The daily morning journal and courier., 1899-08-28


 give a flavor of old time humor to tn ! book, which will always be d bonanzi to the searcher after curious and for . gotten lore.
 He has righted certain wrongs lik
 cofruptions of names as Goodrich fo Guttrdge, Catlinch for Caftlnge. stil
 further restorable to Chatfinch; Falcol
 for Faulkner We may add that Faull1
 ner is the phonetic or spell form of fal
 coner. The lighthouse island was nt
 doubt named from the bird, not iron
 the hunter; as the goose, the gull ant
 other crones of the falcon gave thei
 names to islands in the vicinity whicl
 they inhabited.
 Scores of useful references are em.
 bodied in the work, or put as footmarks
 in the margin to make happy the flu
 ture reader, antiquary or genealogist
 who. with his glosses and commentaries
 all about hm-Hubbard, Savage
 Dwight and the rest of 'em-may en.
 large the subject at his pleasure.
 Passing 1t in quick review, we find
 now gone such emblems as the "Sabba-
 day" house and the church drum; the
 tipping block and the billion; the
 goose-quill and the doctors saddle
 bags; the stage-coach and the child S courtesy to it: the candle and snuffers
 the tester-bed and warming-pan; the
 caash, Cuffy' and witchcraft-these are chiefly the more superficial lost fa- brics of the past; but Guilford clear grit and love of independence and fine old ecclesiastical spunk yet remain.
 If history is the essence of biogra- phers the scores of personal sketches scattered throughout are not the least valuable part of the book,
 The faithful, pious attention given to the early settlers, among whom were mighty men like Dsborough and Leete, the careful tracing out of their origin in England, their precise locations there and noting down even where they laid at last their young or old and weary bones, this is all noble work, we'll done. | Having ourselves spent delightful 1 hours in asking for news of the Rev. | Henry Whitfield, who led the colony searching libraries in Boston, New York, New Haven, and piously going down to Winchester in England to look for his bones (without finding em), we feel qualified to say that we have here brought to our door the best possible account of the saintly Henry. Whitfield was a devout mystic more in love with Paradise than with Saw pits farm, and to have held the fort here those twelve, terrible years, 1639-51 nearly, was well done for a mystic We gather this character of the man from study of his little book, Some Helps
 
 don, 169D. which is on the order of Thomas A. Kempis highly spiritual and other-Worldly, as far apart from mat ters of earth as if there were no earth.
 We little know how sadly, even mad ly, full of the supernatural were these men of the Puritan era and how well they succeeded in living in another world and it would seem that nothing would so endear another world to them as coming to Guilford in 1639.
 Henry Whitfield. William Chittenden and Robert Kitchel, in the order named, married Dorothy, Joanna and Margaret Sheaffe, daughters of Dr. Edmund Sheaffe of Cranbrook, Kent Their de- scendants, under various aliases, to-day are numerous as leaves in autumn. All
 
 Yale college in 1882 and the Sheaffe girls have continued to this hour to be good patrons of Yale.
 Coming to the origin of our town name, which, plain as the nose on our face, has been somehow strangely mys tfied and juggled into the dignity of a moot-point and almost bone of conten- tion between the sentimentalists and sansationalists, let me endeavor, like a true knight, to strengthen the weaker party.
 So far the subjective and the senti- mental have had it all their own way, but the matter seems by no means one to be viewed only by moonlight, for it has a strong, objective side that has been commonly overlooked
 The names in ford, port, haven, strewn along the Connecticut coast, Power that has been so cleverly en- forced upon us recently by Captain Mahan
 The town plot. then days more than now days was traversed by gushing gills and rushing streams, tding this | way and that, and fording them was the first settlers first daily occupation.
 name in ford meeting the objec- tive condition here and making not too big mouthful, was not merely suita- ble, but was almost unavoidable.
 The Surrey men knew Guildford for their shire town, and that was all they knew; none of them hailed from it, and Parson Whitfield would never write the name Guildford. The fact that We have 10 river Wye and no Hogs back" lere as there, betokens that at first, with Puritan obstinacy against this unprincipled, change-about name, Guilford, Guildford Gudeford, they at last took it because of it's apt, everyday use and thought no more about it. And they did pretty we'll by hese bogs and shaking meadows to call hem so handsomely.
 The recent move by our legislature, LOW generously reinforced by our town. o set apart the Whitfield old stone louse as a state museum gives signifi- ant encoura cement to colonial study, md should lead to that of Indian arch zoology and prehistoric data
 Posterty will thank Connecticut for oing this as much as posterity ever l hanks anybody for doing anything. | Meanwhile Steiner's History of Guil- ord and Madison is on sale at the Iessrs Shepard & Fowler's, Guilford l Il |