“In this regard, there is in all our settlements, early and late, something that they have in common, which appeals more, I am inclined to think, to the philosopher than to the historian. Perhaps the student of history delights rather in noting the differences in the plans and purposes of those who settled our early towns, and in finding in each, as he readily may, some detail of character or event which marks it with a special interest, and almost always brings in the suggestion of a special romance. As your early history is read before you to-day in detail, you are reminded how it differs from the history of every other town in Connecticut. At its beginning you hear of names which give it a stamp peculiarly its own: that of the first minister, continued by an honorable succession through all the generations to this day; that of the early settler who lived here in a log hut on land which he had bought of the Indians and lived to be Attorney General of Massachusetts; somewhat later, that of the man who came here as a shoemaker and removed hence as a judge, to become one of the few leaders in the constitutional history of the land; and with them the names of others which shed a special luster on your annals. Again, the importance of the Indians in this neighborhood, both in numbers and (as it would seem) in influence and character, suggests an almost unique chapter of history, especially when we note that it led to the sojourn of the remarkable man who led hither his band of Moravian missionaries and labored not in vain among the aborigines before he withdrew to make a permanent settlement in another province, and later to return to his home in Europe. And, if you care to boast of it, you share with but one or two other towns the honor of having had congregations of the Glassites--who under their name of Sandemanians will always be remembered for having had in their eldership one of the greatest men of science of a generation ago--and you have the exclusive honor of having been the home of the Jemimaites. Certainly, no two communities are exactly alike, and it is in the study of their differences that much of our pleasure in the reading of their history consists.