[x] This year the Royal Society awarded him the Copley medal for his discovery that lightning was a discharge of electricity.
In 1761 the medal of the Royal Society was also awarded to the Rev. Jared Eliot of Killingworth, Conn., for making iron and steel from black ferruginous sand.
[y] John Trumbull, b. 1750, d. in Michigan, 1831; Joel Barlow, b. 1754, d. in Poland, 1812; Gen. David Humphreys, b. 1752, d. in New Haven, 1818. These Yale men, together with Dr. Lemuel Hopkins, were the leadjng spirits in the club known as "The Hartford Wits." Dr. Dwight was a fellow collegian with them. Trumbull and Dwight did much to interest the students in literature. The latter was also tutor in rhetoric and professor of belles-lettres and oratory.
[z] Conn. Col. Rec. xii, Appendix. This was drawn up by the Governor and three members of the General Assembly, May, 1761.
[aa] With grim humor, he turned to one of his escort, saying that he at last realized the description in Revelation of "Death riding a white horse and hell following behind."
[ab] The latter half of the title was omitted about 1775.
[ac] Foster replied: "One man is not to be called a 'heretick,' purely because he differs from another, as to the articles of faith. For either we should all be 'hereticks' or there would be no 'heresy' among us…. Heresy does not consist in opinion or sentiments: it is not an error of head but of will."—Foster, A Defense of Religious Liberty, p. 47.
[ad] This revision of the laws was in charge of Roger Sherman and Richard Law.
[ae] Quakers and Baptists frequently crossed the state line to attend services in Rhode Island.
[af] There was only an occasional Romanist; Unitarians first took their sectarian name in 1815; Universalists were few in number until the second quarter of the new century.