Norwich bulletin., 1909-07-05
BUILDING A cHuRcH-sTATE.
Address by Rev. c. A. Northrop on The
 Original Settlers of Norwich.


 After the spirited singing of the hymn, Let Children Hear the Mighty Deeds, Chairman Gul1iver said: In the fall of 1659, or spring of 1860, the first settlers constructed a log meeting where we are standing; and then pre- sented Rev. c. A. Northrop to give the address on Building a Church State, and he said:
 The Founders.
 How many there were of them has never been officially determined till recently, when, according to the sign ed, sealed and delivered statement of the Society of the Founders, there were thirty-five This is probably about as near to the truth as we shall ever be able to get.
 They were men in the prime of life, most of them with families-of the re- spectacle middle class of Englishmen, with a dash or two of aristocracy The Hydes and Huntingtons and ,Leffing- wells and Tracys were of good stock. They were young, vigorous adventurers of the best type. Samuel Hyde was 23 years old when he set foot in Nor wich, Simon Huntington was 31, John Burchard 32, Post and Olmstead 34, Fitch and Leffingwell 3s, Adgate 40, Tracy %, Mason and Caulkins SO.
 They were in comfortable circum- stances. They came to work. They were wheelwrights, and millers and merchants and surveyors, and shoe makers, and brewers, and tanners, and cutters, and stone cutters and car- penters and farmers. They were un- educated, some of them, as to books, but they knew many things. If "Old Goodman Hide" and Caulkins made their mark on legal documents instead of their name, it did not prevent them from making a name.
 The Saybrook influences that cra- dled them survived here for many a day. Fitch and Woodward and Lord, the first three ministers, were of Say brook extraction and served the church for nearly 125 years. The third pastor of the Second society of the rine-mile Square (F'ranklin) was a Saybrook boy, and fingered on till the second half of the nineteenth century. l, myself, might have shaken hands with him had he come to my fathers house before he died. And that does not end the Saybrook influence, for when Dr. Mott of Franklin passed away, there came into the Norwich at mosphere the overshadowing delight of pr. Pratt, another Saybrook prod uct, who is with us today and may his shadow never grow less.
 tnelr incoming
 They came as purchasers, not as conquerors. They came by families, and went to work. So busy were they that in a few years they did not know where their own possessions lay. They kept few records. and if they could only have known how much was to be made of them by a grateful posterity they would certainly have told us more about themselves. How much would we not give today for Pastor Fitchs notes on his varied and usefu1 work for whites and Indians, and for an even hurried glance over the lost pages of the church records for the first 40 years
 They were an orderly people. They builded well. They organized at once "a Religious Society and Church. State" It mattered not whether they said church or state. Both were one to them. We have here the three fun damental types of society, Family, Church, State.
 For sixty years town and church af- fairs were recorded together. After that, the church records were called