HARON, venerable as it is with associations of old New England days is yet the last town that the Colony of Connecticut formed. Its first settlement was a full century later than those upon the Sound and upon the banks of its principal river. There is a striking difference between the process of settling the country in the early period and that of a later day, when Progress had donned her Seven League Boots. With slow facilities of travel, the territory was filled and occupied as the wave swept on; and if the pace was that of the ox-team instead of the locomotive, there were not lacking advantages in all that pertains to the solidification of communities, and the avoidance of that isolation which is a potent factor in the tendency to barbarism. Even so late as 1794 there is tradition of a family which came to a border town of Sharon, and which moved out of one of the old coast settlements upon a curious vehicle that an ingenious young man of the family had constructed-the first wagon ever seen in its streets! It thus happened that in October, 1732, as we learn from Gen. Sedgwick's invaluable history, a committee appointed by the Assembly to "view the colony lands west of the Ousatonic River, laid out the town of Sharon and marked its bounds by sundry piles of stones and the blazing of trees. The township was divided into fifty-three rights one of which should be for the use of the ministry, one for the first gospel minister settled, and one for the support of the school. The remaining fifty rights were to be "vendered and sold," and their purchasers were to have "a sure indefeasible estate in fee simple" from his majesty, King George the Second "in fee and common socage, and not in capite nor by Knights Service." Earlier than this, one Capt. Richard Sackett had thought to appropriate to himself a princely estate here, through a colonial patent from 450 New York, and purchases from the Indian chief, Metoxen, some 22,000 acres in the two states-but his scheme, most fortunately, ended in failure. There is however nothing recorded of him specially dishonorable; he was but availing himself of methods in securing a fortune, then, as still, in high repute. as sweet," it is still hard to believe that A. peered over into the sister state with mingled feelings of curiosity and disapproval. They must have pondered gravely on the mysterious ways of their neighbors in the Province of Amenia, N. Y.; for here they met abruptly a wave of emigration which had flowed in a direction opposite to their own, from the banks of the Hudson. They were the people whom Diedrich Knickerbocker long ago portrayed in his renowned 'History of New York '-- a people differing in language, customs and all their social traditions from the New England type. Germans and Hollanders, including their foster brethren, Huguenots, had been already established for fifteen or twenty years in 'The Oblong,' as that strip of territory, fifty miles long and less than two miles wide, which had been ceded by Connecticut to New York in 1731, in exchange for the Horseneck' on the Sound, was called in those days; or 'The Equivalent,' as we see it in land titles of the period. 666 451 meeting house or even a village green in the whole settlement !'" "It was a piece of the irony of fate," continues our chronicler, "that the very first white man to live in the town of Sharon was a Dutchman! This was one BY His EXCELLENCY GEORGE WASHINGTON, Esq; 'General and Commander in Chief of the Forces of the United States of America. HESE are to CERTIFY that the Bearer hereof Tophiah Goodwin Corporal in the Niston Connechuck Regiment, having faithfully ferved the United States from felpril 1777 12 June 7th 103 and being inlisted for the War only, is hereby DISCHARGED from the American Army, GIVEN at HEAD-QUARTERS they By HIS EXCELLENCY'S Command, AEGISTERED in the Book! pl the Regiment THE abov Corporal Foodvin has been honored with the BADGE of MERIT for re DISCHARGE OF HEZEKIAH GOODWIN. 'What manner of man is this Dutchman?' we imagine their exclaiming, 'He can build for himself substantial houses, indeed, of brick and of stone, with deep shady stoups, and with name and date inscribed upon them; sometimes with huge initials and figures fantastically wrought into the masonry of a whole quaint gable; but his roads are devious, wandering trails in the footsteps Where is his organic There is not of the Indians. Baltus Lott-Dutchiest of the Dutch, it would appear. The offence of his intrusion, and his profaning with his outlandish gibberish the sacred precincts of a Puritan settlement, were not without some palliaa tion, for the state boundary was not clearly |