INTRODUCTION

THE hamlet of East Plymouth, two miles north of Terryville, Connecticut, and more commonly known as "East Church," was brought into existence about 1792, by the building of St. Matthew's Episcopal Church by a clan of Tories. These Tories, or, if you so prefer, loyal members of the Church of England--for they could not conscientiously be loyal to the head of the church without bearing the name of Tory--lived in the farmhouses scattered along the hillsides where the boundaries of the present towns of Bristol, Plymouth and Harwinton now meet. With Chippeny Hill in the town of Bristol, or Chippin's Hill as it is commonly called now, as a centre, they had gathered together, unshaken by the stress of the times as the stone ledges north of them, united by family bonds, and by the persecutions of marauding Sons of Liberty, under the leadership of that "designing church clergyman," the Rev. James Nichols. It is certainly time that some memorial of their lives is placed upon paper. Their loyalty to their beliefs, though perhaps not guided by prudence, is certainly to be admired, and that they were hunted, robbed, flogged, and driven to the ledges for refuge, because of this loyalty, deserves not to be forgotten. They were noble men, some of them, and courageous, yet there remains little to remember them by save here and there a family tradition. In this attempt to weld together a collection of facts directly and indirectly concerning the life of that Tory clan, the writer is greatly indebted to the research and assistance of Rev. X. A. Welton, of Redlands, California, who is unashamed of his Tory ancestry, and he is also indebted to Mr. James Shepard, of New Britain.

Project Canterbury