Tag:

litchfield

The Rise and Fall of the Connecticut Borough

For over 200 years Connecticut has had a somewhat unique type of local government – a borough, of which nine currently survive. The borough has provided public services that its parent town would not or could not afford.

Vermont, with its incorporated villages, is the only other New England state that allows similar responsibilities below the town level. (Notably, Connecticut had two incorporated villages—Litchfield and Wethersfield—during the nineteenth century).

In the six New England states, the town formed the original basis for local government. In Connecticut, towns began to form in the 17th century. By the end of the 18^th century, towns geographically encompassed the entire state.

These creatures of the state used tax revenues for building and maintaining roads, caring for the poor, providing education, and for several administrative and regulatory purposes. However, in the 19^th century residents in some towns eventually wanted a broader range of public services. So to achieve their aims, they sought permission from the state to create an incorporated borough that would be located within and subordinate to the town government.

The Borough of Bridgeport

Bridgeport became the first borough by special act of the state General Assembly in October 1800. It was located in part of the town of Stratford on Long Island Sound in the southwestern part of the state. Originally called Pequonnock in the 17th century, it was renamed Newfield around 1777. Starting as a farming and fishing community, it grew into a bustling whaling, shipbuilding, and trading port after the mid-18th century.

Based on its prosperity, the citizenry sought and received permission for a borough to supply more services. The act of incorporation of the borough provided for the election by secret ballot of a warden (chief executive), six burgesses, a clerk, treasurer and bailiff. Among the initial powers granted: the right to sue and be sued; purchase, hold, and convey real and personal property; levy taxes; layout highways; create a fire department; and make by-laws (e.g., regarding markets and commerce, streets, wharves, anchoring and mooring of vessels, trees, animals, buildings, burial of the dead and public lighting).

Since the borough was subordinate to the town government, its residents had dual residency and paid both town and borough taxes. In 1821 the Town of Bridgeport—including the Borough of Bridgeport–were separated from the Town of Stratford. In 1836 the borough became the City of Bridgeport.

More Boroughs

Clinton, Conn., 1881. Killingworth lies on the upper left. Map courtesy Library of Congress.

Four other boroughs were soon created near Long Island Sound. A year after Bridgeport, Stonington was incorporated—currently the oldest continuous borough in the state. Guilford followed in 1815, then both Killingworth and Essex in 1820. Killingworth disincorporated in 1838—the first to do so—with the creation of the town of Clinton. Essex disincorporated in 1854 and Guilford in 1939.

After 1820, boroughs formed within inland towns. Although agriculture dominated economic activity in the early 19th century, manufacturing enterprises slowly began to develop across the state. Their success depended upon navigable rivers, a sufficient labor supply and competent management. This was clearly evident in the last half of the nineteenth century, especially within or near towns in the Naugatuck Valley.

Manufacturing grew because of greater interconnections of the railroad, telegraph and telephone systems. Further population growth and increased incomes then fueled a desire for boroughs to provide more governmental services. Thus, between 1800 and 1899, 39 boroughs were created.

Hats, Brass, Pins

Birdseye view of Danbury, Conn., in 1875. Map courtesy Library of Congress.

One of the earliest boroughs with a manufacturing base was Danbury, incorporated in 1822, known for its hat making. Another example was Waterbury, incorporated in 1825, known for its brass industry. Waterbury and Danbury became cities in 1853 and 1889, respectively.

In the latter half of the century, two notable examples were Wallingford and Shelton. Wallingford, incorporated in 1853, became known for Britannia ware and disincorporated in 1958. Shelton, incorporated in 1882, was known for making corsets, paper, bolts and pins. It consolidated with its town in 1915.

Sidewalk No-Nos

In addition to the customary set of by-laws, many boroughs also dealt with special concerns. For example, West Haven and West Stratford, prohibited riding bicycles on sidewalks, while Bethel residents could not fly kites on streets and sidewalks.

Creation of the final six boroughs occurred in the early decades of the twentieth century: Farmington and Ridgefield in 1901, Groton and Woodmont in 1903, Bantam in 1915, and Unionville in 1921. Ridgefield disincorporated in 1921, as did Farmington and Unionville in 1947. Groton became a city in 1964.

Altogether, between 1800 and 1921, 45 boroughs were created. However, between 1800 and 1991 when Stafford Springs became the latest borough to disincorporate, 15 of them disincorporated from their parent town, 15 eventually became cities, four became part of a new town, one (Clifton) became part of a new borough (Winsted), and one (West Stratford) became annexed to Bridgeport.

No New Boroughs

Stonington, Conn., in 1885. Library of Congress.

Two new options for districts may explain why no new boroughs formed since 1921, despite an outward migration from more populated to less crowded areas—a process that accelerated after World War II. One possibility: the creation of special taxing districts. These districts (e.g., fire and utility districts) can offer one or more public services, while remaining independent of their town governments. Although the exact number is unknown, they have continued to proliferate. The other option available for providing more services is a 1957 “Home Rule” law that allows towns to change their form of government (e.g., to create a mayor-council system) to better deal with citizen demands.

Nine Boroughs

Of the nine boroughs that currently exist, the prospects for their continued survival differ. Naugatuck, Bantam, Litchfield, Fenwick, Woodmont, and Stonington—the latter four in summer resort areas—appear to be working fairly well. Naugatuck is somewhat unusual. Known for its rubber production (Goodyear) and naugahyde (a synthetic leather material), it consolidated with its town in 1895 but retained its borough form of government.

Meanwhile, Newtown, Danielson, and Jewett City have encountered budgetary pressures in previous years. Their future is more problematic as their town governments have already taken over many of their functions. So far, the majority of residents of these nine boroughs remain proud and self-protective and would be very reluctant to see them disappear. Thus, an anachronistic type of local government continues to survive.

About the author: Edward T. Howe, Ph.D., is Professor of Economics, Emeritus, of Siena College near Albany, N.Y. He has written academic articles about the bell industry in New York, incorporated villages in Vermont, and nationwide taxation of the electric utility industry. He has also written about the small bells made in Connecticut for the New England Historical Society. This story updated in 2022.

5 comments 357 views

More Revolutionaries Died in Prison Than on the Battlefield. A Lot More.

Late in 1776, the British army released thousands of revolutionaries imprisoned in New York. Their condition – starving, diseased, near death – horrified the American colonies.

That was just the beginning. The British military command would continue to incarcerate and abuse some 30,000 revolutionaries in New York.

The patriot press spread the news of the prisoner abuse, hardening public opinion against the British. A typical news item from the Connecticut Gazette on Jan. 4, 1782, describes 130 prisoners landed from New York in deplorable condition. “It is enough to melt the most obdurate heart to see these miserable objects landed at our wharves sick and dying, and the few rags they have on covered with vermin and their own excrements,” reported the Gazette.

Somewhere between 60 and 70 percent of the revolutionary prisoners died. One historian estimates two to three times as many men died in New York prisons than in battle.

“The POW story was, in short, a public-relations disaster for the British,” wrote Edward G. Burrows in The Prisoners of New York in the Long Island History Journal. “It enflamed public opinion, squelched any hope of reconciliation, and turned resistance into a fight to the death.”

Revolutionaries in prison aboard the Jersey.

Revolutionaries as POWs

British troops landed in New York City on Sept. 15, 1776 and remained until November of 1783. George Washington and his men tried to dislodge them during the Battle of Long Island in August of 1776. Not only did he fail, but the British captured thousands of Continental Army prisoners. Two months later, the British captured Fort Washington and more revolutionaries.

In the end, they took more than 4,000 Continental Army soldiers (4,114 by one count) and 300 officers. And they held them in deplorable conditions in non-Anglican churches, sugar refineries, jails, almshouses and broken-down warships. Civilians, too, ended up in the horribly overcrowded lockups: 800 in one church, 20 per cell in the city jail and 1100 in the most notorious prison ship, the Jersey.

The notorious Jersey, moored off Long Island

Then in December the POW revolutionaries began to die in heaps.

The British military commander, Lt. Gen. Sir William Howe, released nearly 2,300 soldiers on parole. He informed George Washington that only a few remained in New York.

But what happened to the other revolutionary prisoners – nearly 2,000 of them? One patriot said he sent “one half to the world of spirits for want of food.”

Brutal Example

Howe loaded hundreds of starving prisoners onto transport ships. Some couldn’t make it that far. Ethan Allen, on parole himself, saw several prisoners fall dead in the streets as they tried to walk to the vessels in New York Harbor.

The Glasgow transported about 200 revolutionary prisoners to Milford, Conn. At least 20 died on the way. Nineteen more died on their first night in Connecticut. Thirty-two were too sick to move once they landed. And many of those who could walk home died en route. Most of those who made it home died soon thereafter.

That first mass prisoner release ended January 27, 1777.

In February of 1777, Brig. Gen. Samuel Holden Parsons reported about three-fourths of paroled revolutionaries imprisoned near Lyme, Conn., had died already.

To the left is a sugar house in Manhattan that once held as many as 500 prisoners.

Even as Howe was releasing the POWs, Washington captured hundreds of Hessian troops during the Battle of Trenton. He ordered his men to treat them humanely.

“Let them have no reason to complain of our copying the brutal example of the British army in their treatment of our unfortunate brethren who have fallen into their hands,” Washington said.

But the British continued to abuse their revolutionary prisoners, and the newspapers continued to print the stories.

Prisoner Abuse

In 1777, the Continental Congress investigated prisoner abuse, which deeply dismayed John Adams. “I who would not hurt the Hair of the Head of any Animal . . . am obliged to hear continual Accounts of . . . the most tormenting Ways of starving and freezing, committed by our Enemies.”

The British gave the prisoners only a tiny amount of food, often just moldy biscuit and raw pork. Slop buckets overflowed with excrement, while ticks and lice infested the prisoners’ clothing. Thousands died of typhus, dysentery, smallpox and scurvy. Some revolutionary prisoners ate their own shoes and clothes.

The prisoners in one notorious prison, the Provost, complained of their treatment:

…they were put on the scanty allowance of two pounds hard biscuit, and two pounds of raw pork per week, without fuel to dress it. That they were frequently supplied with water from a pump where all kinds of filth was thrown, by which it was rendered obnoxious and unwholesome, the effects of which were to cause much sickness. That good water could have been as easily obtained. That they were denied the benefit of a hospital; not permitted to send for medicine, nor to have the services of a doctor, even when in the greatest distress. That married men and others who lay at the point of death were refused permission to have their wives or other relations admitted to see them. And that these poor women, for attempting to gain admittance, were often beaten from the prison door.

Devastating Impact

Some prisoners sold their shoes and clothes to the guards in exchange for food. Others weren’t so lucky. The guards put poison powder in their food because they wanted their watches or silver buckles.

William Howe

The British also tormented some revolutionary prisoners, making them sit on coffins with ropes around their necks and threatening to hang them.

In many cases, the British hoped to starve the prisoners into submission, hoping they’d enlist in the British army or navy. Some succumbed, but most resisted.

The sacrifice was enormous. Litchfield, Conn., for example, sent 36 men to the defense of Fort Washington. Only six returned. Four died in battle, but the British took 32 prisoner. Of those, 20 died in the New York prisons and six on the way home.

Danbury sent 100 men to defend Fort Washington. The British took 50 prisoner and held them in a sugar house. Two survived.

The historian Burrows reminds us to acknowledge their sacrifice. The United States wasn’t just made by “those gentlemen in powdered wigs and knee britches we have heard so much about in recent years,” he wrote. The country was also made by “thousands upon thousands of mostly ordinary people who believed in something they considered worth dying for.”

With thanks to the Journal of the American Revolution, 1776 – The Horror Show by Brian O’Malley and the Long Island History Journal, The Prisoners of New York by Edward G. Burrows. This story was updated in 2021.

2 comments 1.1k views

The Prohibition Era Begins in Litchfield, Conn. in 1789

In 1789, Ephraim Kirby, Jebediah Strong, David Buel and more than 100 of their neighbors decided to swear off strong drink. They came together to form the beginnings of the Litchfield Temperance Association, a movement that would evolve into the Prohibition Era more than a century later.

The pact the men signed represented a radical departure in everyday thinking about alcohol that gained popularity after the American Revolution. At that time, cider, beer and wine were liberally consumed and distilled spirits were dispensed to workers. Many stores commonly provided a free dram of an alcoholic drink to customers at any time of day.

Benjamin Rush by Charles Wilson Peale

Birth of the Prohibition Era

As early as 1785, Pennsylvania’s Dr. Benjamin Rush challenged common assumptions about the health effects of alcohol. His temperance/intemperance thermometer ranked beverages in relation to their benefits and drawbacks. The likely outcomes to people who consumed each beverage accompanied the thermometer. Water, milk and small beer, he proposed, inspired serenity of mind, long life and a good reputation. Wine, porter and strong beer brought a person cheerfulness and nourishment when taken in small amounts at mealtime. People who restricted their drinking to these beverages were considered temperate, by Rush’s measures.

The Prohibition Era begins

From there Rush’s scale plunges into intemperance, ascribing outcomes to the various drinks. Punch: sickness, idleness, gaming and jail. From there matters got worse. The beverages increased in potency through toddys, cordials and straight gin, brandy and rum. Similarly, the consequences escalated from lying, swearing and racing horses to swindling, burglary and murder. Eventually they led to insanity, dropsy, epilepsy, hospitalization, life in prison and the gallows.

Litchfield Temperance

The men of Litchfield clearly accepted the wisdom of avoiding intemperance. The pact they signed read as follows:

So many are the avenues leading to human misery that it is impossible to guard them all. Such evils as are produced by our own folly and weakness are within our power to avoid. The immoderate use which the people of this State make of Distilled Spirits is undoubtedly an evil of this kind. It is obvious to every person of the smallest observation that from this pernicious practice follows a train of evils difficult to be enumerated.

Like Rush, they ascribed dire outcomes to strong drink.

The morals are corrupted, property is exhausted, and health destroyed. And it is most sincerely to be regretted that from a mistaken idea that distilled spirits are necessary to laboring men, to counteract the influence of heat and give relief from severe fatigue, that a most valuable class of citizens have been led to contract a habit of such dangerous tendency. Hence arises the inability to pay public taxes, to discharge private debts, and to support and educate families.

The Prohibition Era Begins

And then they took a pledge:

Seriously considering this subject, and the frowns of Divine Providence in denying many families in this part of the country the means of a comfortable subsistence the present year by failure of the principal crops of the earth, we think it peculiarly the duty of every good citizen to unite his efforts to reform a practice which leads so many to poverty, distress, and ruin. Whereupon we do hereby associate, and mutually agree, that hereafter we will carry on our business without the use of distilled spirits as an article of refreshment, either for ourselves or those whom we employ, and that instead thereof we will serve our workmen with wholesome food and common simple drinks of our own production.

Jebediah Strong

The temperance men appended to the pact a statement signed by Jebediah Strong only:

By necessity and on principle, in consequence of little experiment and much observation, I have effectually adopted and adhered to the salutatory plan herein proposed during several months past, and am still resolved to persevere until convinced that any alteration will be productive of some greater good, whereof at present I have no apprehensions whilst human nature remains the same.

The signers of the pact included Litchfield’s most influential men. Ephraim Kirby, whose name appears first on the list, was a Revolutionary War veteran and political leader who became a confidante of Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson appointed him as tax collector for Connecticut and later a judge in the new territory of Mississippi. He was busy at work establishing the first court system in the territory that would become Alabama when yellow fever struck him down in 1804 at the age of just 47.

David Buel, meanwhile, championed the temperance movement for decades.

First Congregational Church of Litchfield, where Lyman Beecher preached his temperance sermons

Litchfield took center stage in the temperance movement again in 1826 when Rev. Lyman Beecher delivered six sermons on intemperance. They were published in multiple translations and were popular for decades. Buel, meanwhile, moved to Troy, N.Y. , where he lived to 90. He never stopped spreading the temperance message.

Jebediah Strong

For Jebediah Strong, however, the path of temperance proved too difficult. Strong, who had signed the addendum to the pact declaring he intended to abstain from spirits, resumed drinking.

Strong was a political leader, town official and lawyer. One uncharitable biographer labeled him a pettifogger, an unscrupulous and petty lawyer. An unpleasant, short, limping man, he held power by pretending to take all sides of an issue, depending on who he spoke to. He was especially unpleasant in his home. In 1790 he was arrested for beating his wife.

Tapping Reeve

Judge Tapping Reeve (who also signed the temperance pact), ordered Strong placed under bail of 1000 pounds and scheduled for trial. The Hartford Monitor reported: “Nothing could be more satisfactory than this sentence among his acquaintances in Litchfield and elsewhere, who have long known the infamy of his private character, while his hypocrisy and intrigues have been imposed upon the good people of the state at large.”

In the end, Strong’s wife, Susannah, divorced him. He died in 1802, a beggar and a drunkard.

Thanks to: Sketches and Chronicles of the Town of Litchfield, by Payne Kenyon Kilbourne. This story was updated in 2022.

Image of Congregational Church: Highsmith, C. M., photographer. (2011) First Congregational Church, Litchfield, Connecticut. Litchfield United States Connecticut, 2011. October. [Photograph] Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2012631563/.

0 comment 425 views

François-Jean de Chastellux Meets 250 New Hampshire Cows in 1780

François-Jean de Chastellux, the French philosopher, writer and general, travelled to America in 1780 as part of the French expeditionary force in the American Revolution.

He would record his travels in a book published after the war, providing a colorful description of his journey and the conditions he discovered along the way.

de Chastellux

Chastellux would become a lifelong friend of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. But one group of men who impressed him were far from the American aristocracy. They were a group of farmers he encountered in Pawling, N.Y., at a tavern run by Col. Andrew Morehouse. At first, Chastellux expected the men to obstruct his journey from Litchfield. But he soon found otherwise, as he reported in his journal.

de Chastellux by Charles Wilson Peale

He learned, with concern, that the little inn where he planned to spend the night was occupied by 13 farmers and 250 oxen coming from New Hampshire. de Chastellux found the oxen the least inconvenient of the company, as they grazed in a nearby meadow. They didn’t even have a dog to guard them, he wrote. But the farmers, their horses and dogs had taken over the inn.

“They were conveying to the army a part of the contingent of provisions furnished by New Hampshire,” he wrote. He called it “sort of a tax divided among the inhabitants.” On some, he wrote, the imposition amounted to 150, on others to 100, or 80 pounds of meet, according to their abilities.

Cows resting in an open landscape by T.S. Cooper

The farmers agreed among themselves to furnish a larger, or smaller sized ox, he wrote. They weighed each animal, and then some farmers and drovers conveyed the livestock to the army. “The farmers are allowed about a dollar a day, and their expenses, as well as those of the cattle, are paid them on their return, according to the receipts they are obliged to produce from the inn-keepers where they have halted, wrote de Chastellux.

Generally, it cost three pence to five pence English per night for each ox, he wrote.

Distress

While his people endeavored to find him lodgings, he wrote, he informed himself of those particulars. “But all the rooms, and all the beds were occupied by these farmers, and I was in great distress,” he wrote. Then a tall, fat man — the principal person among them, learned who he was and came to him. He assured de Chastellux, “that neither he, nor his companions would ever suffer a French General Officer to want a bed.” The fat man said they’d rather sleep on the floor. They were used to it, and it “would be attended with no inconvenience.”

de Chastellux replied that as a military man he was as accustomed as they to make the earth his bed. “We had long debates on this part of politesse,” he wrote. They spoke in a rustic manner, “but more cordial and affecting than the best turned compliments.”

But our acquaintance did not end there. “After parting from each other, I to take some repose, they to continue drinking their grog and cider, they came into my room,” he wrote.

They found de Chastellux tracing his route by the map of the country. “This map excited their curiosity,” he wrote. “They saw there with surprise and satisfaction the places they had passed through. They asked me if they were known in Europe, and if it was there I had bought my maps.”

Handshakes All Around

de Chasetllux assured them, “We knew America as well as the countries adjoining to us.”

“They seemed much pleased,” he wrote. But their joy had no bounds when they saw New Hampshire on the map.

They called their companions in the next room, and de Chastellux’ room filled with the “strongest and most robust men I had hitherto seen in America.”

“On my appearing struck with their size and stature, they told me that the inhabitants of New-Hampshire were strong and vigorous,” he wrote. They gave as reasons: excellent air, their only occupations was agriculture, and their blood was unmixed. The country, they told him, was inhabited by ancient families who had emigrated from England.

“We parted good friends, touching, or rather shaking hands in the English fashion, and they assured me that they were very happy to have an opportunity to shake hands with a French General,” he concluded.

This story was updated in 2022.

Image of cows: By https://wellcomeimages.org/indexplus/obf_images/a1/9b/b30af428b57c60b64918f514afdf.jpgGallery: https://wellcomeimages.org/indexplus/image/V0021726.htmlWellcome Collection gallery (2018-03-27): https://wellcomecollection.org/works/h83wub48 CC-BY-4.0, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=36550970.

0 comment 211 views

When Cleveland Belonged to Connecticut

The City of Cleveland and nearly all of Northeastern Ohio once belonged to Connecticut. The land, 3.5 million acres of it, was called the Western Reserve.

It’s why a university in Cleveland is called Case Western Reserve. Towns in Northeastern Ohio have Connecticut names like Norwich, Saybrook, New London, Litchfield, Mansfield and Plymouth. Some of those towns even have New England-style commons and white meetinghouses.

Cleveland-area schoolchildren, at least the ones paying attention, know well the story of Connecticut pioneer Moses Cleaveland. He brought 50 men and women to the shores of Lake Erie in 1796. Less well known is how Connecticut got the land in the first place.

Colonial Imperialism

Moses Cleaveland

For a small colony, Connecticut had big ambitions. It wanted to own parts of New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and much of America’s western frontier – all the way to the Pacific Ocean.

So in 1662, Connecticut’s governor John Winthrop the Younger went to England with the draft of a charter extending the colony’s lands and political rights. He intended to present it to King Charles II and ask for his approval and royal signature.

He had a little problem, though. Connecticut’s Puritans had supported Oliver Cromwell during the English Civil War. Cromwell deposed Charles’ father, King Charles I. A panel of 59 commissioners – ‘king killers’ – sat in judgment of Charles and signed his death warrant. He was beheaded in 1649. Eleven years later, Charles II returned to the throne and sought revenge on the men who ordered his father’s execution. He had Cromwell’s body dug up and his head cut off for display outside the palace.

Three king killers fled to America, where they found refuge in New Haven. Because of that, Winthrop knew Charles had attitude about Connecticut.

When Winthrop arrived in England, he got an audience with the King. At the start of the interview, Winthrop showed him ‘a rich, massive gold finger-ring.’ The King’s father had given it to his own father, Massachusetts Gov. John Winthrop, ‘as a mark of honor for valuable political services.’ The gesture moved Charle to tears.

So Charles granted Connecticut a charter extending its north and south boundaries to the Pacific Ocean. No one really knew how much land that meant. That was the same charter hidden in the Charter Oak when Gov. Edmund Andros tried to seize it.

Western Reserve

In Ohio, the Western Reserve was a 120-mile strip of land from Lake Erie to a line just south of what is now Akron and Youngstown.

At the western end of the Reserve, 500,000 acres were set aside for people whose homes were burned by British troops during the American Revolution. The land was called the Firelands and the Sufferers’ Lands. Most of the fire victims sold their claims to land speculators. Few ever settled in the Firelands.

After the American Revolution, Connecticut gave up some of its land to the federal government in exchange for its war debt, but it hung on to the Western Reserve.

Map of the Western Reserve

Meanwhile, prominent and wealthy men formed the Connecticut Land Company to buy the Western Reserve and divide it into lots.

Most of them came from the Town of Suffield, which once belonged to Massachusetts. The speculators included:

Peleg Sanford, the grandson of Anne Hutchinson and later governor of the Colony of Rhode Island.
Pierpont Edwards, the son of minister Jonathan Edwards, uncle of Aaron Burr and ancestor of J. P. Morgan.
Aaron Olmsted, a sea captain who made his fortune in the China trade.
Moses Cleaveland, an able and energetic lawyer and surveyor who had served in the American Revolution.

Sometime around 1795, Connecticut sold the Western Reserve to the Connecticut Land Company for $1,200,000. Cleaveland was sent to survey the land into townships and negotiate with the Indians who lived there.

Becoming Cleveland

Cleveland Skyline

Moses Cleaveland brought a surveying party of 50 with him. Some traveled on horseback, some by boats. The arrived at the mouth of Conneaut Creek and Lake Erie on July 4, 1796.

The group then celebrated its arrival in what would become Cleveland with toasts to the president of the United States, the state of New Connecticut and the Connecticut Land Company.

Then they wished the ‘Port of Independence and the 50 sons and daughters who have entered it this day be successful and prosperous.”

“May these 50 sons and daughters multiply in 16 years 16 times 50,” they toasted. And they wished every person ‘have his bowsprit trimmed and ready to enter every port that opens.”

They then gave three cheers, drank several pails of grog and went to bed.

Cleaveland Becomes Cleveland

On July 22, Cleaveland landed at the mouth of the Cuyahoga River. He climbed the bank and saw a beautiful plain that looked like a good place for a city. So he paced out a 10-acre town common that is now Public Square. His followers called the place Cleaveland.

Moses Cleaveland then returned to Connecticut and died there some years later. He never returned to the Western Reserve.

There are several stories about how Cleaveland became Cleveland. One says a newspaper editor in 1830 discovered that ‘Cleaveland’ was too long for a headline, so he left out the ‘a.’ Another is that Cleaveland’s surveyors spelled it Cleveland on the original map.

In 1800, Connecticut finally gave up its sovereignty over the Western Reserve. Ohio then became a state in 1803.

Map: CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1290884. Photo of Cleveland: By No machine-readable author provided. Avogadro94~commonswiki assumed (based on copyright claims). – No machine-readable source provided. Own work assumed (based on copyright claims)., CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1061960

This story was updated in 2022.

8 comments 1.2k views

William Franklin, Ben’s Son, Spent the Revolutionary War in a Connecticut Jail

The American Revolution created rifts in many families with both patriots and loyalists among their members, none more disruptive than the divide between William Franklin and his famous patriot father Benjamin.

Benjamin Franklin (Joseph Siffred Duplessis) and William Franklin (by Mather Brown)

Benjamin’s son William Franklin was most likely born around 1730 out of an illegitimate relationship that later became a common-law marriage. But Benjamin Franklin did not ignore his son. Though the boy was largely raised by his caustic mother, Deborah, Franklin nonetheless looked out for him.

The two were companions and friends, and Franklin helped his son obtain an education and his early jobs.

Franklin ensured that his son had a military position in the French and Indian Wars. The two worked together publishing Poor Richard’s Almanack. And Benjamin lobbied in London for William Franklin’s appointment to royal governor of New Jersey in 1762.

Gov. William Franklin

In the early days of the American Revolution, Franklin wanted even greater things for his son, then a leading political figure in America.

His father urged William Franklin to resign as governor and join the patriot cause. William refused, outlasting all other colonial governors well into 1775, because of his and his father’s good name.

George Washington, 1776

In August, Benjamin visited his son in New Jersey to give him the full picture of the war’s developments. The British were collecting an army of Hessians and the Americans were coalescing around George Washington.

Benjamin assured the young man the patriots would welcome him with open arms. He said William could get a generalship in Washington’s army because of his earlier military service and his prominence.

William Franklin stubbornly refused his father’s advice. He had twin arguments for his position. One, he remained loyal to the king; and two, he did not believe most Americans would support the Revolution.

King George III

William would lead one last quixotic attempt to lead the colonies in a reconciliation with the king. But the effort failed. His actions formally put him at odds with Benjamin, a reluctant but vigorous patriot leader.

William Franklin might have thought reconciliation between England and the colonies would give him greater political power in America. But as the war with Great Britain gained momentum, so did the fight between father and son.

Just Shoot Me

In June of 1776, rebels in New Jersey exiled Gov. William Franklin to Connecticut, where Gov. Jonathan Trumbull sided with the patriots.

The patriots placed him under guard at Wallingford and then Middletown. However, the stubborn governor-in-exile refused to submit to his captors. He continued gathering intelligence for loyalists and helping protect Connecticut Tories’ property by issuing them royal pardons.

In May of 1777, armed guards took William Franklin to Litchfield. They placed him in solitary confinement in the cell reserved for prisoners condemned to death. His filthy room contained a straw mat on the floor and nothing else – no bed, no seat, no toilet facility.

Jonathan Trumbull

In September, he wrote to Gov. Jonathan Trumbull: “I suffer so much in being thus buried alive, having no one to speak to day or night, and for the want of air and exercise, that I should deem it a favor to be immediately taken out and shot.”

William Franklin sent a plea to George Washington, asking to visit his ailing wife. Washington replied he could not countermand the Continental Congress, which had confined him. He did, however, ask the Congress to grant a furlough for Franklin so he might visit his wife in New York. Congress refused, and Franklin’s wife died while he was imprisoned.

Release

Finally, in December of 1777, the governor removed him from the Litchfield jail and allowed him to be imprisoned in a house at East Windsor. By now, the conditions of the jail had taken their toll. William Franklin had lost his teeth and hair and was desperately ill.

In 1778 he was exchanged for other prisoners and allowed to go to New York. He would soon travel to England.

Benjamin Franklin made no efforts after 1775 to assist his son in the predicament he chose. The two men would reconcile somewhat in 1784, but never became the close companions they had been earlier in life.

Benjamin Franklin would leave his son very little of his property and virtually excised him from his autobiography.

This story about William Franklin was updated in 2022.

8 comments 1.8k views

Newer Posts

Older Posts