There were no religious exercises at the funerals, neither singing, praying, preaching, or reading of the scriptures. This was by way of revolt from former superstitious practices. The friends gathered, condoled with the afflicted ones, sat around a while and then the corpse was taken to the burying ground. After that the party returned to the house of the deceased, where much eating and drinking was indulged in, and if the weather permitted, outdoor games and horse races were in order. The next Sabbath an appropriate funeral sermon was preached. A bereaved husband or wife usually soon married again.
The meeting house was never heated, but the people, summoned by drum beat, attended it every Sabbath, morning and afternoon, even in the severest weather, although no Sabbath day house was erected here until 1745.
The sacramental bread often froze upon the communion plate, as did the ink in the minister's study. The people worked their minister very hard, as was the case in all early New England communities. They went to church not so much because they had to as because they wanted to. Church-going was their principal recreation. They demanded long prayers and two long sermons each Sabbath from their minister, usually on doctrinal points, which they acutely criticised. Services began at nine o'clock in the forenoon, and continued until five in the afternoon with an hour's intermission. Soldiers, fully armed, were always in attendance throughout the services ready to repel any attack upon the settlement.
It should be added, however, that with all their strictness in Sabbath keeping and catechising, in family and church discipline, there was great license in those days in speech and manner, much hard drinking, and rude merrymaking, due to their rough form of living. They were not what they wanted to be, nor what a loyal posterity perhaps longs to believe them. They had red blood in their veins. They were among the most enterprising men of their generation. They were backwoodsmen, the vanguard of that wonderful race which in two hundred years pushed westward the frontier from this place to the Pacific, fighting with man and beast the whole way, and sowed the land with vigorous sons and daughters.
The congregational singing in those days must have been an interesting performance. When the first settlers came to New England from the old country, they brought with them a few tunes to which they sang all the psalms and hymns. The proper mode of rendering these was through the nose. With the lapse of time and the advent of a new generation, these tunes became jangled together in inextricable confusion. The practice was for a deacon as leader to read a line of the psalm or hymn, and the congregation sang at it as best they could, each one using such tune as he chose, and often sliding from one tune to another in the same line or improvising as he went on. Finally, in 1721, the Rev. Thomas Walter of Roxbury, Mass., published a treatise, upon the grounds or rules of music or an introduction to the art of singing by rote, containing twenty-four tunes harmonized into three parts. The attempt to supersede the old Puritan tunes and restrict the liberty of the individual singers met with the greatest opposition and was long successfully resisted in all the churches in New England, so tenacious were they of the rights of the individual singer. It caused great dissension in the church at this place. Finally, in February, 1740, the church voted to half the time for the next year, singing the old way one Sabbath and the new way the next, and in 1741, at a meeting specially called to settle the matter, it was voted thirty to sixteen to sing thereafter after the new way.
No musical instruments were allowed in the meetinghouse. They had never seen or heard a church organ. But they knew that their fathers likened its sound to the bellowing of a bull, the grunting of a pig, and the barking of a dog, and had resisted its use in religious services even to the shedding of blood. Nor were flowers allowed in the church.
In those days in New England women were not thought to have minds worth educating, and they were brought up in extreme illiteracy. Nevertheless, their natural wit, brightness, and good sense made them very agreeable companions of the superior sex. And their influence over their husbands, sons and brothers, was quite as great as that of their more cultivated daughters of the present day. The refining, educating, stimulating influence of the women had much to do in withstanding the tendency back to barbarism, which life in an isolated and new community led to. The debt which is owed to them is incalculable.
As the descendants of those people assemble here to-day after the lapse of two hundred years, to commemorate their work and rejoice in all the strength, beauty and order, now smiling around us in peace and plenty, which have grown out of what they began, and as we look back upon their condition, trials and experiences, we are apt to imagine that their lot, contrasted with our own, was an unhappy one. Nothing could be further from the truth. They were a brave, hardy, thrifty, frugal, industrious and most capable people. Man for man and woman for woman, they were probably superior to those here to-day in faculty, and in the capacity for healthy enjoyments. Their whole previous lives had inured them to their experiences. They were the sons and grandsons of the original pioneers of New England, and they had been born and reared in rude settlements. They never indulged the delusion that this region was a land flowing with milk and honey. Before they came they knew that they were to wrest their living from an uncongenial soil, to struggle with penury and to conquer only by constant toil and self-denying thrift. The forest would supply them with the materials for shelter and fuel and to some extent with food and clothing. All the rest must depend upon their own exertions. There was a pleasure in facing and overcoming the perils and difficulties which they encountered, which those, more delicately reared who now live here can never know. Their individual helplessness in the face of appalling obstacles to be met, but bound them closer together in mutual helpfulness. Accordingly we find that their social faculties were highly developed. It may well be doubted whether the sum total of human pleasure among the whole five thousand inhabitants of the town to-day is any greater than it was among the few hundred who settled it. Probably our own superabundance of good things has actually lessened our capacity to enjoy, in comparison with theirs. Their simple tastes and homely joys amid their rude surroundings were probably more productive of positive pleasure and real happiness, than all the refinement and culture of our twentieth century civilization.
It would be a pleasing and instructive task to trace the progress of this old town, from those rude beginnings to its present strength and wealth. But the limits of the time and subject allotted to me on this occasion forbid. It is the product of the labors of eight generations, who now sleep beneath its soil. They never could have foreseen the present. They never knew or thought of us. Each generation was busy with its own problems, tasks and experiences. As we look back upon them our hearts are filled with gratitude for the results of their work. A clean blooded, land-loving thrifty race, through their activities they escaped from the poverty of their beginnings and attained unto an almost ideal abundance of the primal needs of civilization. Their physical condition became probably as good as that of any other village community in the world. Their experiences stimulated their intellectual life into full activity, and they bore their full share in the wonderful work which Connecticut has done in the world. In all critical times in both State and Nation, the sons of New Milford, both native and adopted, have been very active and influential and one of them, Roger Sherman, performed a work which will last as long as this nation shall continue to be free and independent or as long as the Constitution of the United States shall endure.
We know that the past two hundred years are but the beginning of a long history of this town. We believe that as the years roll by, at the close of each century of its life, the events of this day will be repeated here. What will be the lot of those who stand here, one, two, three and four hundred years hence, to recall the origin and history of this town, we cannot conceive. Our hope is that it will be as peaceful, as prosperous, and as contented, as our own.