“In a centenary sermon delivered at Danbury in January, 1801, the Rev. Thomas Robbins had this to say of him:
“ ‘One of the early inhabitants of Danbury was John Read, a man of great talents and thoroughly skilled in the knowledge and practice of the law. He possessed naturally many peculiarities and affected still more. He is known to this day through the country by many singular anecdotes and characteristics under the appellation of “John Read, the lawyer.”’
“In 1712 the town was incorporated, which gave it the power to tax the inhabitants to support a minister, and the place became thereby an ecclesiastical society. In March, 1712, the Rev. Daniel Boardman was called to preach to the settlers. In May, 1715, the settlers petitioned the General Assembly that they might obtain liberty for the settlement of the worship and ordinances of God among them, and the Legislature granted them liberty to embody in church estate as soon as God in his providence should make way therefor. On November 21, 1716, Mr. Boardman was duly ordained as the pastor of the Church of Christ in New Milford, the total number of the inhabitants of the town then being one hundred and twenty-five. The first vote of the town to build a meeting-house was passed in 1716, but work was not commenced upon it until 1719, and it was not completed until 1731, after infinite struggling. It was forty feet long, thirty wide, and twenty feet in height between joints, and was provided with galleries, pews, and a pulpit. Long before completion, when it was first used for religious purposes, the congregation was accustomed to sit upon its outer sills, which were able to accommodate every man, woman, and child in the town with a little squeezing. In 1713, the town voted to build for the minister a dwelling house forty feet between joints. In 1726, thirteen years later, the house was still unfinished. The first Sabbath Day house was not built until 1745.
“In 1721, when there were but thirty-five families residing here, a public school was ordered by the town to be kept for four months the winter following, one-half of the expense to be borne by the town. The children were taught reading, spelling after a phonetic fashion, writing, and the first four rules of arithmetic. In 1725 it was voted to build a schoolhouse twenty feet long, sixteen feet wide, and seven feet in height between the joints.
“The first settlers crossed the Housatonic to their lands on the west side by fording it at a point near the mouth of Rocky River, about a mile above the settlement, or at Waunupee Island in times of very low water. In 1720 the town built a boat for the purpose, which was used until 1737, when the first bridge ever built across the Housatonic from its source to its mouth was constructed at what is now the foot of Bennett Street.
“The settlers for many years crushed their grain by hand in mortars or carried it to mill at Danbury, Woodbury, or Derby, and brought back the flour and meal. In 1717 John Griswold, under an arrangement with the town, built a grist and saw mill on Still River, at what is now Lanesville.
“It is said that in 1713 there was but one clothier in the colony. The most that he could do was to full the cloth which was made in the homes. A great proportion of it was worn without shearing or pressing. He lived at Woodbury, and thither the early inhabitants of this town resorted to have their cloth fulled. People, to a very large extent, wore clothing made from the skins of animals. They also wore wooden shoes and moccasins, or went barefoot, although leather boots and shoes were sometimes used.
“The implements which they used in subduing the wilderness, their axes, saws, plows, hoes, and scythes, were of the rudest description. Their horses, cattle, sheep, and swine, we should now regard as of very inferior quality. The same was true of the few vegetables they cultivated and of their fruits, especially their apples. Turnips, squashes, and beans were the principal vegetables. Potatoes were not as yet cultivated in New England, onions were not generally, and tomatoes were looked upon as poisonous. Some of them owned negro slaves, but worked the harder themselves to make them work.
“They had little or no currency, taxes and debts being paid in produce. What they ate, what they wore, what they coaxed from the reluctant soil of these hillsides, cost them infinite labor. As was to be expected, a stingy avarice was their besetting sin, which manifested itself in all the relations of life. They were without newspapers, none being published in the Colony until 1755. They had few books, the first printing press in the Colony not having been set up at New London until 1709. They suffered greatly from malaria and other forms of sickness, as did all the early settlers in the State. Medical treatment was poor and difficult to obtain. The women went to the limit in childbearing, and the burden of rearing their large families was awful. The art of cooking was little understood. They had no stoves nor table forks. The food was served in a very unsavory fashion, and was very indigestible. The people therefore had frightful dreams, and dyspepsia was very prevalent. No carpet was seen here for a hundred years after the settlement. Communication with the outer world was slow, difficult, and rare. On several occasions, owing to the failure of their crops and the difficulty in getting relief from distant places little better off, they nearly starved to death.
“Truly the task which they had undertaken to subdue this wilderness, to plant here the civil, religious, and educational institutions of Connecticut, and to prepare this beautiful heritage for their children and children’s children, was no holiday pastime, no gainful speculation, no romantic adventure. It was grim, persistent, weary toil and danger, continued through many years, with the wolf at the door and the savage in the neighboring thicket.