But it is in his biographical record of the patriots and loyalists of Redding that Mr. Grumman’s book is most original and valuable. There are one hundred pages of these, compiled with an accuracy and fullness surprising to one who realizes the paucity of material of this sort now extant and the difficulty of securing it.
Joel Barlow, poet, statesman, and earlier, Chaplain in the Army was one of the most distinguished of these. Mr. Grumman has a very interesting extract from the diary of the Rev. Eleazer Wheelock, dated Sept. 14, 1773, regarding young Joel’s matriculation at Moor’s preparatory school in Hanover, N. H., not given by any of the poet’s biographers so far as we are aware.
“Mr. Samuel Barlow of Reading, Mass, (Ct.?) brings his son Joel to school. The said son is to officiate as waiter on table at meal time and also to be at the beck of Miss Elizabeth: only in play time and vacations to perform such errands and incidental service as she shall have occasion for in her business, and in consideration of her services and his to have his board, viz: eating, drinking, washing, firewood, candles, study room and tuition.”
This Miss Elizabeth Burr was of Fairfield, Conn., near Reading, and came to have charge of Joel, and to “superintend the cooking in commons and manage the prudentials of it.” She was probably a relative and did this to aid the boy in getting an education, his father having a family of ten to provide for.
A typical Reading patriot was the Rev. Nathaniel Bartlett who served the Congregational Church there as pastor for fifty-seven years, and who when hostilities broke out brought his sword, freshly ground, to his son Daniel, and bade him go and defend his country. Another was Lemuel Sanford, who represented Redding at twenty-two sessions of the General Assembly, covering a period of twenty years, served on numerous committees and died a Judge of the County Court.
The greatest patriot of all, and one of the greatest of the historic struggle, William Heron, Mr. Grumman places among the loyalists. This man was an Irishman, born in Cork in 1742, of good family and educated at Trinity College, Dublin. He was the intimate personal friend of Lord Howe, and the friend and trusted adviser of Washington and Putnam. Howe’s well known leniency toward the Americans was perhaps due to him, and the minute knowledge the patriot chiefs had of the British forces, and the plans of their leaders came largely from him. He was a shrewd, tactful, forceful, brilliant man with all an Irishman’s power of blarney, and hating the British as a loyal Irishman should, he yet hoodwinked Sir Henry Clinton, and his Adjutant General, Major Oliver DeLancey, into the belief that he was secretly an adherent of the British cause, and could give them valuable information. For years—with the full knowledge of Washington and Putnam—he maintained a correspondence with them, was allowed to come into the city of New York, was dined and wined by them, went freely about the city, and obtained information of the greatest value to the patriot leaders. What information he gave the British in return was either of no great importance, or would have come to them by some other channel. In Clinton’s “Record of Private Intelligence,” discovered in London in 1882, and purchased by Dr. Thomas Addis Emmet,[[2]] there are several letters from this man, some of them implicating Major General Samuel H. Parsons, of Connecticut, in treasonable intercourse with the British, but this was only a part of the plot. The career of Heron during the eight years of the war would furnish material for a dozen historical romances. Mr. Grumman prints a letter from Parsons to Washington, dated Apr. 6, 1782 in which he says of him:
“He is a native of Ireland, a man of very large knowledge, and a great share of natural sagacity united with a sound judgment, but of as unmeaning a countenance as any person in my acquaintance. With this appearance he is as little suspected as any man can be. An officer in the department of the Adjutant General is a countryman and very intimate acquaintance of Mr. Heron, through which channel he has been able frequently to obtain important and very interesting information.”
Parsons adds that he knows him to be a consistent National Whig, always in the field in every alarm and in every trial proving himself a man of bravery. Corroborative proof of this view is found in the fact that after the war, instead of being run off to Nova Scotia with the other loyalists, Heron represented Redding in seventeen sessions of the General Assembly, and was given other offices of importance by his townsmen.
A typical loyalist of Redding was John Lyon, a farmer and business man, who owned one hundred acres of land in the town with two houses thereon, beside a half interest in a schooner and much merchandise. This man not only signed the “Reading Resolves,” but carried them to Rivington, the King’s Printer in New York, who printed them. For this act in March, 1775, he was seized by a mob, ill treated and robbed, and his merchandise at Mill River (now Southport) to the value of five hundred pounds was also seized. The persecution continued until he was obliged to fly to the British lines, where he entered the King’s service, aided in raising the “King’s Rangers,” a loyalist regiment, and acted as guide during the war. At the close of the war he fled to Nova Scotia with his wife and two sons and settled at Kingston.
In his memorial to the King from which the above facts are taken, he estimates his losses at £1,790, and was allowed £290 in satisfaction (?) thereof.