part of this town. Tolland and Coventry were settled towns, enjoying regular "gospel ministrations," long before any one was located here.

The following is the first known record of land surveyed in the present town of Ellington :

"Land surveyed to Daniel and John Ellsworth, sons of Lieutenant John Ellsworth, of Windsor, by Thomas Kimberly, surveyor of land in the county of Hartford, 16th of March, 1720, five hundred and forty acres of land between the mountains east of Windsor and Connecticut River, at a place called by the English The Great Marsh, and by the Indians Wearskashuck-340 acres bought of Capt. Joseph Wadsworth, and 200 acres bought of the Bissell's,' by said Lieut. John Ellsworth, began at a pine tree marked and having two mere-stones by it, standing on the plain, near the northwest corner of the said marsh [then all the bounds are described] Samuel Pinney and Daniel Grant, being under oath, assisted in carrying the chain."2 It has been generally supposed that Ellsworth was the first settler in Ellington. It seems probable to us however, that he was preceded by Samuel Pinney, as early as the year 1717. This supposition is, to our mind, very strongly corroborated by the following entry, or addition, made by some person to Matthew Grant's list of deaths, &c., in the Old Church Record.

-

"The year 1717. I set down all that have died in Elenton [Ellington] to the year 1740."3

This we may consider, as establishing the earliest date of settlement in the town. Samuel Pinney had, for some years previous, been much employed by the town of Windsor, in surveying the lands east of the Connecticut River. He thus had an excellent opportunity of selecting, and probably purchased of the town the land on which he settled. This was a tract about 11⁄2 miles in length from east to west, and about 1 mile broad from north to south, comprising some of the best land in Ellington.*

1 See first part of this chapter.

2 Barber's Hist. Coll. Conn. p. 547.

3 The first name on the list is that of Lt. Ellsworth, and the second "Isibe[1] Pinye."

4 It was afterwards divided to his three sons, as follows: Samuel, Jr. had his share on the northern side of the tract, now owned by Martin Beebe, Henry Lawrence and Albert Pinney. His house was near Mr. Martin Beebe's present

On this he built a log house, about twenty rods southeast of the square-roof brick dwelling lately occupied by Lt. Eleazer Pinney, and at present by his son Nelson Pinney.

In the spring of 1720, John Ellsworth came from (East) Windsor, and made a clearing on the east side of the Great Marsh, and built a shanty near the present residence of Mr. Chester Chapman. Tradition says that he and his two sons were accustomed to come out to this place on Monday morning, with their oxen and cart, and return again to their homes on Saturday afternoon. On the clearing which they made they raised corn, peas and turneps. One Saturday afternoon, in October, 1720, the father ordered the boys to pull some turneps and put them in the cart, while he would go down to the Marsh and fell a tree. Having done as they were told, and finding that their father did not return as soon as they expected, they went to look after him. They found that the tree had fallen upon and killed him. Taking their oxen and stone-boat, they drew their father's dead body to the shanty; where one remained to guard it during the night while the other returned to the settlement on the river for assistance. Who can imagine the feelings of that faithful son as he watched by the dead through the long hours of night, far away from all human aid and sympathy; or the horrors which surrounded the other youth, as, with "mind affright" by the sad spectacle of a father's mangled corpse, he anxiously picked his way through the dense forest and darkness to his home on the river's side?1

On a stone by the roadside, on the farm of Mr. Noah Pease, Jr., is the following inscription: "Lieut. John Ellsworth was

dwelling. Joseph, the second son, took his share on the south side, now owned by Andrew and William Pinney. His house was 15 rods east of William Pinney's brick house, the ancient well is still to be seen there. The central portion of this property fell to the third son Benjamin, and it was truly a Benjamin's portion. On this reside Nelson Pinney, Amos Jacques and Stedman Nash; on it also is the Ellington Carpet Mill, Flouring and Saw Mill, and a whole manufacturing village, dwellings, stores, etc.

1 This son was afterwards the first Captain of Militia in Ellington.

killed here by the fall of a tree, Oct. 26th, 1720, aged 49 years and 15 days."1

The tract which he purchased is now owned by Mr. McKinstry, Asaph McKinney, Austin Tilden, Chester Chapman, Noah Pease, Jr., and others, and together with the Pinney tract, embrace the best land in Ellington.

After Ellsworth and Pinney, the first settlers were probably Capt. Daniel Eaton, Nath'l Tayler, Simon Chapman, Isaac Davis, John Burroughs, Nath'l Davis, and the McCrea family.

The early settlers of Windsor Goshen, as the little collection of farms at the Great Marsh was called, for many years attended the ministry of Mr. Edwards in East (now South) Windsor. The distance, however, to the Street, which they were obliged to travel every sabbath, was a very severe tax upon even their weather-proof fidelity; and it is not strange, that they should have been anxious to secure gospel privileges for themselves, at the very earliest moment warranted by their ability. It is probable that some attempt of this kind was made in 1725, as in December of that year, the Second (Mr. Edwards's) Society passed a vote, "that the inhabitants at the Great Marsh shall be freed from their parts of Mr. Edwards's salary for the year past, provided they do on their own cost provide themselves a minister to preach the Gospel to them from this present time till the first day of April next." And in February following the town, "considering there is likely to be a society on the land laid out on the east side the River," granted, "30 acres to be laid out for a [ministerial] home-lot in the ancient town patent, and 40 acres in the equivalent." Two or three years elapsed before the inhabitants of Great Marsh were able to effect their desire, owing probably to a want of ability, for in 1730, the settlement numbered only eleven families, most of whom were poor: In 1731 they hired

1 A few years since a man who purchased a part of the old Ellsworth farm, took up the stone which marked the spot where Lieut. Ellsworth was killed. He was designing to use it for a door step. Mr. Miller, a neighbor, hearing of his proposed vandalism, purchased it from him, and set it up where it now stands.

2 Town Acts of Windsor, Bk. 111, 48.

a minister, and in 1733 settled him with a salary of forty pounds a year, and his fire wood; yet in 1734 the precinct contained but one hundred and ten persons. Their first pastor was the Rev. John McKinstry, a native of Brode, county of Antrim, Ireland, his Scottish parents having removed to that place from the vicinity of Edinburgh, to escape the persecution in the reign of Charles Second. He was educated at the University of Edinburgh, where he graduated as M. A., in 1712, and in 1718, was one of a large company who emigrated to New England from the North of Ireland. After preaching in Sutton, Mass., several years, he set out with his family for New York, but resting in East Windsor on account of the illness of one of them, he was invited to Ellington, where he remained until his decease in 1754, at the age of seventy-seven. He preached on the Sunday before his death. He was sensible, pious, a sound Calvinist, plain in manners and spoke a broad Scotch dialect. His widow, originally a Miss Fairfield, of Worcester county, died in 1762, aged eighty-one. On account of disagreements between Mr. McKinstry and his people, arising from discordant views of church discipline, their connection was dissolved in 1749. A branch of his family yet remains in Ellington-his descendants in various parts of the country are numerous and respectable.2

According to usage in those days, the aid of the general assembly was frequently requested in the management of parochial affairs. The early ecclesiastical annals of Ellington are fully given in the following summary from papers in the archives of the state.

May, 1732. They petitioned for exemption from ministerial

1 He purchased a small place of Andrew McKee, a little east of the place where Judge Hall's High School is located, by deed April 27th, 1736. He built here an elegant house, for those days, where before the meeting-house was built the first settlers used to assemble for worship. Three years after he bought about thirty acres of land adjoining his first purchase, of Simon Parsons; his deed witnessed by Daniel Ellsworth, John Fairfield and Samuel Thompson, as appears from Windsor records. (Barber's Hist. Coll., Conn.) 2 See Genealogical portion of this work.

taxes in East Windsor. They stated the number of persons in the settlement was one hundred and ten.

May, 1734. In a second memorial they desire a continuance of the same exemption. They stated that it had been granted them by a vote of the town, two years of the three in which they had supported a minister of their own, but on the preceding year ministerial taxes had again been laid upon them. They desired freedom from all taxes whatever. The assembly freed them from ministerial taxes in East Windsor, so long as they maintained an orthodox minister of their own. There were thirty-five signatures on the petition, and on it was endorsed, "There are one hundred and ten souls in the parish." A paper accompanying this memorial is as follows; "Windsor, May 13, 1734. We the subscribers are perfectly willing that our neighbors that live at the Great Marsh shall be excused from paying rates to Mr. Edwards, so long as they hire a minister among themselves: we live on the street and are the Rev. Mr. Edwards's constant hearers." Signed by fifty-nine persons.

May, 1735. A memorial, signed by twenty-three persons, desired the erection of their precinct into a distinct parish, the western line of which should be four miles from the Great

1 Names of the Signers of the Petition of 1734. Those marked [*] had no male descendants in the town bearing their name in 1820.

Nearly all the signers of this petition resided near the marsh-mostly west or north-west, two or three a mile and a half N. E. of the present meetinghouse. Settlements on the mountain probably had not commenced.