“There was a movement of life into this part of Connecticut, the meaning and result of which will be brought before you by those who have studied it in its details, and can describe it with local color. Without repeating or anticipating their words, I may venture to ask you to think of the difference which a little more than seventy years had made in the motives that swayed men’s minds, and the impressions that were made on them by the new lands which they occupied. One thinks of the stern resolve, both political and ecclesiastical, which sent Hooker and his company on their long walk through the wilderness till they came to the river and crossed it into a strange land, with a determination like that of the father of the faithful when he crossed the great river of the eastern world; and then one questions whether they admired the beauty of the meadows, and one feels sure that when they climbed the hills and looked down into the more beautiful valley of the Tunxis, they were drawn by it to travel still further west. One follows in mind the military instinct which saw the importance of the control of the Connecticut River, and built a fort at its mouth, and levied dues on traffic and transportation, and laid out streets for the houses of people of quality who were expected to come to dwell there. And one thinks of the surprises which befell those who sailed slowly along the shore of the Sound, looking into inlet and bay, and finding at the Fair Haven a place where they might build a city after the pattern of the heavenly Jerusalem, and in it dwell and get gain.
“In each of these early instances there was an element of romance, of strong conviction of duty, mingled with an appreciation alike of the beautiful and the practical, that combination which, as Horace told us long ago, ‘carries every vote.’ To some extent this had passed away two hundred years ago, when possession was taken of the farming lands, and the fair, though rugged, hillsides enclosing the river valley in which we now stand. The settlers, who came up into the high grounds from the shores of the Sound, did not leave, for the most part, on account of disagreement with their neighbors in matters civil or ecclesiastical, nor with a special sense of divine calling or mission. They were rather led by the Anglo-Saxon spirit of colonization to settle on new soil, to extend former industries or to undertake new ones, and to organize new units of life in the body politic. Still, we cannot doubt that when they, too, looked over the fields they saw more than the possibility of gathering harvests and crops from them, and that when they followed the water-courses they did more than estimate the use which they might make of the force of the falling stream. They had something of the enthusiasm of discovery, and something of the joy of those who first turn nature’s forces to man’s account. It is worth our while, as we go back in mind to these beginnings, to try to think as they thought, who first looked upon the natural features of the landscape, which it takes much more than two centuries materially to change, and to see why they chose as they did, who fixed on this spot as their home.
“In this regard, there is in all our settlements, early and late, something that they have in common, which appeals more, I am inclined to think, to the philosopher than to the historian. Perhaps the student of history delights rather in noting the differences in the plans and purposes of those who settled our early towns, and in finding in each, as he readily may, some detail of character or event which marks it with a special interest, and almost always brings in the suggestion of a special romance. As your early history is read before you to-day in detail, you are reminded how it differs from the history of every other town in Connecticut. At its beginning you hear of names which give it a stamp peculiarly its own: that of the first minister, continued by an honorable succession through all the generations to this day; that of the early settler who lived here in a log hut on land which he had bought of the Indians and lived to be Attorney General of Massachusetts; somewhat later, that of the man who came here as a shoemaker and removed hence as a judge, to become one of the few leaders in the constitutional history of the land; and with them the names of others which shed a special luster on your annals. Again, the importance of the Indians in this neighborhood, both in numbers and (as it would seem) in influence and character, suggests an almost unique chapter of history, especially when we note that it led to the sojourn of the remarkable man who led hither his band of Moravian missionaries and labored not in vain among the aborigines before he withdrew to make a permanent settlement in another province, and later to return to his home in Europe. And, if you care to boast of it, you share with but one or two other towns the honor of having had congregations of the Glassites—who under their name of Sandemanians will always be remembered for having had in their eldership one of the greatest men of science of a generation ago—and you have the exclusive honor of having been the home of the Jemimaites. Certainly, no two communities are exactly alike, and it is in the study of their differences that much of our pleasure in the reading of their history consists.
“While I bring to you to-day, Mr. President, a greeting on behalf of the Historical Society of the State, I venture to ask you and all the citizens of this venerable town, and all who are interested in her annals already written, and in the record which she is to make in years to come, not to allow the interest of these memorial days to pass away with the days themselves. This week is bringing to the memory of some of you that which you have already heard with your ears and your fathers have declared unto you, while it is teaching many others, and in particular the youths and maidens, their first lessons in the history of the community in which their lot is cast. The story of the founders and those who carried on their work, who they were and what they did, what New Milford was in itself and what part it played in the State and the Republic, told again now in greater detail than it has ever been told before—do not let it be soon or readily forgotten. See to it that the whole town becomes a sort of historical society, for the appreciation and preservation of that which is old, for the lending of a proper perspective to that which belongs to our own day, for preparation rightly to understand and rightly to value and use that which is coming. They best do the duties of the present, they best provide for the future, who read and value the lessons of the past.”
The second speaker, Chief Justice Baldwin, was presented to the audience by Mr. Williams with these words: “New Milford has had many notable and useful citizens during her two centuries of existence, but she has had none as illustrious as Roger Sherman. We have with us to-day one of his descendants, Simeon E. Baldwin, LL. D., Ex-President of the American Bar Association, Ex-President of the American Historical Society, Ex-President of the International Law Association, and Chief Justice of Connecticut, who will now address you.
Chief Justice Baldwin then delivered the following address on “Roger Sherman”:
“The rarest and most ill-defined class of human beings is that of great men. Only those belong to it who have done a great work in a great way. The ‘mute, inglorious Milton’ is not to be reckoned among them. They number none, however great their natural gifts or acquired attainments, who have not made for themselves, by their own merits, a place in the history of their times. It is from their lives, indeed, that history gains its color and its inspiration.
“It was the good fortune of New Milford to be the home of such a man in the middle of her first century of existence.
“It was a hundred and sixty-four years ago, this very month that a tall and well-set young fellow of two and twenty ended in this town a toilsome journey, taken on foot from the neighborhood of Boston. He had come to make New Milford his home, bringing on his back the tools of his trade—that of a shoemaker—and with their aid he here gained for a year or two an honest livelihood.
“A shoemaker and the son of a shoemaker, he had, and felt he had, capabilities for a larger work. His mind was already