,
would take us beyond the limits of this article. A few names will
suggest the significance of this body of Christians on the banks of the
Connecticut, in the life of the nation. Matthew Grant, the clerk of the
church and the town, whose fine records are now in the town clerk’s
office, was the ancestor of Gen. U. S. Grant and the numerous clans of
the Grant family in this country. The hero of Manila Bay is a descendant
of Thomas Dewey, of the old Windsor church. Henry Wolcott, a man of
wealth and social importance in old England, was the ancestor of the
famous Wolcott family, which included two Connecticut governors and men
of note in every generation to the present day. Roger Ludlow, the lawyer
of the settlement, gave legal shape to the democracy of Thomas Hooker in
the Constitution of Connecticut, the first written instrument of the
kind on record. Captain John Mason led the federated colonists to the
number of eighty men against the Pequots, and by no means least, Esther
Warham, the youngest daughter of the minister, a woman of rare charm and
remarkable gifts, was the mother of a mighty race, which has been
distinguished by many illustrious names, chief among whom must be named
her grandson, Jonathan Edwards. Two other men of national renown in
quite different directions are Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth and Edward
Rowland Sill. Ellsworth was born in Windsor, lived here practically his
whole life save, of course, when he was away on public business, and his
home still remains, now the property of the Connecticut Society of the
D. A. R. He was a devoted member of the church and chairman of the
building committee in charge of the erection of the new house of worship
in 1794, which still remains in excellent condition. The book
containing, among many others, Mr. Ellsworth’s subscription of 100
pounds, with that for like amounts by Dr. Chaffee and Jerijah Barber, is
in possession of the present treasurer. Edward Rowland Sill, the rare
quality of whose poetic genius has won increasing recognition ever since
his early death, was a descendant of Rev. David Rowland, one of the old
Windsor pastors, and was, by immediate family connections as well as the
associations of his own boyhood, a child of the Windsor church, though
he spent the larger part of his mature life elsewhere.