Joel Barlow. ***
* Joshua Porter, Eleazer Starr, Adams, and a negro.
** Robbins's Century Sermon.
*** This is quoted from the Columbiad, a long epic—the American Revolution its theme. The author was one of the poets of the Revolution whose writings have outlived them. Dwight, Trumbull, Humphries, Hopkins, and a few other men of literary reputation in Connecticut, were his friends and associates. He was a native of Reading, Connecticut, where he was born in 1755. He was the youngest in a family of ten. He graduated at Yale College in 1778. He recited an original poem on taking his bachelor's degree, but it possesses little merit. Four of his brothers were in the Continental army, and during his collegiate vacation he went to the field as chaplain. He was in the battle at White Plains, and displayed good courage in several minor engagements. He married the sister of the Hon. Abraham Baldwin, of New Haven, and in 1783 removed to Westford, where he commenced the publication of the "Mercury." He was admitted to the bar in 1785, and the same year, at the request of several Congregational ministers, pre pared and published an enlarged and improved edition of Watts's version of the Psalms, and added to them a collection of hymns, several of them his own. His "Vision of Columbus" was published in 1787. It was dedicated to the unfortunate Louis XVI. In London and Paris it was reprinted, and received considerable applause. He was engaged, with the literary friends just named, in publishing a satirical poem called he Anarchiad, which had considerable influence. Privileged Orders," and, the following year, The Conspiracy of the Kings. He had some correspondence with the French National Assembly, and, on going to Paris, was honored by the gift of citizenship, and made France his home. His time was devoted chiefly to commercial pursuits, by which he amassed a fortune. He traveled some on the Continent, and in Piedmont wrote a poem called "Hasty Pudding," the most popular of his writings. Returning to Par is in 1795, he was appointed by Washington consul at Algiers, with power to negotiate a treaty of commerce with the dey, and with Tunis and Tripoli. After an absence of seventeen years, he returned to the United States, and built a splendid mansion on the bank of the Potomac. In 1791 he published in London his "Advice to the Washington, known afterward as "Kalorama." The Colitabiad, the original Vision of Columbus greatly altered, was published in 1808, in a splendid quarto, richly illustrated. Its merits have been variously estimated, some regarding it as a fit companion of the Iliad, Aeneid, and Paradise Lost, and others allowing it only a small share of merit. Mr. Barlow had prepared to write a history of the United States, in 1811, when the design was frustrated by his being appointed minister plenipotentiary to the French government. In the autumn of 1812 he was invited by the Duke of Bassano to a conference with Napoleon at Wilna, in Poland. He traveled thitherward without halting to rest. The fatigue and exposure brought on an inflammation of the lungs, which caused his death, at an obscure village near Cracow named Zarnowica, on the 2d of December, in the fifty-fourth year of his age. He has been charged with abjuration of Christianity, but the accusation rests solely upon inferences. In private life he was pure and greatly beloved, and his public career was without spot or blemish.—Allen's Biographical Dictionary; Grisivold's American Poets.
Estimated Damage.—Revolutionary Men.—Levi Osborn.—Joel Barlow.—The Sandemanians.
Nineteen dwellings, the meeting-house of the New Danbury Society, and twenty-two stores and barns, with all their contents, were consumed. The exact amount of military stores that were destroyed is not known, but, from the best information that could be obtained, there were about three thousand barrels of pork, more than one thousand barrels of flour, four hundred barrels of beef, one thousand six hundred tents, and two thousand bushels of grain, besides many other articles, such as rum, wine, rice, army carriages, &c. A committee appointed to appraise the private losses estimated the whole amount at nearly eighty thousand dollars.
On inquiring for men of the Revolution in Danbury, I was referred to three, all of whom 1 had the pleasure of seeing. I first called upon the venerable Levi Osborn, in September, eighty-six years of age. He resided in Danbury when the village was burned, 1818 and remained, amid the jeers of Tories and the insults of the invaders, to protect an aged and sick parent. He is a leader of the sect of Sandemanians, of the division known as "Os-bornites." * His naturally strong mind was yielding to the pressure of bodily infirmities, yet he still lives, an honored representative of the men of 1776.