On that quiet Sabbath day the village of Woodbury recalled to me Mr. John H. Bryant's description of his native village: "There lies a village in a peaceful vale, With sloping hills and waving woods around, Fenced from the blasts. There never ruder gale Bows the tall grass that covers all the ground; And planted shrubs are there, and cherish'd flowers, And a bright verdure born of gentle showers." Subsequently I again visited Woodbury with General Sherman. Mr. Cothron was still there and was very kind to us. It seemed to me that the old place had run down a little, that the walks were not so clean, the grass was not as fresh in the fields, and evidently the graveyards had lost some of their monuments, but a prominent one had been erected in the churchyard to Rev. Anthony Stoddard, to which General Sherman had contributed. We heard of no one of our name in Woodbury, but when General Sherman saw an old sign, "Sherman's Tannery," he said that he believed he had at last found some tangible evidence of the residence of our fathers in Woodbury; that Sherman had been a good honest tanner no doubt, and that was the most that could be said of any one. As I have said, my grandfather, Taylor Sherman, and his wife, Elizabeth Stoddard, moved from Woodbury to Norwalk, where he practiced his profession as a lawyer. He attained a good position as such, and for many years he was a Judge of Probate. He became early associated with the proprietors of the half million acres of land lying in the western part of the Western Reserve in Ohio, called "Sufferers' Land." In the period immediately before and after the adoption of the constitution several of the states laid claim to western lands, founded upon grants by James I, the chief of which were the claims of Virginia to the region north and west of the Ohio River, and the claim of Connecticut to all the land lying west of Pennsylvania to the South Seas and north of the 41st parallel of latitude. These claims were finally compromised by Congress granting to Virginia all the land lying between the Scioto and the Miami Rivers in Ohio, and to Connecticut the land in Ohio north of the 41st parallel, extending westward of Pennsylvania one hundred and twenty miles. During the Revolutionary War the coasts of Connecticut had been subjected to several raids by the British and Tories, and several towns, including Norwalk, Greenwich, Fairfield, Danbury, New Haven and New London, had been burned. Indemnity had been proposed, but the state was in no condition to pay such losses.