Historic Litchfield
Address Delivered at the Bi-Centennial
Celebration of the Town of Litchfield,
August 1, 1920
PRIVATELY PRINTED
1920
Fellow Citizens, Ladies and Gentlemen:
An attempt to epitomize the events of two hundredyears in an hour’s time is no easy task in any circumstances.It becomes doubly difficult when those yearsare filled with the stirring events that have markedthe history of this community. I do not hesitate tosay that no town of an equal number of inhabitants inthis or any other country has played so conspicuousa part in the affairs of a state or nation as has the townwhose two hundredth birthday we celebrate. Its veryconception originated in a historic tragedy. Years beforethe settlement of the town, our State officials becameconvinced of the hostility of the English Government andits determination to revoke our charter. To frustratethis design, in part, and to prevent the “Western Lands,”as they were called, which embraced the territory of thistown—in the words of the enactment—“From fallinginto the grasp of Sir Edmund Andros and permitting himto enrich himself and his minions,” the Legislature, onJanuary 26, 1686, ordered the sale of those lands to theTowns of Hartford and Windsor. A few years later,there dropped from our Royal Oak, in whose bosom safelylay concealed our hidden charter, an acorn, which byreason of this action of the legislature, sprouted and blossomedforth as the Patent of this Town.
A company was organized in 1718, upon the petitionof Lieutenant John Marsh and Deacon John Buel, andthey, with others, were incorporated by the General Assemblyat its May Session, 1719, to settle a town calledLitchfield on the “Western Lands” at Bantam. Theseoriginal settlers were residents of and men of affairs inthe Towns of Wethersfield, Hartford, Windsor, Lebanonand Farmington.
Among the list of settlers appear names that we hearuttered almost daily in our streets and today are fortunateto have some of their descendants still with us—Marsh,Buel, Woodruff, Webster, Griswold, Gibbs, Stoddard,Sanford and many others.
The plan of the village has never been materiallychanged. The settlers who had the first choice selectedthe southern portion of the town along the Bantam Riverand Little Pond, presumably because of the naturalmeadows which gave them hay for their cattle withoutwaiting the slow process of clearing the land,—the firstpitch was the upper corner of South Street and GallowsLane (then called Middle Street).
Following the usual custom of our Puritan forefathers,the original proprietors here built a church and then aschool house. From those two sources,