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Wallingford

Polly Peabody, The Bohemian Blueblood Who Invented the Bra

Inventing the bra was possibly the least interesting thing Polly Peabody did in her life.

Polly Peabody as Caresse Crosby and her whippet, Clytoris

Born Mary Phelps Jacob, she was called Polly Peabody during her first upper-crust marriage and Caresse Crosby during her scandalous second. She and her husband Harry Crosby personified the Lost Generation as they cavorted recklessly through Europe. After he committed suicide (and murdered his mistress), she devoted herself to business – publishing, not underwear. She had an affair with an African-American boxer and a third marriage to a football player 18 years her junior before dying in Rome at the age of 78.

Polly Peabody

Mary Phelps ‘Polly’ Jacob was descended from Puritans, but was anything but puritanical. Her ancestors included Plymouth Colony governor William Bradford and William Phelps, founder of Dorchester, Mass., and Windsor, Conn.

She was born in New Rochelle, N.Y., on April 20, 1891. Her family divided its time among New Rochelle, Manhattan and Watertown, Conn.

She grew up, she later said, ‘in a world where only good smells existed.’ If she wanted something, she usually got it.

Polly Peabody Invents the Bra

Polly went to boarding school at Rosemary Hall (now Choate Rosemary Hall) in Wallingford, Conn., graduating at 19.

Bra diagram, 1914

But from the age of 12 she prepared to make her debut, attending one to three balls every night and sleeping until noon every day.

One evening she put on a sheer gown for yet another debutante ball. She noticed her corset stuck out of the top of the low-cut bodice. She asked her maid to fetch two handkerchiefs, some pink ribbon, a needle, thread and pins. They quickly fashioned a simple bra.

After the dance her friends demanded to know the secret to her risqué look. When a stranger offered her a dollar if she’d make a bra, she realized she had the makings of a business.

On Feb. 12, 1914 she filed for a patent, and in November the United States Patent and Trademark Office granted her one for the ‘Backless Brassiere.’

Her lingerie career was interrupted by her marriage the next year to another Puritan blueblood, Richard Peabody. His grandfather, Endicott Peabody, who founded the Groton School, officiated at the wedding.

Polly Peabody may have started her bra business because she couldn’t rely on her husband. He had little interest in their two children, and when he wasn’t going off to war he liked to get drunk and watch buildings burn.

Home of the Bra

Polly Peabody started the Fashion Form Brassiere Company – your basic sweatshop — on Washington Street in Boston. In her autobiography she admitted she only made a few hundred bras for a few department store accounts. The shop, though, turned out to be a good place for trysts with her new lover, Harry Crosby.

Washington Street in 1920

She met Crosby in 1920 at a party on Nantasket Beach while Peabody tried to dry out.

Eventually, she sold her patent for $1,500 to the Warner Brothers Corset Company in Bridgeport, Conn. The Warner brothers, Lucien and Ira, had made millions selling Coraline Health Corsets. Three-fourths of the corsets sold in America came from Bridgeport, and most came from the Warner brothers.

The company began to make the backless bra in mass quantities. It got a boost from the U.S. War Industries Board in 1917 when it asked women to stop buying corsets to free up metal for World War I. Warner Brothers made more than $15 million from the bra patent.

Later Warner Brothers became Warnaco and manufactured underwear, swimwear and other apparel. The company moved out of Bridgeport in 1996, and developers converted the enormous factory into lofts.

The Warner Brothers factory

Caresse Crosby

Harry Crosby was a wealthy Boston Brahmin and World War I veteran. He and Polly Peabody had sex within two weeks of meeting. Then they married in 1922 after she divorced Peabody. They moved to Paris, where they spent freely, partied like mad, took drugs and lovers and started Black Sun Press.

Harry and Caresse Crosby

Polly Peabody became Caresse Crosby. She and Harry then started publishing their own poetry and the early works of such Lost Generation writers as Ernest Hemingway, Archibald MacLeish, Anais Nin and James Joyce.

By 1928, Caresse Crosby had started an intense affair with photographer Henry Cartier-Bresson.

Harry Crosby killed his lover and committed suicide that year. Caresse threw herself into the Black Sun Press after Harry’s death.

Eventually Caresse Crosby broke it off with Cartier-Bresson and fell in love with Canada Lee, an African American boxer and actor. She followed that affair with marriage to an unemployed actor and football player 18 years younger than she, Selbert Saffold Young. They bought a plantation in Virginia because he wanted to be a farmer. He often got drunk and stayed away from home. Caresse ghostwrote pornography for Henry Miller.

Later she opened a modern art gallery in Washington, D.C. She also founded Women Against War and started an artists colony in Rome in an old castle. A film, Always Yes, Caresse, was made of a tour of the castle. You can watch a clip from it here.

Caresse Crosby died in Rome on Jan. 24, 1970. Of the bra, she once wrote,

I can’t say the brassiere will ever take as great a place in history as the steamboat, but I did invent it.

This story about Polly Peabody inventing the bra was updated in 2023.

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Six Churches (All Gorgeous) Designed by Ralph Adams Cram

Once the most famous architect of his day, Ralph Adams Cram designed many churches, schools and libraries throughout New England. He also planned much of Princeton University, the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and the great cathedral St. John the Divine in New York City.

Phillips Church, by Ralph Adams Cram

Ralph Adams Cram

Cram was born Dec. 16, 1863, in Hampton Falls, N.H., to an old New England family. His parents named him for Ralph Waldo Emerson and John Adams.

He became not only a prominent architect but an Anglo-Catholic, or High Episcopalian. He also founded the Catholic magazine Commonweal. Cram headed MIT’s architecture department for seven years. In 1926, he made the cover of Time magazine.

Though an ardent advocate of Gothic Revival, Ralph Adams Cram also designed buildings in the Colonial Revival and Art Deco styles.

Cram died Sept. 22, 1942. Unlike his contemporary, Frank Lloyd Wright, his fame has dimmed. The Episcopal Church, though, celebrates his birthday as a feast day.

Here, then, are six churches designed by Ralph Adams Cram, one in each state. If you know of another, please mention it in the comments section.

Seymour St. John Chapel

In 1924, The Choate School in Wallingford, Conn., had 339 male students and a pressing need for a chapel. (John F. Kennedy would later attend Choate.)

Then-headmaster George St. John wrote in his autobiography, “To run a school without a chapel seemed like running a line for light and power without a powerhouse.”

To raise the $100,000 to pay for the chapel, alumni, parents and friends contributed, as did students who sold bricks for $5.

Ralph Adams Cram designed the chapel in the Colonial Revival style. Choate broke ground for the building in May 1924 and dedicated it in 1925.

Choate merged with a girl’s prep school in 1971 and became Choate Rosemary Hall. In 1998, the school rededicated the chapel and renamed it after the Rev. Seymour St. John, headmaster from 1947 to 1973.

All Souls Congregational Church

In 1911, a great fire destroyed much of Bangor, Maine, including the First Congregational church, which overlooked the central business district. The Third Congregational Church also burned in the fire, so the two parishes joined together to build a new church on the site of the First’s old one.

The two parishes commissioned Ralph Adams Cram, who designed an exceptionally creative (some say odd) Gothic Revival church. He incorporated flying buttresses, a rose window, a slender copper-clad spire, a small bell tower and stone from the Third’s building.

The church, which occupies a city block, once faced a row of stately homes. Today it looks across at offices, gas stations and retail stores.

All Saints Church, Ashmont

One stormy Sunday, a snow squall stranded Mary Lothrop Peabody and her husband Oliver near the small wooden chapel of All Saints in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood. They were on their way from their estate in Milton to church. They had just lost a young child. Coincidentally, so had the rector of the All Saints chapel. The storm hit them on Dec. 28, 1879, the Feast of the Holy Innocents.

The Peabodys stopped in the chapel instead of forging on to church in Boston. The sermon moved them deeply. The minister preached, “Rachel, weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.”

Oliver had co-founded the investment bank Kidder, Peabody. He and Mary decided to build a new All Saints church. They, like Cram, were children of Unitarian ministers who became Anglo-Catholics, aka High Episcopalians.

The Peabodys hired young architects, Ralph Adams Cram and his partner Bertram Goodhue. They persuaded the Peabodys (or perhaps they needed little persuading) to revive the Gothic style in the design of All Saints. It was Cram’s first church. Cram biographer Douglas Shand-Tucci said of All Saints, Cram’s first church:

A significant landmark in American architectural history, All Saints’ is, of its type, Cram and Goodhue’s masterpiece, and a model for American parish church architecture for the first half of the 20th century.

All Saints Church

The Episcopal All Saints Church, Peterborough, is one of Cram’s small masterpieces, considered by some to be the most beautiful church in America. It’s set back from the road on four acres in the Monadnock Region of New Hampshire. Ralph Adams Cram modeled it after St. Mary the Virgin Church in Iffley, Oxfordshire, England.

Cram stressed local workmen and local materials – hence, he ordered the building built of granite. Some of the finest Arts and Crafts artisans in the region decorated the interior: woodcarver Johannes Kirchmayer, ironworker Frank Koralewski and stained glass artisan Charles Connick.

Mary Lyon Cheney Schofield commissioned the building in 1913 to honor her family. Her first husband, Charles Cheney, was the son of the founder of American Express. He died in 1897, shortly before their third child was born. Her second husband, Harvard professor William Schofield, died in 1920. One of her sons died in World War I. Mary lived until 1947. She, her husbands and her son are interred in the chapel.

Emmanuel Church

In the early 19th century, many residents of South Newport, R.I., couldn’t afford to attend church because they had to buy pew seats. So in 1841, three women from Trinity Church began to hold religious meetings in their homes.

Eight years later, with 88 members, they bought an empty Baptist church. Within three years, the Rhode Island Episcopal diocese admitted Emmanuel Church. The parish soon built a wooden Tudor-style church.

By the turn of the century, the old church needed repair or replacement.

Rhode Island’s prominent Brown family stepped in and commissioned Ralph Adams Cram to design Emmanuel Church in Newport. He later designed other buildings for the princely Browns.

Natalie Bayard Brown built the church in memory of her husband, John Nicholas Brown I. It took two years to build, reaching completion in 1902. Cram’s partner, Bertram Goodhue, designed the rich interior ornamentation, which went wildly over budget.

In the early 1930s, concert organist E. Power Biggs served at the church.

Today, Emmanuel still prides itself on welcoming anyone who wishes to worship.

St. James Episcopal Church

The parish of St. James was organized in the summer of 1826, when Woodstock, Vt., was a prosperous mill town that produced scythes, carding machines, woolens, carriages and tack.

It was built in time for Christmas Eve service in 1827 and consecrated the next year. The founders of the parish bought stone for the church, but discovered quicksand under the land donated for the site. They built a wooden frame church instead, and put a Paul Revere bell in the tower.

In 1907, St. James got the stone church its founders wanted. Ralph Adams Cram designed the building, considered one of his most distinguished smaller churches. He incorporated the brass pulpit and lectern, the marble font and three stained glass windows, one of which came from Tiffany studios.

If you’d like to read more about Gothic Revival buildings in New England, see our story about Henry Vaughan.

Photos: St. James Episcopal Church, AlexiusHoratius~commonswiki; Emmanual Church By Swampyank at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20434397; All Saints Church, By John Phelan – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19104034; All Saints, Ashmont By Jim Roberts – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=51960817; Seymour St. John Chapel, Wallingford, Conn. By Daderot (Own work) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.

This story about Ralph Adams Cram was updated in 2021.

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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.

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The Mystery of the Wallingford Shoebox Murder

The Wallingford shoebox murder was discovered on the Sunday morning of Aug. 8, 1886. Three young men rambling through farm country happened to stumble across it.

Edward and Joseph Terrill and a friend were walking along an old logging road about three miles from the town center. Then Edward’s dog approached a wooden crate under a tangle of huckleberry bushes. Edward Terrill “thought nothing strange until his dog approached the box and acted in a strange manner, sniffing about the box and whining,” the Hartford Courant reported.

The lettering on the outside of the 30” by 12” wooden box said its contents were a half-dozen pairs of ‘machine sewed, fine stitched’ men’s shoes. But it gave off a peculiar smell. The young men pried it open and discovered a bloody dismembered male torso. Someone had wrapped it in straw and tar paper.

A medical examiner could only determine the body belonged to a healthy man, 30 to 40 years old. He had died five to 10 days earlier. Further examination found in his stomach a large quantity of arsenic – which had also caused the sensational murder of beautiful Jennie Cramer five years earlier.

Head Hunt

At first people thought the body belonged to Albert Cooley, an old soldier who had recently taken a $1,500 pension from a local slaughterhouse and then went missing. But then Cooley turned up alive.

Another theory held that an arsonist who had set a number of fires recently had turned on his accomplice. A third blamed an unidentified tramp who hung around the train station.

By September the victim’s identity was still unknown, though the woods had been searched and police had combed through files and pored over missing persons reports.

Local butchers fell under suspicion. When one butcher’s employee mysteriously disappeared, police thought he might have been the victim – until they found him alive and healthy.

On Sept. 26, a farmer found the victims’ arms and legs near the spot where the young men found the box. The had, though, never turned up. Rumors circulated that the head had been found in a well, but that proved false.

Wallingford, the Quinnipiac River

Wallingford Shoebox Traced

The box itself was traced to a Fall River shoe factory, which had sent it to a shoe dealer in Chicago. The dealer had thrown it behind his store and several months later sold it to a man who disappeared. That sparked more rumors that the victim was somehow connected to the Haymarket Riots.

A local prostitute, Mabel Gage, told police she knew all about the Wallingford Shoebox Murder. Two years later she committed suicide.

A constable claimed he knew the murderer but would take the knowledge to his grave. He did.

No one ever solved the Wallingford Shoebox Murder. The old logging road where the box was found is still known as Shoebox Road.

Read more about the Wallingford Shoebox Murder in True Crime: Connecticut: The State’s Most Notorious Criminal Cases by Brian Ethier. This story was updated in 2022.

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Moses Dunbar, The Other Connecticut Man Hanged in the Revolution

Moses Dunbar was hanged in Hartford, Conn., on March 19, 1777 – and his father, it is believed, offered the hemp for the noose.

One of these is probably Moses Dunbar’s grave.

Moses was 30 years old, widowed, with five children. He had just remarried after his first wife died. As he approached death – ‘the terrible crisis of my earthly fate’ – he was at peace with his God and his conscience and had little doubt of his future happiness.

Before Moses Dunbar died, he wrote out his final words in a small 10-page booklet. He read them to the large crowd assembled for his execution.

Moses Dunbar had close relatives, Stephen and Ruth Graves. The Graves family farm was located a mile or two up the road from East Plymouth, where it is believed his family re-buried his body in the Episcopal cemetery.

In the mid-20^th century, a couple fascinated by colonial homes found the Graves homestead, dismantled it and moved it to New Canaan, Conn. In the process of dismantling, a small booklet 10 pages long was found in the walls. Those papers were the long-lost documents of the last words of Moses Dunbar.

His Life

Moses Dunbar was born June 3, 1746, in Wallingford, Conn., the second of 16 children. A Congregationalist, he married Phebe Jerome. The couple had seven children, but two did not survive.

After much consideration, Phebe and Moses Dunbar joined the king’s army because they did not support the Declaration of Independence. Moses fled to Long Island, where he accepted an offer to become a captain in the king’s army. He later went back to his family in Bristol, where he was a member of Trinity Episcopal Church. He was arrested by local authorities for trying to recruit boys to the king’s army, released, but caught again some time later.

Moses Dunbar was sentenced to the gallows of Trinity Hill in Hartford. It is believed that Dunbar’s father offered the hemp for the noose. In his last days, he wrote his final speech. Dunbar recounted his father’s disliking him in ‘treating him harshly in many instances.’

Moses Dunbar was executed before a large concourse of spectators. His remains were taken to the Ancient Burying ground in Hartford, where he was placed in an unmarked grave. It is believed the family removed his body and brought him to the Episcopal cemetery in East Plymouth, where he was given a pauper’s grave. There are 23 limestone graves in East Church Cemetery, each unmarked.

Moses Dunbar was the only man in Connecticut history executed for treason.

Last Words

The following paragraphs are his last words:

I was born at Wallingford in Connecticut, the 3rd of June, A.D. 1746, being the second of sixteen children, all born to my Father by one wife. My Father, John Dunbar, was born also at Wallingford, and married Temperance Hall of the same place, about the year 1743. I was educated in the business of husbandry. About the year 1760, my father removed himself and family to Waterbury where, May ye 30th, 1764, I was married to Phebe Jearman of Farmington, by whom I have had seven children, five of whom are now living.

The first year of our marriage my wife and I, upon what we thought sufficient and rational motives, declared our conformity to the Church of England, the Rev. Mr. Scovill being a missionary at Waterbury. May 26th, 1770, my honored mother departed this life. She was a woman of much virtue and good reputation, whom I remember with the most honor and gratitude for the good care and affection she continually shewed me.

My joining myself to the Church occasioned a sorrowful breach between my father and me, which was the cause of his never assisting me but very little in gaining a livelihood, likewise it caused him to treat me very harshly in many instances, for which I heartily forgive him as well as my brothers, as I hope pardon from my God and my Saviour for my own offences. I likewise pray God to forgive them through Christ.

“From the time that the present unhappy misunderstanding between Great Britain and the Colonies began, I freely confess I never could reconcile my opinion to the necessity or lawfulness of taking up arms against Great Britain. Having spoken somewhat freely on the subject, I was attacked by a mob of about forty men, very much abused, my life threatened and nearly taken away, by which I was compelled to sign a paper containing many falsehoods. May 26th, 1776, my wife deceased in full hope of future happiness of which I doubt not in the least she is now in possession. The winter preceding this trial had been a time of distress with us, I, my wife and child sick all winter, another of my children had a broken leg, with many other afflictions which I omit relating.

I had now determined if possible to live peacable and give no offence, neither by word nor deed. I made some proposals of that kind to the committee, offering to enter into a voluntary confinement within the limits of a farm, instead of which I was carried to New Haven jail. But the sheriff and jailer both refused to receive me. A few days afterward I was taken again, carried before the Committee and by them ordered to suffer imprisonment during their pleasure not exceeding five months. When I had remained there about fourteen days, the authority of New Haven dismissed me. Finding my life uneasy, and, as I had reason to apprehend, in great danger, I thought it my safest method to flee to Long Island, which I accordingly did.

But having a desire to see my friends and children, and being under engagement of marriage with her [Esther Adams] who is my wife, the banns of marriage having been before published, I returned, and was married. Having a mind to remove my wife and family to Long Island, as a place of safety, I went there the second time, to prepare matters accordingly. When there, I accepted a captain’s warrant for the King’s service in Colonel Fanning’s regiment.

I returned to Connecticut, when I was taken and betrayed by Joseph Smith, and was brought before the authority of Waterbury. They refused to have anything to do with the affair. I was carried to Farmington, before Justice Strong and Justice Whitman, and by them committed to Hartford, where the Superior Court was then sitting. I was tried on Thursday, 23d of January, 1777, for High Treason against the State of Connecticut, by an act passed in October last, being accused of enlisting men for General Howe, and for having a captain’s commission for that purpose. I was adjudged guilty and on the Saturday following was brought to the bar of the court and received sentence of death. The time of my suffering was afterward fixed to be the 19th day of March, 1777.

Which tremendous and awful day now draws near, when I must appear before the Searcher of Hearts to give an account of all things done in my body whether they be good or evil. I shall soon be delivered from all the pains and troubles of this mortal state, and shall be answerable to None but the all-seeing God, who is infinitely just, and knoweth all things. As I am fully persuaded that I depart in a state of peace with God and my own conscience, I can have but little doubt of my future happiness, through the mercy of God and the merits of Jesus Christ. I have sincerely repented of all my sins, examined my heart, prayed earnestly to God for mercy, for the gracious pardon of my manifold and heinous sins, and now resign myself wholly to the disposal of my Heavenly Father, submitting my will to His. From the very bottom of my heart I forgive all enemies and earnestly pray God to forgive them all. Some part of J—-h S—–h’s evidence was false, but I heartily forgive him, and likewise sincerely beg forgiveness of all persons whom I have injured or offended.

Since my sentence I have been visited by sundry worthy ministers of the gospel, who have discoursed and prayed with me, among whom are the Rev. Marsh of Wethersfield, the Rev. Mr. Strong of Hartford, and The Rev. William Viets being my fellow prisoner [on account of practices in favor of the British government], has been indefatigable in affording every possible assistance to prepare me for the terrible crisis of my earthly fate. He administered to me the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper the Sunday before I was put to death. To those gentlemen, as well as all others who have shewed me kindness I give my most sincere thanks. I die in the profession and communion of the Church of England. Of my political sentence I leave the readers of these lines to judge. Perhaps it is neither reasonable nor proper that I should declare them in my present situation.

*** I cannot take the last farewell of my countrymen without desiring them to show kindness to my poor widow and children, not reflecting on them concerning the method of my death.

Now I have given you a narrative of all things material concerning my life with that veracity which you are to expect from one who is going to leave the world and appear before the God of truth. My last advice to you is that you, above all other concerns, prepare yourselves, [with God’s assistance], for your future, Eternal state. You will all shortly be as near Eternity as I now am, and will then view both worldly and spiritual things in the same light in which I do now view them. You will then see all wordly things to be but shadows, but vapours, but vanity of vanities, and the things of the Spiritual world to be of importance beyond all description. You will then be sensible that the pleasures of a good conscience, and the happiness of the near prospect of Heaven, infinitely outweighs all the Riches, Pleasure, and Honor of this mean, sinful world.

God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, have mercy on me, and receive my spirit.

Amen and Amen.
Moses Dunbar.

Hartford, March 18th, A. D., 1777

Moses Dunbar’s Message To His 5 Children

Moses Dunbar wrote the following to his children:

MY CHILDREN. Remember your Creator in the days of your youth. Learn your Creed, the Lord’s prayer, and the ten commandments and catechism, and go to church as often as you can, and prepare yourselves as soon as you are of a proper age to worthily partake of the Lord’s Supper. I charge you all, never to leave the Church. Read the Bible. Love the Saviour wherever you may be. I am now in Hartford jail condemned to death for high treason against the State of Connecticut. I was thirty years last June, the 14th. God bless you. Remember your Father and Mother and be dutiful to your present mother.

About the author: Thomas Vaughn is vice president of the Plymouth Historical Society and a clock collector. He also has an ongoing passion for local history. You can see the Plymouth Historical Society’s website here and Facebook page here. For a story by Thomas Vaughn about Connecticut clockmaker Eli Terry, click here.

This story about Moses Dunbar was updated in 2023.

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Flashback Photo: Quinnipiac River, Connecticut, 1907

Quinnipiac River, 1907

This vintage postcard view of the Quinnipiac River was taken in 1907 from Wallingford, Conn. ‘Quinnipiac’ comes from an Algonquian phrase meaning ‘long water land,’ and the river flows from the Dead River Swamp near New Britain to the Long Island Sound in New Haven. It was terribly polluted during the 19th and 20th centuries because of the industry along its banks. In 1886, the Connecticut Legislature passed the state’s first-ever pollution control measure to try to clean up the Quinnipiac. It banned the City of Meriden from discharging sewage into the river.

We thought a springlike scene would be a welcome sight for winter-weary eyes!

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