Transcript 

of

Torrington, Devon – Torrington, Connecticut

Trans. Devon. Assoc. 1902, Vol XXXIV, plate, pp.575-577.

by

George M. Doe

Prepared by Michael Steer

This paper, was presented at the Association’s July 1902 Bideford meeting. To quote its author, it was submitted as an example of “the fraternal feeling which exists between ourselves and our cousins across the Atlantic”.
George M. Doe, the paper’s author was Town Clerk of Great Torrington from 1891 to 1923, successor in that position to his father George Doe, an articled solicitor whose obituary is available here.
Both Does, father and son were regular contributing members to the Association’s annual conferences. The Great Torrington Council website provides more information on its close relationship with the North American eponymous ‘daughter’.  The article, from a copy of a rare journal can be downloaded from the Internet Archive. Google has sponsored the digitization of books from several libraries. These books, on which copyright has expired are available for free educational and research use, both as individual books and as full collections to aid researchers.

 The subject of the admirable presidential address of last year by Sir Roper Lethbridge suggested the idea to me of writing this paper, and I trust it will not be deemed inappropriate as a little addendum thereto, being another instance of the fraternal feeling which exists between ourselves and our cousins across the Atlantic.
The intercourse between the two Torringtons of Connecticut and Devonshire commenced some nineteen years ago, and has been continued up to the present time, and I propose in this paper to briefly describe the same.
Before doing so, however, I will give a few particulars of Torrington in America taken from the " Souvenir Edition " of the Torrington Register, one of the daily papers of Torrington, Connecticut.
The town lies in the valley of the Naugatuck River, which divides it, and is spanned by several bridges. It is celebrated as the birthplace of John Brown, " the man who," to use the words of the Register, "gave slavery its death thrust, who was born May 9th, 1805, in the house still standing, and the Mecca of many pilgrims.” The population in 1897 was over 10,000, and was then rapidly increasing, and the principal industries are in brass, woodturning, casting, and machine work.
I cannot, however, agree with the American derivation of "Torrington,"though it is at any rate original" The name is made up," says the Register, "from three old Saxon and Briton words - tor, a hill ; hring, a circle ; and ton, a town. Hence it means a hill-encircled town." In 1883 the then Mayor of Great Torrington received a letter written on behalf of the above-named paper, asking for particulars of the town, which were duly furnished to the editor, and the arms of the borough of Great Torrington, Devon, appeared at the head of the Torrington Register, and have ever since been used by that paper as a "trade-mark."
The intercommunication thus established between the two towns was not allowed to entirely drop, and in September, 1897, 1 received a letter from the Rev. John Chauncey Linsley, the Rector of Trinity Church, Torrington, Connecticut, asking me to send him a stone from the parish church of Great Torrington to be built in the walls of the new Trinity Church then being erected, and to be, as the rector put it, " another link binding together two great branches of that Church whose faith is one." This request I at once complied with, and with the consent of the Rev. Frank Emlyn Jones, the Vicar of Great Torrington, obtained one of the old stones from the church and forwarded it to the Rev. J. C. Linsley, and in due course received an acknowledgment from him, with a photograph of the stone, which had been mounted on a slab of Sienna marble with an inscription, and placed in the tower vestibule of the new church in America.
The cost of doing this was borne by one of the parishioners, Mr. John Davey, a Devonshire man, who had been in his boyhood confirmed in the parish church of Great Torrington by the late Dr. Henry Phillpotts, Bishop of Exeter.
In 1899 Mr. Davey came to England and paid a visit to Great Torrington, after an absence of fifty years, and renewed his acquaintance with many old friends of his native place.
It is, I think, a very interesting circumstance that a North Devon man, who spent his early days in and near Great Torrington, Devon, should have found his way to its namesake in America, and shown his love for the older Torrington in so fitting a way as by helping to place a bit of the old Devonshire church in the walls of the new American one, and it is gratifying to find such a warm and brotherly feeling existing between two towns of the same name, but so widely separated as Devonshire and Connecticut - a feeling which not only exists between individual towns, but is, and may we hope ever will be, cordially maintained between the two great English-speaking countries, so happily expressed in the title chosen by Sir Roper Lethbridge for his address of  Hands across the Sea”.
Since writing these notes I have received, by the kindness of the Rev. J. C. Linsley, some further particulars of our American namesake, as well as a plate by which I am enabled to give an illustration of Trinity Church.
He informs me that the population of Torrington, Connecticut, has now reached 14,000, and that the town is still increasing in every way - the United States Government having just appropriated 60,000 dollars for a post office building for the town.
On the occasion of the funeral of our late beloved Queen, a service was held in Trinity Church, the rector preaching from the text, "Well done, good and faithful servant," the lectern on the occasion being entwined with the flags of England and America - the "Union Jack" and the "Stars and Stripes" The church was crowded.