The Reformation of King Charles II and the Judges Cave! Chapter Two

New Haven, Connecticut May 1661, under cover of darkness, two men from a recently arrived English ship are secretly rushed away to a nearby building where another man guided them to the edge of town. From there, two other men joined in the secrecy and they continued a couple of miles through the fields to a grove of trees. For two days and nights they hid in this place they named ‘Hatchet Harbour’, so named for the rusty hatchet they found there and used to build a shelter. On the third night they were taken to a more protected hide-away atop a cliff where some large rocks provided the comfort of a small cave. This new hiding spot was to become known as the ‘Judges Cave’ where they would remain in hiding from May 15 to June 11, 1661.

The three men who faced certain and dire consequences for abetting wanted fugitives from the court of Charles II of England, were Richard Sperry, William Jones and a man named Burril. The fugitives were Edward Whalley and his son-in-law William Goffe, charged with the regicide of King Charles I. The hiding place known as ‘Judges Cave’ was on the property of Richard Sperry, who fed and cared for the secrecy of the fugitives. One night a panther was reported to have frightened them away and they spent occasional nights at the Sperry household.

During their time spent in hiding from the British soldiers, Goffe and Whalley ventured out only at night. Sperry supplied them with food left in the area by Sperry’s Negro servant, Pompey who was under strict orders to not look about or to ask questions lest the Devil get him! Their ‘cave’ gave them little shelter and during stormy weather they would stay with Sperry, always under fear of capture and punishment of all. Eventually they were to find refuge in the home of Rev. John Russell at Hadley, Massachusetts.

A report from a Hadley newspaper dated April 6, 1909, reprinted in the Minneapolis Journal, relates a story about William Goffe:

“A New England tradition that the 100 inhabitants of this town were saved from an attack of Indians in 1675 by the appearance of William Goffe, one of the regicide judges who sentenced King Charles I of England to death, is revived and will be commemorated at the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the town this coming summer.

“Had Goffe not forsaken the hiding place which he had kept for years and marshaled the disheartened colonists, says the legend, the town would have been destroyed. The aged man’s unexpected appearance, wearing robes of unknown fashion and a long white beard, and his equally abrupt departure in the moment of victory left among the colonists the belief that a heavenly messenger had been dispatched to them in the time of need, and Judge Goffe is known today as the ‘Angel of Hadley.’”

Richard Sperry, the original protector and regicide supporter of the two judges who hid from the Crown, was one of three Sperry family members who came to the new world in 1637 from Wales. After some time passed, the other two Sperry men went west but Richard remained as a farmer on the estate of Stephen Goodyear, progenitor of the Goodyear Rubber Company. Richard Sperry later was granted some of his own land by Goodyear and founded Amity Farm at Woodbridge, Connecticut, later known as Sperry Farm. Richard had ten children and sixty grandchildren, accounting for the many place names containing Sperry, such as Sperry Falls, Connecticut and Sperryville, Virginia. My research suggests that Richard Sperry, although a prominent player in the regicide incident, was not a prominent citizen of the time. He was alleged to have been illiterate (from records showing he signed his name with an ‘X’) and he was given an honorary seat at the town council, but near the door, probably for his support of the regicide judges in hiding. From his ancestors listing on his ‘Find A Grave’ site:

“Richard Sperry emigrated from England on the "Hector" to Boston in 1637 and may have come as an agent of the Earl of Warwick. He was in New Haven by 1643 as a farmer for Stephen Goodyear (a rich land owner), swore the oath of a freeman in 1644, and is famous for supplying food to the regicides, Whalley & Goffe, while they were hiding at West Rock in the "Judges Caves" which adjoined Richard Sperry's property which was called "Sperry Farms." This land was left to Richard Sperry by Stephen Goodyear upon his death and was known as "the rich plains of West Rock." Stephen Goodyear had build a house between West Rock and Hudson River on this land for Richard Sperry. In about 1648, Richard Sperry married Dennis (Unknown) in New Haven. Some think that Dennis was the daughter of Stephen Goodyear since Stephen & Mary Goodyear had a daughter named Dennis born in 1624 in England. In court records dated May 2, 1648, a complaint was filed against Richard Sperry for not keeping watch and Mr. "Goodier" answered for him, showing the close relationship they had. The exact date of Richard's death is unknown but Jacobus gives it as 1698.”

The two Sperry’s who went west are likely connected to the names of ‘Sperry Lake’ and the Sperryville addition of Wilmar, Minnesota. There are also Sperry Glacier in Glacier National Park and the Sperry Chalet which was in the valley east of Lake McDonald. Eastern Descendants of Richard Sperry included Nehemiah Sperry, a U.S. Congressman and one of the two men who financed the ironclad ‘Monitor’ during the Civil War. Moses Sperry served with the Green Mountain boys, led by Ethan Allen and involved in the capture of Fort Ticonderoga during the Revolutionary War. The extended history of the Sperry family includes some interesting reading and history buffs will find the relationships quite a treasure.

Moving along six generations, Richard (regicide supporter) begat Richard, begat Moses, begat Moses junior, begat Moses Johnson (private in Ira Allen’s[brother of Ethan Allen] Regiment, Vermont Militia, Revolutionary War), begat Daniel, begat Bela Jarvis Sperry who was the father of our main topic, James Dow Sperry. Bela Jarvis Sperry was born March 19, 1795 in Manchester, Vermont and died October 31, 1861. In 1820 he married Matilda Dow who was born in 1798 and died in 1872. Matilda Dow was also from Revolutionary War lineage and may have been part American Indian which seems to prove itself in the high cheekbones and coarse dark hair of the children. Bela and Matilda had eight children:

Martha Eugenia Sperry Dec. 22, 1821 – July 2, 1895. Married Nathaniel Drake Berry and bore three children, Matilda Abbie 1849, Mary Elizabeth 1850 and Nellie Marie 1859.

Benjamin Franklin Sperry Jan. 26, 1824 – Oct. 31, 1852

JAMES DOW SPERRY Dec 26, 1825 – Oct. 10, 1893

Sophronia Elizabeth Sperry Oct. 17, 1827 – Sept 27, 1898. Married William Dana Pierce 1824 – 1874 and she bore four children, Albert Edwin 1852, Arthur William 1859, Anson Merritt 1864 and Bertha Agnes 1870.

Daniel Straw Sperry Dec. 5, 1829 – Dec. 28, 1853

Bela Jarvis Jr. Sperry Sept. 28, 1831 – June 14, 1858. Married Haphzibah Underwood and had two children, Mary Elizabeth 1847 and Infant 1850.

Nathaniel Dow Sperry Mar. 5, 1834 – Apr. 29, 1889

Anson Martin Sperry Aug. 22, 1836 – Apr. 19, 1916. Married Thirza Rebecca Garrison 1838 – 1905, they had ten children, Fredrick James 1869, Theodore Anson 1871, Lloyd Garrison 1872, Mary Halesia 1874, Grace Anna Violet 1876, Elsa Matilda 1877, Leonard Boyd 1879, Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1880, Jarvis Dow 1882 and Ralph Landon (Little Willow) 1884.

Bela Jarvis Sperry was a man with some future and education. He had a broad intellect and knew a smattering of Greek, Latin and Hebrew. He was a natural at mathematics, kept excellent accounting books, his penmanship was of high order, read music and sang with a fine tenor voice. Bela was a ‘tramp’ or travelling shoemaker and among his rounds may have met his bride, Matilda Dow. During this period of time, country people got their shoes from a travelling shoemaker. Once a year they would summon the shoemaker to come after they had prepared and tanned the hides from their livestock. The families would have their own ‘lasts’ or forms which the shoemaker would adjust as needed.

Early on, Bela prospered and had a shop and two journeymen helpers, but for some unknown reason he made a horrible trade. He traded his shoe business and comfortable home for a small, hilly farm east of Claremont. The man with whom he made this lopsided trade was a man by the name of Phillips Fiske who made the once prosperous shoemakers shop into the first shoe manufacturing company in town and expanded it into the firm, Fiske & Farwell. Fiske duped Bela into the trade, but also took a mortgage on the farm and chattel mortgage on the cattle. As a young child of four years Anson watched while his mother cried silently as the sheriff and his posse came and drove the cows away, lost for lack of payment. Bela abandoned the farm, went to live with his brother Seth just outside of Claremont and returned to making shoes.

By this time, all of the children but their youngest, Anson, had moved on to begin lives of their own. As mentioned, Bela and Matilda had two girls and six boys. The girls had both married and established good lives. The boys of the family each had gone separate ways from their father and their stories follow.

Benjamin Franklin Sperry was said to have been a fine fellow, impulsive and generous. Ben worked as a clerk for his uncle, Frank Mudgett and failing that, went to work as a ‘mule spinner’ (Mule spinning is a process of producing fine filling yarn from a large complicated spinning machine that moves back and forth along tracks in the mill floor. The mule spinner manipulates the machine to meet specifications for the yarn. He draws out and twists a length of yarn and then winds it up) with Anson being his ‘bobbin boy’ (someone who delivers full bobbins and collects and cleans the empty bobbins from the spinning and weaving machines). Not long after that Ben contracted appendicitis and died, mourned and loved by all who knew him.

Bela Jarvis Jr. Sperry became a shoemaker, married and prospered for a time before contracting pulmonary consumption which overcame him rather quickly. He always longed to get out in the woods hunting and ‘knew’ that if he only could do that, he would get well again, ‘but that terrible fresh air would kill him’ they feared in his day.

JAMES DOW SPERRY, the third eldest child and second oldest son is known to have been at home up to 1840. He is shown on the 1830 and 1840 census of the time as was pointed out by Helen Manley. He was said to be the most handsome of the boys and a bright and likeable fellow. The desire for the woods and the lure of the west probably played a role in his decision to leave home. At the age of sixteen in 1841, he went to seek his fortune in the Adirondacks as a lumberman and joined an Indian tribe. He came home only once, to visit his mother, and then left for the far western parts of Wisconsin in 1853.

Daniel Straw Sperry was named after his Uncle Daniel Straw, husband to Aunt Hipsie. According to Anson, Daniel tired of home life, quarreled with his father about his wages and went to the Adirondacks to work with his brother James. He was killed not long after, by a felled tree and his body was transported back home for burial in the family plot at Claremont. I will propose here that James accompanied his brother’s body home in 1853 where he visited his family before leaving for Wisconsin.

Nathaniel Dow Sperry has little written about him in early life. He most likely also worked at home or in the mill factories of the time and in 1857 left home for Minnesota with his good friend Rayne Parker. There he must have had a land claim which he failed to improve and later sold, choosing to hunt and trap instead. Nathaniel never returned home but occasionally wrote his family. Nathaniel settled in the east side of Wright County, west of Minneapolis which was a small burg at the time.

Anson Martin was the youngest child and as such was able to chronicle the family. He was also the only one to carry on the family name through his children. Anson and his wife Thirza had 10 children and lived to see the twentieth century. Anson out-lived all of his siblings and had a very storied and productive life. At the age of fourteen he was working in the spinning mills for thirteen hours a day, six days a week, for the princely pay of one dollar. In the spring of 1861, Anson joined the army for a three month stint. Most people thought the war would be over after that and they would all be home in July.