162 
John H, Redfield. 
By Wm. M. CAnsy. 
(WITH PORTRAIT.) 
On the banks of the beautiful Connecticut and near the center 
of the State of the same name is to be found the place anciently 
and still called Middletown; and, in accordance with a custom 
nowhere so common as in New England, of retaining for offshoots 
from the original settlements the name of the mother town with a 
prefix or a suffix, the little hamlet, a few miles up the river, was 
of old called by the somewhat picturesque name of “Middletown 
Upper Houses,” now, alas! changed to the unmeaning one of 
Cromwell. Here,on July 10, 1815, the subject of this sketch was 
born. He could claim John and Priscilla Aiden among his an- 
cestors and was in every way of pure New England blood. Many 
of his family had been sea captains, a vocation nowhere repre- 
sented by more honorable, hardy and vigorous men than on our 
northern coast. His father, William C. Redfield, at this time a 
country storekeeper in humble circumstances, was a man of enter- 
prising character and of an unusually inquiring and vigorous mind. 
The son only knew his mother as an invalid and she died when 
he was but four years old; and although his father married after- 
ward, he was again bereaved; so that his son owed much of his 
good bringing-up to a widowed relative who came to take charge 
of the household and who, according to the custom of those days, 
did not stint the lessons to be derived from the “ New England 
Primer” and the “Shorter Catechism.” Other lessons, more 
pleasant perhaps, came to him early from his father and served to 
stimulate his inherited scientific tastes. 
The following pleasant account is of one of these which oc- 
curred when he was six years old during a long ride taken soon 
after the storm long known as the “Great September Gale.” * 
“My father’s habits of close observation led him to watch the 
fallen trees and the effects of that destructive wind. At Middle- 
town the wind had been from the southeast and the trees lay 
* See Oliver Wendell Holmes’ poem “The September Gale.” 
