The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-06-18
THE HISTORY OF
 NEW MILFORD Address Delivered by Dan- iel Davenport There
 Yesterday. BOOTH ANNIVERSARY. Dreary Wilderness Changed Into Habitable Section
 By Forefathers.
BOOTH ANNIVERSARY.

%AAloA Odf6upOII OL 6EluS6pOTII Connecticut, delivered the following address yesterday at New Milford on the 200th anniversary of the settlement of that town:
 The settlement of New Milford be- gan in HOT, exactly century after that of Jamestown, Va. At that time although Milford and Stratford at the mouth of the Housatonic had been set tied almost seventy years, and the river afforded a convenient highway into the interior, for much of the dis tance, this place, only thirty miles from the north shore of Long Island sound, was still beyond the extreme northwestern frontier of New Eng land, and indeed of English North America.
 The inhabitants of Connecticut then numbered about 15,00O, settled in thir- ty towns, mostly along the shore of Long Island sound, and upon the banks of the Connecticut and Thames rivers. During the thirty years next before, few families from Norwalk had settled at Danbury, from Strat- ford at Woodbury, from Milford at Derby, and from Pennington at Wa terbury. With these exceptions, hard ly more than pin points upon the map and few settlements about Albany, N. T., the whole of western and north western Connecticut and of western Massachusetts and northern New York was savage wilderness, covered with dense forests, and affording almost perfect concealment for the operations of savage warfare.
 Though the northwestern portion of Connecticut was then most formida- ble and inhospitable wilderness, stren- uous efforts were already being put forth by the colony to encourage its settlement. For, strange as 1t seems to us now, at tbat time, owing to im- perfect modes of cultivation and the difficulty of subduing the wilderness, the settled portions of the common wealth had begun to feel overpopulat- ed. Twenty-Five years before, the sec retary of the colony had reported to the home government that "in this mountainous, rocky and swampy pro- vince" most of the arable land was taken up, and the remainder was hardly worth tillage.
 This need of more land, and the pro- tection from invasion which the set- clement of this section would afford tile communities near the coast. and the innate love of adventure and de- sire to subdue the wilderness, which have characterized the American peo- pie from the beginning, were the inn polling causes which led to the plant ing of New Milford.
 So pressing did this movement be- come that, though what is now Litch- field county was then as remote and inaccessible to the rest of the colony, as were Indiana and Illinois to our fathers in the middle of the last cen tury, within forty-five years after the first settler had built his log cabin and lighted his fire here, twelve towns had been settled and the county organized with a population of mora than 10000.
 Tn order that we may appreciate, somewhat the broader political condi- tions under which the first settlers took up their abode here, which large ly engrossed their thoughts and vital- ly affected them and their children for two generations, 1t Is necessary, before taking up the narrative of their act ual settlement here, to advert briefly to the state of affairs at that time in England, and on the continent of Flu rope, and in the English, French and Spanish colonies of North America.
 By 1707, it had become apparent to the people of Connecticut that, soon or late, they must fight for the very ex- istence of their chartered privileges and natural rights, not alone the Brit ish Crown, but the English people. The disposition of the people of Eng land to reap where they had not sown had become very clear. In April, 1701 Connecticut was named in the bill then introduced in parliament to ahrogate all American charters. She resisted with all her might through her agent, but 1t passed the second reading, and would have become law but for the breaking out of the French war. It's principle was supported by the mer- cantile interests and the great men of England. Then for the first time the people of Connecticut fully realized that their foes were to be, not the ex- lied house of Stuart, but the English people themselves, and that though they changed their dynasties they did not change their own nature.
 In HOT, the principal kingdoms of Europe and their colonies were ablaze nr,ith oar Anne was Queen of Eng land. In that very year she attached her signature to that long projected and most important constitutional ar engagement, the Act of Union between England and Scotland, which made them one kingdom, the crown of which by the Act of Settlement passed few years before, had been forever vested in the person and heirs of Sophia, the electress of Hanover, the present reigning dynasty. Annes accession to the throne in 1702 had been followed by the acknowledgement, by Louis XIV of the son of James II, the de- posed and fugitive king of England and the determined foe of the rights of the colonists, as the rightful king. all though in the Treaty of Ryswick, in 1897, he had solemnly stipulated to the contrary. This act of perady rous- ed the English to fury, The primary cause of the war, then raging, was the acceptance by Louis of the crown of Spain for his grandson Philip de- spite a previous formal renunciation. But the immediate occasion was his