Killer Colt

by Harold Schechter

  In later years, Lydia Huntley Sigourney (as she was known following her marriage) would achieve national fame as an author. Wildly prolific, she would publish sixty-seven volumes before her death in 1865. Some were novels, some memoirs, some histories and biographies. Her reputation, however, rested primarily on her poetry.

  Dubbed the “Sweet Singer of Hartford,” she poured out an endless stream of popular verse, most of which consisted of cloyingly sentimental tributes to the newly deceased. Of the nearly one hundred pieces collected in her 1822 Poems, for example, more than half are mawkish elegies with titles like “The Dying Mother’s Prayer,” “Anniversary of the Death of an Aged Friend,” “Babe Bereaved of Its Mother,” “Voice from the Grave of a Sunday-School Teacher,” and “Death of a Young Lady at the Retreat for the Insane.” In an age that made a fetish of bereavement and mourning, however, it was precisely Mrs. Sigourney’s morbid preoccupations, rendered in verse and drenched in a saccharine piety, that made her so widely beloved—the country’s best-selling poet before Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.8

  Though she began writing poetry at a precocious age, her earliest ambition was to keep a school. Her childhood reveries (as Sigourney writes in her autobiography) were replete with “vivid pencillings of the delight, dignity, and glory of a schoolteacher.” During her playtime, she would arrange her “dolls in various classes, instructing them not only in the scanty knowledge I had myself attained, but boldly exhorting and lecturing them on the higher moral duties.”9

  She first got a chance to realize her dream in 1811, when she and a friend started a seminary for young girls in Norwich. Three years later, at the behest of her acquaintance Daniel Wadsworth—the wealthy Hartford arts patron who would go on to found the Wadsworth Atheneum—she established a new private school for the daughters of his well-to-do friends. The inaugural class was limited to fifteen pupils, a number that was eventually enlarged to twenty-five. Among the members of this “select circle of young ladies” were Margaret and Sarah Ann Colt.

  In contrast to other teachers of her era—who believed that girls should be schooled solely in such “womanly arts” as needlework and watercolors—Sigourney had little use for the “ornamental branches.” Her stated pedagogical goal was the cultivation of both the intellect and “moral nature” through “rational education.” To that end, she devoted each hour of the school day to one of the “simple, solid branches of culture”: history, geography, rhetoric, grammar, arithmetic, orthography, and natural and moral philosophy.

  To refine their diction, she had her pupils recite “select passages of poetry,” devoting “much attention to the meaning of the sentences” so that they might make “the spirit of the author their own” and thus “more accurately interpret his style.” To assist them in developing rigorous habits of mind, she frequently quizzed them on the dates of significant world events: “In what year of the world did the ark rest upon Mount Ararat? Who was called, 1,921 years before the Christian era, to go forth alone from his people and his father’s house? Who was Queen of Assyria, and who the Judge of Israel, when Troy was destroyed, 1,184 years before Christ?”10

  Sigourney also placed great emphasis on the acquisition of “clear and precise penmanship.” Each girl was given a blank book with marble-paper covers and “long foolscap pages” and required to make daily entries in their finest handwriting.

  Two of these notebooks—one belonging to Margaret Colt, the other to her younger sister, Sarah—still survive.11 Margaret’s is distinguished by a bold, exuberant script and pages that are illustrated with bright floral designs. By contrast, Sarah’s notebook is written in a cramped, tightly controlled hand and is utterly devoid of decoration. To a startling extent, moreover, it consists of transcriptions of exceptionally death-haunted poems: “The Orphan,” “The Loss of Friends,” “The Grave: A Poem.” This is perhaps unsurprising, given her teacher’s own morbid inclinations. Even so, there is something unsettling about the little girl’s funereal tastes. And in view of the calamities that were about to befall the Colt family, it is hard not to read a number of her selections—“Death of an Affectionate Mother,” “The Beautiful Burial Plot,” “Consumption” (“There is sweetness in woman’s decay, / When the light of beauty is fading away”)—as sadly prophetic.

  3

  An epitome of the risk-taking, entrepreneurial spirit of his age, Christopher Colt had, by dint of his “innate ability, hard work … and sheer willpower,” made a swift rise to wealth and local eminence.1 A successful importer and retailer of assorted merchandise, from dry goods and glassware to cutlery and crockery, he had also opened a thriving distillery with his father-in-law. By 1818, Christopher held a number of positions in local institutions, serving, among other offices, as treasurer of the Hartford County Agricultural Society and as a trustee of the Society for Savings, the first savings bank in the state.2

  One of the vice presidents of the latter was the prosperous hardware merchant Charles Sigourney. In 1819 the recently widowed Sigourney, having been introduced to Lydia Howard Huntley by their mutual friend Daniel Wadsworth, declared his feelings for her in a letter “of touching eloquence and the fairest chirography.” Though the twenty-eight-year-old poetess had, by then, resigned herself to spinsterhood—to the untroubled existence, as she put it, of “a quiet school-dame … addicted to maiden meditations”—she accepted his proposal. Retiring from teaching, she moved into her husband’s splendid hilltop home and took up the life of a prosperous housekeeper, supervising the three female servants while herself performing a variety of domestic tasks, including the keeping of the household accounts. She also served as hostess to the frequent “pleasant parties of friends … for whom it was our rule to make ice-cream and other varieties of refreshments within our own premises.”3

  Christopher and Sarah Colt were among the regular guests at these gatherings. Evoking those early halcyon days of her marriage in her posthumously published autobiography, Letters of Life, Lydia Sigourney recalled the Colts as “the handsomest couple” in their neighborhood: he “a gentleman of fine form and countenance and amiable manners,” his wife “a model of dignified beauty.” Their home, opposite to the Sigourneys’ own splendid “hill-residence,” was “a spacious and pleasant mansion.”

  Having ascended to the upper ranks of Hartford society, Christopher Colt was determined to give his eldest boy an education befitting the son of a gentleman. Accordingly, in 1819, nine-year-old John was sent to Hopkins Academy in his father’s hometown, Hadley, Massachusetts.

  Housed in a fine three-story brick building erected in 1817 at the then substantial cost of nearly five thousand dollars, the school featured two classrooms on the ground floor and, on the second, five additional rooms “used for recitations and to contain scientific apparatus and the beginning of a library.” The third floor consisted entirely of a spacious gallery known as Academy Hall. There, on a stage raised four feet above the floor, “embryo orators spouted poetry and read compositions at the afternoon rhetorical exercises, debates were held on abstruse subjects, exhibitions were given, lecturers spoke words of wisdom, and diplomas were awarded to those who had attained ‘ripeness and dexterity’ in all sorts of learning.” Tuition at the academy—which, under the preceptorship of the Reverend Daniel Huntington, placed heavy emphasis on the knowledge of Latin and Greek—was three dollars per quarter, plus an additional dollar and a half a week for board, “including room rent and washing.”4

  Besides a sound education, John’s parents evidently hoped that their unruly son would derive other benefits from his time at Hopkins Academy. The former pastor of the Congregational Church in North Bridgewater, the Reverend Mr. Huntington was reputed to be a strict disciplinarian who brooked no frivolity in his charges. Surely a course of study under this “grave master” would help tame John’s “volatile spirit.” Their hopes were quickly dashed.

  Bridling at the constraints of an institution that, according to its bylaws, demanded complete “subjection” to its �
�authority and government,” John devoted himself largely to troublemaking. The threat of public “degradation”—the prescribed punishment for misbehavior—only seemed to incite him to even more flagrant acts of rebelliousness.5 He became, in the words of an early biographer, “the ringleader of all mischief.” Utterly indifferent to the study of dead languages, John sought to excel not in his schoolwork but “at swimming, skating, horseracing, hunting, and fishing.”6

  After one year, his father withdrew him from the academy. Besides the evident futility of subjecting the boy to a classical education, another consideration entered into the decision. Even the modest expense of less than eighty dollars per annum had suddenly become prohibitive for Christopher Colt.7 Like millions of his countrymen, he had suffered a precipitous reversal of fortune.

  • • •

  In the immediate aftermath of the War of 1812, the United States experienced a period of unprecedented economic expansion, a heady era of booming commerce, soaring land values, and rampant speculation. Five years after the end of hostilities, however, the economy crashed. Exactly what caused the panic of 1819—the first such crisis in the nation’s history—is still a subject of debate among scholars. Its devastating consequences, however, are beyond dispute. Banks failed, property values plunged, jobs evaporated, the ranks of paupers swelled at an alarming rate. Times were so hard that, according to one contemporary newspaper report, desperate young men turned to robbery not to profit from the loot but to get thrown into prison, where they could at least be assured of regular meals and a roof over their heads. All together, an estimated three million people—roughly one-third the population—were adversely affected.8 Among that staggering number was the family of Christopher C. Colt.

  Sam Colt was only six years old when his father went bankrupt. He was playing under the piano in the front parlor when Christopher came in and informed his wife that he had “lost the bulk of his property.” Though the news had dire implications for herself, Sarah’s first thoughts were for her children. “My poor little ones!” she cried, wringing her hands as her “eyes dimmed with tears.” It was a memory that would haunt Sam for the rest of his life.9

  In the midst of this family crisis, John, back home from the Hopkins Academy, was still finding ways to make trouble. Somewhere around this time—the exact date is unclear—he and a friend decided to take revenge on a neighbor who had caught them stealing apples from his orchard and had administered a severe whipping to John’s friend. The neighbor, a surly old farmer and veteran of the Continental army, owned a prize horse that he rode proudly on militia muster days. Not long after the incident in the apple orchard, John and his friend set about collecting “a vast supply” of burdock burrs. They then snuck into the animal’s pen and pelted it with the burrs until its tail and mane were hopelessly ensnarled. Unable to comb out the burrs, the farmer was forced to shear off the hair, making the horse too unsightly to ride in the next parade. That John and his friend carried their vengeance to such an extreme—“even to the persecution of an innocent horse,” as one outraged commentator wrote—inspired widespread indignation in the community.10

  It was shortly after this episode that John was sent to live with an uncle, a farmer in Burlington, Vermont. While his year under the stern discipline of the Reverend Mr. Huntington had done little to improve the boy’s character, the rigors of farm work—the unceasing round of plowing and planting, mowing and hoeing, repairing fences and retrieving strays—had a beneficial effect. The refractory boy blossomed into a responsible man. On one memorable occasion, he was entrusted with a particularly challenging task. A blizzard had left the local roads buried beneath drifts seven feet high. When the storm finally subsided, a group of neighbors turned out to clear the roads. Thirteen oxen were hitched to a snow drag with two horses in the lead. Perceiving “an excellent opportunity of trying what John was made of,” his uncle assigned him the job of riding the foremost sorrel. Though the horse threw him a half dozen times while negotiating a treacherous hill, the boy remained undaunted and acquitted himself “in the best manner.” “John is made of good stuff,” his uncle reported to Christopher soon after this event. “You need not give yourself any uneasiness about him.”11

  By the time this letter was sent, its recipient had already turned to a new trade: yarn and cloth manufacturing. Equipped with newfangled technology—water-powered spindles and looms—the nascent New England textile industry was spared the worst effects of the depression of 1819.12 True to his family motto—“He Conquers Who Endures”—Christopher Colt took the loss of his fortune as a mere setback. A fresh opportunity awaited in the mills. To persist in the face of adversity was, as the proverb assured him, the key to success.

  As it happened, his capacity to endure suffering was about to be sorely tested. Fate had another, even more devastating blow in store for him.

  In May 1821, his wife delivered her eighth child, a boy christened Norman Upton Colt. By then, however, she had already suffered the first bouts of bloody coughing that signified the onset of pulmonary tuberculosis—consumption, the “white plague.” She died on June 6 at the age of forty.

  The infant, sickly from the day of his delivery, survived for only a year. His burial took place on May 5, 1822—the anniversary of his birth. His passing was—predictably—commemorated in verse by Lydia Sigourney, who rarely squandered a chance to rhapsodize on the death of a newborn:

  DEATH found strange beauty on that polished brow,

  And dashed it out. There was a tint of rose

  On cheek and lip. He touched the veins with ice,

  And the rose faded. Forth from those blue eyes

  There spake a wishful tenderness, a doubt

  Whether to grieve or sleep, which innocence

  Alone may wear. With ruthless haste he bound

  The silken fringes of their curtaining lids

  For ever. There had been a murmuring sound

  With which the babe would claim its mother’s ear,

  Charming her even to tears. The Spoiler set

  The seal of silence.

  But there beamed a smile

  So fixed, so holy, from that cherub brow,

  Death gazed, and left it there. He dared not steal

  The signet-ring of Heaven.13

  The Grim Reaper, in this typically tear-jerking piece, may have been humbled by the holiness of the infant’s “cherub brow.” But neither Death nor his favorite female poet was done yet with the offspring of Christopher and Sarah Colt.

  4

  Not long before she succumbed to the white plague, Sarah Colt bestowed on her little son Samuel a cherished keepsake: a military horse pistol that her father had wielded in the Revolutionary War. That, at any rate, is one version of the story. Another is that she bought him the old firearm as a reward for learning to read. According to a third, Sam found it among the discards in a “gunsmith’s junk pile.” And some biographers claim that he got it in a trade from his younger brother Christopher, Jr., reputedly a sharp dealer even in early boyhood.1

  Though these tales differ in detail, all agree that the gun was inoperative when Sam acquired it and that—in a precocious display of mechanical genius—he tinkered it back into working order with spare parts from “some generous gunmaker’s scrapbox.” One famous anecdote portrays the seven-year-old seated “under a tree in a field with the pistol taken entirely to pieces, the different parts carefully arranged around him, and which he was beginning to reconstruct. He soon, to his great delight, accomplished this feat.” Like the stories of Newton and the apple and Washington and the cherry tree, there is a hagiographic quality to this tale of little Sam Colt and his broken-down flintlock—appropriately enough for a figure who would one day be compared to the Deity Himself.2 Whether it corresponds in any way to actuality is another matter. In any event, the truth is impossible to verify.

  There are some documented facts about this period in the Colt family history. Following Sarah’s death, the running of the household fel
l to Christopher’s widowed sister, Lucretia Colt Price, who had lived with the family for a number of years. In March 1823, she was relieved of her domestic duties when Christopher took a second wife, Olivia Sargeant, daughter of a prosperous Hartford mechanic.

  Two years after this happy event, another tragedy befell the Colt family, at least as devastating as the loss of Sarah. In July 1825, Margaret, the oldest child, fell victim to the scourge that had claimed her mother. She was only nineteen at the time and just months shy of her long-planned marriage—“snatched,” as Lydia Sigourney put it, “in her bloom and in her bridal hour.”

  In her inevitable tribute, Mrs. Sigourney lavishes her usual maudlin attention on the presumably poetic details of Margaret’s slow decay: her struggles “for that slight breath that held her from the tomb,” her “wasting form” like “a snow-wreath which the sun marks for his own,” her “emaciate hand” raised “in trembling prayer.” Describing the young woman’s funeral, Sigourney pictures the mourners gathered at the gravesite. There are the grieving companions of Margaret’s youth—“a train of young fair females with brows of bloom / And shining tresses.” There is her stricken fiancé, E. B. Stedman—the “pale lover,” who, “ ’ere the fading of the summer rose,” had “hoped to greet her as a bride.” And finally there are the young woman’s surviving siblings: “those who at her side were nursed / By the same mother.”3

  Though precise dates are impossible to ascertain, it would appear that their sister’s funeral was one of the last times, for years to come, that the children of Christopher and Sarah Colt would all be gathered in one place. Their lives were about to undergo a major upheaval.