THE JOLLY FARMER OF WINDHAM HILLS AND HIS FLOCK OF SHEEP
There was an old manor in sunny England to which Lord Cornwallis used
to resort, and a certain Captain Blackwell purchased a territory in
Windham, Conn., among the green hills and called it Mortlake Manor,
after the English demesne. Here Israel Putnam purchased a farm of some
500 acres, at what is now Pomfret, Conn., and began to raise great
herds of cattle and flocks of sheep, and to plant apple-trees.
He was made a major in the northern campaign, afterward a colonel, then
in the Indian War he became a general. They called him “Major Putnam,”
for the title befitted his character, and he wished to be sparing of
titles among the farmers of Windham.
Israel Putnam was born a hero. He had in him the spirit of a Hannibal.
He had character as well as daring; his soul rose above everything, and
he never feared a face of day.
He had the soul of Cincinnatus, and not of a Cæsar. He could leave the
plow, and return to it again.
His conduct in the northern campaign had shown the unselfish character
of his heroism. A jolly farmer was he, and as thrifty as he was jolly.
He could strike hard blows for justice and liberty, and like a truly
brave man he could forgive his enemies and help them to rise in a right
spirit again.
Why had he come here at this time?
Let us go into the store, or, as it was beginning to be called, the
“war office,” with these two men of destiny.
“Governor Trumbull,” he said, “I am about to go to Boston, and I want
your approval. Boston is being ruined by British oppression. She is
almost famine-stricken, and why? Because her people are true to their
rights.
“Governor, I can not sleep. Think of the situation. Here I am on my
farm, with hundreds of sheep around me, and the men of liberty of
Boston town are sitting down to half-empty tables. Some of my sheep
must be driven away.
“They must be started on their way to Worcester, and to Newtowne, and
to Boston, and, Governor, the flock must _grow_ by the way.
“I am going to ask the farmers to swell the number of the flock as I
start with my own. Boston Common is a British military post now――but I
am going to Boston Common with my sheep, and my flock will grow as I
go, and I will appear there at the head of a company of sheep, and if
the British Government does not lift its hand from Boston town, I will
go there with a company of soldiers. Have I your contentment in the
matter?”
“Yes, go, hero of Lake George and of Ticonderoga, go with your sheep
and your flock, increase it as it goes; but as for that other matter
you suggest, let us talk of that, the matter of what is to be done if
British oppression is to increase.”
They talked all night, and Putnam said that the liberties of the
colonies were more than life to him, and that he stood ready for any
duty. He rode away in the light of the morning.
As he passed the tavern, Dennis O’Hay went to the war office, where the
Connecticut militia used to appear, to meet the Governor.
“The top of the morning to you, Governor,” said Dennis, holding his cap
in his hand above his head.
“My good friend, I do not know you,” said the Governor, “but that you
are here for some good purpose, I can not doubt. What is your business
with me?”
“I was a sailor, sir, and our ship went down, sir, but I came up, sir,
and am still on the top of the earth. I am an Irishman, sir, from
Ireland of the North, that breeds the loikliest men on the other side
of the world, sir, among which, please your Honor, I am one.
“I have heard about the stamp act, sir. England has taxed Ireland into
the earth, sir. We live in hovels, sir, that the English may dwell in
castles, sir. I wouldn’t be taxed, sir, were I an American without any
voice in the government, sir. That would be nothing but slavery.
“I would like to enlist, sir. I have heard of the minutemen, sir, and
it is a half-a-minute man that I would like to become.”
“I see, I see, my good fellow; I read the truth of what you say in
your looks. Let me go to my breakfast, and I will talk over your
case with my wife, Faith, and my daughters, and my son John. In the
meantime, go and get your breakfast in the tavern.”
“The top of this earth and all the planets to you, sir.”
After breakfast the Governor summoned Dennis to the store, which came
to be called the “war office.” The back room in the store was the
council room.
“Did you notice that man who rode away in the morning?” he asked.
“Sure, I did, sir. I heard him tell a story last night in the tavern.
The flesh was gone from one of his hands.”
“It was torn from his hand while pouring water on a fire which was
burning the barracks near a magazine which contained 300 barrels of
powder. That was in the north.”
“Did he save the magazine?”
“Yes, my good friend. He is a brave man, and he is soon going with a
drove of sheep to Boston.
“You ask for work,” continued the Governor. “I want you to go with that
man, Major, Colonel, General Putnam, and his drove of sheep to Boston,
and to keep your eye out on the way, so, if needed, you might go over
it again. I wish to train a few men to learn a swift way to Boston
town. You may be one of them. I will have a horse saddled for you at
once; follow that man to Pomfret, to the manor farm at Windham. I will
write you a note to him, a secret note, which you must not open by the
way.”
“Never you fear, Governor; I couldn’t read it if I did, but I can read
life if I can not read messages.”
In a few minutes he was in the saddle, with his face turned toward the
Windham hills.
He found General Putnam, the “Major,” on his farm.
“It is the top of the morning that I said to the Governor this morning,
and it is the top of the evening that I say to you now. I am Dennis
O’Hay, from the north of Ireland, and it is this message――which may
ask that I be relieved of my head for aught I know――that the Governor
he asked me to put into your hand. He wants me to learn all the way to
Boston town, so that I may be able to drive cattle there, it may be. I
am ready to do anything to make this country the land of liberty. After
all that ould Ireland has suffered, I want to see America free and
glorious――and hurrah, free! That word comes out of my heart; I don’t
know why I say it. It rises up from my very soul.”
“You shall learn all the way to Boston town,” said the Major, “and I
hope I shall not find you faithless, or give you over to the British to
be dealt with according to the law.”
Putnam was preparing to leave for his long journey on the new Boston
road. His neighbors gathered around him, and young farmers brought
to him fine sheep, to add to those he had gathered for the suffering
patriots of Boston town.
The driver of this flock knew the way, the post-houses, the inns, the
ordinaries, and the Major assigned Dennis to him as an assistant.
Putnam was a lusty man at this time, in middle life. He wore homespun
made from his own flocks. His great farm among the hills had been
developed until it was made sufficient to support a large family and
many work-people. He raised his own beef, pork, corn, grain, apples and
fruit, and poultry. His family made their own butter and cheese; his
wife wove the clothing for all; spun her own yarn. The manor farm might
have been isolated for a hundred years, and yet thrift would have gone
on.
No one was ever more self-supporting than the old-time thrifty New
England farmer. His farm was more independent than a baron’s castle in
feudal days.
He “put off” his butter, cheese and eggs, or bartered them for “West
India goods”; but even in these things he might have been independent,
for his maple-trees might have yielded him sugar, and roasted crusts
and nuts a nutritious substitute for coffee and tea.
Putnam drove away his sheep, stopping at post-houses by the way,
and telling some merry and some thrilling stories there of the wild
campaign of the north, and of his escapes from the Indians under
Pontiac.
He arrived at Boston and was welcomed by the patriot Warren.
A British officer faced him.
“And you have come down here,” said the British officer, “to contend
against England’s arm with a lot of sheep. If you rebels do not cease
your opposition, do you want to know what will happen?”
“Yes.”
“Twenty ships of the line and twenty regiments will be landed at the
port of Boston.”
“If that day comes, I shall return to Boston, and I shall bring with me
men as well as sheep.”
“Ho, ho!” laughed the British officer. “That is your thought, is it,
hey? It is treason, sir; treason to the British Crown.”
“Sir,” said Putnam, “an enemy to justice is my enemy; is every man’s
enemy. It is a man’s duty to stand by human rights.”
Dennis studied every farmhouse and nook and corner by the way. He had a
quick mind and a responsive heart, and he was learning America readily.
He could read lettered words, so he looked well at the sign-boards
at four corners and on taverns and milestones. He “stumbled” in book
reading, but could define signs.
“Could you find your way back again?” asked the Major of him, as they
rested beneath the great trees on Boston Common.
“And sure it is, Major. I would find my way back there if I had been
landed at the back door of the world.”
“Well,” said the Major, “then you may go back in advance of us alone.”
Dennis parted from the Major, and dismounted in a couple of days or
more before the Governor’s war office with
“And it is the top of the morning, it is, Governor.”
“Did you bring a recommendation from the Major?” asked the Governor.
“No, no, he sent me on ahead, but I can give a good report of him.”
“That is the same as though he brought a good report of you. A man who
speaks well of his master is generally to be trusted.
“Well, you know the way to Boston town. I think that I can now make you
useful to me, and to the cause. We will see.”
Dennis found work at the tavern. He would sit on the tavern steps to
watch for the Governor in the evenings when the latter appeared on the
green. He soon joined the good people in calling the Governor “Brother
Jonathan.”
Dennis was superstitious――most Irishmen are――but he was hardly more
given to ghostly fears than the Connecticut farmers were. Nearly every
farmstead at that period had its ghost story. Good Governor Trumbull
would hardly have given an hour to the fairy tale, but he probably
would have listened intently to a graveyard or “witch” story.
People did not see angels then as in old Hebrew days, but thought that
there were sheeted ghosts that came out of graveyards, or made night
journeys through lonely woods, and stood at the head of garret stairs,
“avenging” spirits that haunted those who had done them wrong.
So we only picture real life when we bring Dennis into this weird
atmosphere, that made legs nimble, and cats run home when the clouds
scudded over the moon.
Dennis had heard ghost story after ghost story on his journey and
at the store. Almost everybody had at least one such story to tell;
how that Moodus hills would shake and quake at times, and tip over
milk-pans, and cause the maid to hide and the dog to howl; how
the timbers brought together to build a church, one night set to
capering and dancing; how a woman who had a disease that “unjinted
her jints” (unjointed her joints) came all together again during a
great “revival”; how witches took the form of birds, and were shot
with silver bullets; and like fantastic things which might have filled
volumes.
“I never fear the face of day,” said Dennis, “but apparitions! Oh, for
my soul’s sake, deliver me from them! I am no ghost-hunter――I never
want to face anything that I can’t shoot, and on this side of the water
the woods are full of people that won’t sleep in their graves when you
lay them there. I shut my eyes. Yes, when I see anything that I can’t
account for, I shut my eyes.”
That was the cause of the spread of superstition. People like Dennis
“shut their eyes.” Did they meet a white rabbit in the bush, they did
not investigate――they ran.
Dennis would have faced a band of spies like a giant, but would have
run from the shaking of a bush by a mouse or ground squirrel in a
graveyard.
He once saw a sight that, to use the old term, “broke him up.” He was
passing by a family graveyard when he thought that an awful apparition
that reached from the earth to the heavens rose before him.
“Oh, and it was orful!” said he. “It riz right up out of the graves
into the air, with its _paws_ in the moon. It was a white horse, and he
_whickered_. My soul went out of me; I hardly had strength enough in my
legs to get back to the green; and when I did, I fell flat down on my
face, and all America would never tempt me to go that way again.”
The white horse whose “paws” were in the moon was only an animal turned
out into the highway to pasture, that lifted himself up on the stout
bough of a graveyard wild apple-tree to eat apples from the higher
limbs. Horses were fond of apples, and would sometimes lift themselves
up to gather them in this way.
The ghost story was the favorite theme at the store on long winter
evenings.
“If one could be sure that they met an evil ghost, one would know that
there must be good spirits that had gone farther on,” reasoned the men.
“They may as well all go farther on,” said Dennis. “Such things do not
haunt good people.”