Halfway Brook

The Colonists bought smuggled Dutch tea rather than pay for more expensive tea from the East India Company. So in 1767 Parliament passed the Indemnity Act, which lowered the tax on tea consumed in Great Britain and gave the East India Company a refund of the 25% duty on tea, if it was re-exported to the Colonies.

To help offset the loss of government revenue, Parliament passed the 1767 Townshend Revenue Act. Taxes levied on items imported by the Colonists included: glass, lead, paints, paper, and tea. Protests were so strong that the British repealed all taxes except the one on tea.

The Colonists then boycotted legally imported tea. In 1768 British troops were stationed in Boston to protect officials appointed to enforce Parliament’s laws.

Boston Ladies Boycott Tea
“Fine,” said over three hundred Boston women who signed an agreement in January 1770. “We won’t buy or even drink tea that is offered to us.”
—Boston Evening Post, January 31, 1770; historyofmassachusetts.org.

The demand for tea dropped and tea surplus grew in the East India Company’s English warehouses. Over one hundred years later Julia Smith, David Hickok’s granddaughter, referred to the ladies’ tea boycott.

Only Half Benefit from Our Common Fathers
April 19, 1875 was the Centennial for the Battles of Concord and Lexington. On May 1, 1875 Julia Smith and her sister Abby spoke at the Melrose Woman’s Suffrage Convention held to celebrate the Centennial, honor their forefathers, and their inherited principles.*

Julia retold the story of the auction of her pet cows and their meadowland and added that the State was no help. Then Julia referred to the Colonial women who wouldn’t buy or drink tea.

“Maybe Abby and I would fare better under a king,” Julia quipped. “When King George collected taxes on tea, his subjects could quit drinking tea, which many of the women were brave enough to do a hundred years ago. Continue reading →

“My animals include two cows, a calf, a yoke of oxen, a horse, a two-year old colt, two swine, and thirteen sheep, which I sheared in May.

“My neighbors, my father, and my brothers borrow my oxen for work on their farms, to go to the sawmill, to cart stone, and to go to Derby.”—David Hickok, South Britain, 1771 Journal.

“They put the fishnet into the river, but they catched no shad.”—David Hickok, South Britain, Connecticut, April 1771.

Shad, a fish in the herring family, was prevalent in early Farmington and the Great River, now known as the Housatonic River, Southbury’s southwestern border.

David Hickok was the older brother of my ancestor Asa Hickok, who settled in Lumberland. David and Asa each had a daughter named Hannah Hickok.

David Hickok was involved in at least one skirmish in the French-Indian War. He spoke fluent French, which he learned at Yale College. David was not able to complete a college degree because of health issues, which continued to plague him.

David was a mathematician, astronomer, teacher, farmer, inventor, and watchmaker. For a few years David taught “scholars” in the Bullet Hill School District of Southbury. (It is not known for sure if a school was there at the time.)

In his 1769–1783 journals, David detailed daily life in the South Britain section of Southbury, Connecticut. David built fences, planted, harvested or threshed grains, paid his rates (taxes), traded for rumb at Ensign Hinman’s, took grain to the Levenworth Mill, took apples to the mill to be made into cider, “measured a bushel of corn” for his pigs, helped rebuild bridges, wound many wruns of linen thread (which he had processed) or wool (from their sheep), and helped his wife with her weaving.

Some terms from David’s journals and other sources
(included in Abby, Laurilla, and Mary Ann)

• Cradle: A scythe set in a frame of wood with a row of long curved teeth projecting above and parallel to the scythe. A cradle laid the grain in bunches as it was cut.

• Hogshead: In America, a cask containing from 110 to 120 gallons; as a hogshead of spirit or molasses. “Hogshead” was possibly a corruption of the Germanic word for 
“oxhead.” It may be “the name arose from the branding of such a measure with the head of an ox.”—Webster’s 1828 Dictionary; Encyclopedia Britannica, 1911.

• Quill: spool or bobbin.

• Sheaves: bundles of grain stalks of wheat, rye, oats or barley stacked lengthwise and tied together.

• Shock: sixteen sheaves of wheat, rye, or other grains.

• Wrun/run: A run of spun wool is 1600 yards.

Locations of David’s Journals
(Some entries may have been transcribed by his daughter.)
• Connecticut State Library: Diary of David Hickok, 1771–1783 covers 1771 and a few entries for 1775, 1776, 1778 and 1783.

• Historical Society of Glastonbury: David Hickok’s Diary, 1769–1770.

Lake George is without comparison, the most beautiful water I ever saw; formed by a contour of mountains into a basin…finely interspersed with islands, its water limpid as crystal, and the mountain sides covered with rich groves…here and there precipices of rock to checker the scene and save it from monotony.
—Thomas Jefferson, May 1791.

Hudson River, Lake George, and Lake Champlain created 
a waterway connecting New York City, in Britain’s New York Province, to Montreal, in French-Canadian territory. The French and English built garrisons or forts along that inland water route.

Lake George in northeastern New York is 32 miles north-south, almost four miles wide, and up to 200 feet deep. The short La Chute River drops 230 feet from the north of Lake George, as it drains into the southern end of 107-mile-long Lake Champlain.

Lake Champlain, 14 miles at its widest point, lies mainly in Vermont and New York and reaches to St. Johns (Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu), Quebec, Canada.

In 1734 the French built Fort St. Frédéric on Lake Champlain, some 105 miles south of St. Jean (John).

In 1755 the French built the star Fort Carillon ten miles south of Fort St. Frédéric, where La Chute enters Lake Champlain near northern Lake George. The fort will be the British Ticonderoga.

In 1755 the British built Fort William Henry (40 miles southwest of Fort Carillon) and Fort George (southeast of Fort William Henry) at the southern end of Lake George. The same year the British also built Fort Edward, 15 miles south and a bit east of Fort George, near where the Hudson River veers west.

The French destroyed Fort St. Frédéric in the summer of 1759, before the British army arrived.

Calendar Complications 1582

The Julian Calendar, which the English continued to use from 1582–1752, started the new year on March 25. So December was the tenth month.

Parliament declared that the day after September 2, 1752 was to be September 14, 1752. The change to the 
Gregorian Calendar, happened in several steps:

• December 31, 1750 was followed by January 1, 1750.
• March 24, 1750 was followed by March 25, 1751.
• December 31, 1751 was followed by January 1, 1752
• September 2, 1752 was followed by September 14, 1752.

By September 14, 1752 the English (including the 
Colonies) had switched to the Gregorian Calendar and were 
using the same dates as the rest of Europe. The year 1752 was 72 days shorter.

Is it all clear now?

Any document dated January 1st through March 24th, 
before 1752, is one year off.