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Newtown Turnpike
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Road
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Division
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Brook
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Stony
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Baker Ave
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Acte Lane
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Greens
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Farms Road
compo Creek
Compo
Narrow Rock Rd
Hillspoint
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Compol
Compo
Compo Tide
Old Mill Fo Mill
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Minute Man
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Nath? C. Hill
Puggs Knoll
Compo Burial Place
Drive
Hills Point
Soundview
Compo Beach
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Cedar Point
Old Saugaturs Road
Great
Marsh
Riverside
Tings Highway
Treadwell Ave
SAUGATUCK
Indian Hill Rd 8
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Saugatuc
Highwca
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Wilton
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Saugatuck River
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Norwalk Westport
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State
Beach Rd
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY
Fairfield
Birge's · Spring
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Sturges Rd *
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Joseph Hide, 2nd
Joseph Hide, Ist
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Port Royal Spring
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Hillandale Rd
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Joseph Wakeman
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Castle Taylor
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Eli Couch" Cider Mill,
Road )
Farms
The Fulling Mill
Clapboard
New Brook
Greens
Sasco
GREENS
Polly
Nash's Blacksmith,. Shop
(Geo. P. Sennings)
Hot Hole"
Sherwood Island Lane
First Church & 5 IL . School Ry Sta
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Long Hill's
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Francis Andrews
John Green
Thos. Newton
Henry Gray
Dan'l Frost
Dennies Point
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Island Lane
Sherwood Point
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* The Eleven O'clock Roads Ø Also known as Sherwood Pond and the Mill Pond.
North
Brook
Bayberry Lane *
Ave *
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Hyde Rd
Muddy Brook
Maple
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Batterson's Blacksmith rop
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Thos Nash
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Third & Fourth Churches
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Gideon Couch (Rev. Benj., J.Relyea)
Center
Turkey
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Farms
Sasco
Colonial or Lower Burial Ground
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""Aunt"Charlotte Jennings
Seo.P.Jennings
\\\Clapboard " Hill
(Bedford Homestead)-
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Creek Rd
FARMS Andrews House
Morehouse
Lane
First Parsonage (Dan'l Chapman)
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N.y., N.H. & H.R.R.
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Maple Lane
Beachside
Bankside Farmers
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Long Ditch
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Sound
Frost Point
( The Country
W.s. Jennings
Birthplace of
Petticoat Lane
Machamux Boulder
Westport
John Hide (Henry Birge)
Adams Academy
Creek
Rd
GREENS FARMS CONNECTICUT
FROST POINT- 1648
From a painting made especially for this volume by John B. Morris, Jr.
GREENS FARMS
CONNECTICUT
THE OLD WEST PARISH OF FAIRFIELD
. where the white man following the cattle trails "sits down and inhabits"
Historical Sketches and Reminiscences by
GEORGE PENFIELD JENNINGS THE SQUIRE OF ELMSTEAD
"This Court ... doe find that the first six miles granted to Fayrefeild hath been measured and is stated to be at a white oak tree neer Daniel Frost deceassed his house, eastward ... " May the 12th 1687
THE CONGREGATIONAL SOCIETY OF GREENS FARMS 1933
COPYRIGHT, 1933, BY THE CONGREGATIONAL SOCIETY OF GREENS FARMS
Printed in the United States of America
SCRIBME
MY FRIEND
FREDERICK T. BEDFORD, ESQ.
WHOSE HOME-LOT OF TEN ACRES LIES OFF THE POINT AS DID DANIEL FROST'S - THE BANKSIDE FARMER OF 1648
Foreword
THE AUTHOR of this book was well equipped for the task, for heredity linked him with the early settlers and his experience was saturated with this community life.
Born in Greens Farms, April 11, 1855, he removed as a young boy with his parents to Wisconsin. These impressionable years spent on a large farm in the Mid- dle West brought him back to Greens Farms in his late 'teens with a widened outlook on life.
I feel well qualified to estimate the author because we had been close friends since our school days, when together we went to the Greens Farms Academy under Principal Robert Forsyth and took from him what is now the High School training. From then until his death, which occurred just as this book was going to press, we had been closely linked in church, commu- nity, and town affairs.
As a deacon in the church, as an officer of the Greens Farms Farmers' Club, as a town officer, and as a notary public for fifty years, George Penfield Jennings had been in the midst of making the wheels go round, but his life had been broadened by wide travel and shrewd observation.
He brought to this work an insight and affection which few could equal and put down a valuable com- munity record that otherwise would have been lost when his generation is gone.
EDWARD COLEY BIRGE.
GREENS FARMS CONNECTICUT
The Legend of Machamux
"Lo! the poor Indian, whose untutored mind, Sees God in storms and hears Him in the wind."
C HICKENS, a young sachem of the Wallops tribe, and his young squaw, after many moons of wanderings when and where the white man knoweth not, came tracking through the forests and along the ridge of Clapboard Hill. At its crest they halted. It was dark. His squaw cooked the evening meal of game. Then they lay down to sleep under a large oak tree. A hoot owl kept watch during the night.
It was early springtime in his dreams. Chickens saw the promised land before him. He was to shoot forth his arrow, and where it came down and stood upright, there he was to build his wigwam. Oh! that the white man, by play of words, could picture the primitive scene of this red man's promised land. The croaking frogs to Chickens's right down at the hot hole, the lair of skunks and black snakes, early awoke him. He stood up to get a view of his new homeland. In the sky the friendly crows were "caw-cawing" and the eagle was zooming far above while the gray squir- rels frisked in the tree tops. To his left, down the hill, was the calamus swamp overgrown with willows, cat- tails, mosses, and alderbushes. He heard the splash
[I]
Greens Farms, Connecticut
of the muskrats with their young leaving their winter sod-mounds and eating their full of sweet flag and aqueous plants.
Before him down the hill was an undulating glade fringed about by salt marshes and creeks. He gently shot an arrow, hoping it might alight right in front of him, but it glided and fell far out on the flats of the ebbing tide among the gulls feasting on clams, oysters, and shellfish. He listened and heard the baying of foxes among the forest trees on Fox Island (now for many years named Sherwood Island). He shot his second arrow, hoping the while that it would come down there, but it dropped among the wild duck and geese in the creeks. Away across Compo Pond and on the open hillside of Compo Hill a herd of deer, to- gether with their young, was browsing on the spring herbage and wandering down to the salt-licks. But that was too far to shoot an arrow!
Over across the valley of Muddy Brook there was a pleasing prospect on Benjamin Hill. The woodcocks were whir-rr-rr-ing, the partridges drumming, and in nuptial play a pair of quail were whistling "Too wet -more wet-too wet-more wet." To his left, Chick- ens saw a flock of wild turkeys circling around, look- ing for a nesting place on Turkey Hill. He was still in doubt. His last arrow, the ancestral totem of his tribe, prized for its Indian craftsmanship and tipped with a finely wrought flint arrow-point, remained in
[2 ]
The Legend of Machamux
the quiver. He looked again toward the level field- lands of Frost Point near the great sea. Can he shoot his arrow so far? He is a sachem, a brave. He bends his bow; his totem arrow whirls forth and soars over the space, comes down, and stands up. He sees the fluttering feather tip through the mists of early morn- ing. Chickens* and his squaw followed, and where the arrow stood he built his wigwam. His squaw dug up the soil, and when the buds opened on the hickory tree, showing the papoose paws, the sign for planting corn, there was a young papoose in the wigwam.
The Indian named this new land Machamux-"The Beautiful Land." It was his possession by right of dis- covery and occupation. The white man interprets the meaning of Machamux as "The Red Man's Paradise."
* An Indian sachem by the name of Chichens signed the deed in which were reservations and privileges for fish and fowling. The relations between the white men and the Indians seem to have continued friendly. In 1725 a small sachem, variously known as Sam Mohawk, Chickens, Warrups Chichekns, or Chicken Wallups, said to be a Mohawk, sold his remaining land to Samuel Couch for 12 pounds and 6 shillings, and withdrew to the hills of Redding. Here he received the Indian belt which came from Towattowau. In 1749 he retired further to the north. To settle the Indian question once and for all the General Court at Hartford granted the Schaghticoke tribe 200 acres of land in the town of Kent in Litchfield County. Here Chicken Wallups spent his last days. As one rides up along the new state highway through the valley of the Housatonic, a mile before entering Kent, if he looks across the river he will see a few brown, wood houses. This is the reservation and here are said to be still living one or two last members of the Schaghticoke tribe. Here died Chicken Wallups, a descendant of the red man who first greeted the white man on the Indian fields of Greens Farms.
[3]
Captain John Gallup. 1637
I N 1637 Captain John Mason, in command of the English colonists' soldiers and friendly Indians, was pursuing to the west the hostile Pequots from their stronghold in and around New London. Con- temporary history states that a supporting fleet of vessels was coasting along the Connecticut shore carrying ammunition and supplies for these soldiers, and although no mention is definitely made, no doubt this fleet was commanded by Captain John Gallup. This Captain Gallup was reported to have been a daring vesselman and Indian trader and had already won distinction and prowess as an Indian fighter around Block Island and Narragansett Bay. The fleet hove to in Guilford Harbor and later came to anchor in New Haven Harbor, where the soldiers went ashore, rested, and reconnoitered. The Pequots slipped away to the west and finally made their last stand in Pequot Swamp, Southport. The monument near the Post Road has this inscription:
"The Great Swamp Fight here Ended The Pequot War. July 13, 1637."
Meanwhile, Captain John Gallup was coasting along, keeping in touch with but just in advance of
[ 4 ]
Captain John Gallup. 1637
the land forces, so as to land and help cut off the fleeing Pequots. The tidal inlet, just east of Sherwood Island, which has carried the name of Gallup Gap Creek from the earliest times, is some two miles be- yond Pequot Swamp. It appears reasonable there- fore that Captain John Gallup sailed his vessels through the Gap and made a landing in the deep creeks alongside the uplands known as the Horse Pasture.
This daring event dates the Greens Farms history from 1637. I have heard elderly people say that the name "Gallup Gap Creek" came from the galloping horses down in the horse pasture. This theory of the name is wrong. Captain John Gallup was known and lived "on east." His name is still perpetuated there by many persons. The word gap means an opening or passageway on land or sea, so that this intrepid navigator is entitled to the honor of naming this inlet "Gallup Gap Creek."
[5]
New Plantations
T HE subjugation of the powerful tribe of Pe- quots opened up Tidewater Connecticut from the Housatonic westward for new settle- ments by the English. Here were giant forests on the hillsides, sweet springs of water and streams, rich soil in the valleys, common lands for pasturage, tidal in- lets, creeks, and meadows. Here was an abundance of sea food and game.
In 1639 Roger Ludlow and his associates started a plantation at Unqua, thus founding the colonial town of Fairfield. The cattle of the new settlement were branded and at first were pastured on the "Common," watched by the town's herdsman. Before long, how- ever, led by their instinct to find sweet and nutritious new grass, the cattle browsed farther afield and even- tually made their way out through Mill Plain to the ford of Mill River. Slaking their thirst with the pure water, they wandered southward along the eastern slope of Mill Hill. They continued grazing down along the region of Pequot Avenue to the Sasqua Fields, pausing abruptly at the mouth of the Sasqua (Sasco) River. The herdsman, looking beyond to the west- ward, saw a wide plain of luxuriant pasture land; at
[ 6]
New Plantations
the next low tide he drove the cattle across the river to the Machamux Field. Gradually they spread out, south of Little Creek-a fresh-water slough stretching westward from the Sasco-and on along the winding creeks, covering the site of the present Bedford Gar- dens, where there was ample pasturage on the grassy bluffs overlooking Long Island Sound.
By sign language the red man welcomed the white man and granted free pasturage for his cattle; by sign language, too, he pointed out his sachemdom, Machamux, from the seaway up and over the hills and valleys to the Aspetuck and beyond, and from the River Saugatuck to the Sasqua.
The herdsman saw that it was a goodly land for white settlement. From the crest of Clapboard Hill, the foot of which was skirted by the plateau of the red men's homes, a fair country was spread before him. Below lay a flat terrain soon to be devoted to a "Common" and just beyond the rounded slope of Bridge Hill with its oak tree-one of our first land- marks. To the right was wooded Long Hill, and then the grassy expanse long known as the Horse Pasture; beyond, the salt meadows and Gallup Gap Creek, the beach, and the shining waters of Long Island Sound. Away to the south in a blue haze could be seen the bald headlands of Sawanhacky, the Island of Shells, or Long Island. The baying of foxes on the large wooded island of a hundred acres off the shore caused the
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Greens Farms, Connecticut
herdsman to call it Fox Island. Compaug (Compo) Pond was just beyond, and in full view out in the Sound was Cockenoes Island (its original name). To the north stretched out an intriguing landscape of forests, valleys, and winding streams-Greens Farms in its original sylvan beauty. The herdsman lost no time in telling all about it to the Fairfield colonists.
Three farmers, Thomas Newton, Henry Gray, and John Green, quickly followed the cattle trails, and, guided by the herdsman to the top of Clapboard Hill, viewed the prospect from there. On their own responsibility they decided at once, "with Yankee knack for a good bargain," to purchase the land from the Indians. This purchase extended over a mile frontage along the Sound, from an oak tree west to and including Fox Island, and northerly to the Aspe- tuck River. Two other associates chosen by these three men and approved by the town of Fairfield were Daniel Frost and Francis Andrews.
The first document relating to this settlement is one which contains articles of agreement between the town of Fairfield and certain individuals who were al- lowed to "sit down and inhabit" in this place. It bears the date of 1648. For the preservation of this document we are indebted to that wise provision of the Colonial Government which required that each town should transmit copies of all grants, deeds, and transfers of land to Hartford, to be put on record there.
[ 8]
New Plantations
The frontispiece or preamble is not preserved, but the items of agreement are in the words following:
"Imprimus: It is agreed that Thomas Newton, Henry Gray and John Green shall have liberty to sit down and inhabit at Machamux; and shall have for each of them laid out as in property to themselves and their heirs forever, twenty acres in upland, to be laid out indifferently by the appointment of said town, in a convenient place, where it may not be too obnoxious to the depasturing and feeding of the cattle of said town. And that if they improve the said land, to make a sufficient mound or fence, or mounds and fences, to secure their said town and land from the trespass of the cattle of the inhabitants of said town. And their fence shall be viewed by said town, or their deputies, whether or no, and shall be therein subject to such orders as the town shall make about other farms of the town.
"ITEM: That there shall be sufficient passage and way or ways for the cattle of said Fairfield to pass to the sea-shore; and all the way to feed and depasture to and again in those parts; and that neither the in- habitants of the said town nor their cattle may be pre- vented that way.
"ITEM: That there may be sufficient quantity of meadow laid out by the inhabitants of said town, or their deputies, to the parties above said, for their
[9]
Greens Farms, Connecticut
comfortable subsistence in that place. And that the parties above said shall only keep their own sheep in and upon their said land and commons adjoining, and not take cattle to foragement and depasture in the commons of said town.
"ITEM: That the aforesaid parties and their heirs be subject to all taxes and rates of the said town wherein they have a common benefit together with said town, and are subject to the officers of said town, save only in watching and warding.
"ITEM: That there may be liberty to said parties to take in two more inhabitants by full consent and approbation of the town of Fairfield: and that they be approved as aforesaid, there may be like quantity of upland and meadow set out to them by the town upon the terms aforesaid.
"ITEM: It is agreed that if said town and the par- ties are not agreed between themselves about the meadows and upland, the court to be the indifferent judges."
Then, under the guidance and legal sanction of Fairfield, Daniel Frost and Francis Andrews joined the first three settlers, and at the end of 1648 all five men with their families were securely settled on a ten-acre home-lot, each home-lot having twenty acres of pasture land attached to it. The settlement was known as Bankside. Fairfield kept a jealous eye upon
New Plantations
the new development-perhaps with reason. The five farmers of Bankside, quick to perceive the prom- ising merits of their new waterside plantations, were no sooner settled than they bought of the natives more shore frontage to the west, with the northern bound- ary indefinite. This was Yankee initiative, Yankee independence of action indeed, but of such a large order that it raised the wind in Fairfield. Roger Lud- low and his deputies brought the matter to the atten- tion of the General Court.
Fortunately, just then a boundary dispute with the town of Norwalk influenced Fairfield to agree to the territorial ambitions of Bankside. The dispute was that in its original charter, the colony of Fairfield supposed that its western boundary was the Sauga- tuck River, but in measuring along the coastline of Long Island Sound from the Pequonnock River it was found that the number of miles in the original grant brought the western boundary in the neighbor- hood of Burial Hill. The colonial town of Norwalk was set off in 1651 and claimed that its eastern bound- ary crossed the Saugatuck and ended abruptly at New Creek-the western boundary of Fairfield.
This dispute lasted half a century and it seemed to be a strategic move on the part of Fairfield to en- courage the Bankside farmers, since their settlement was a sort of buffer state to hold back the pretensions of Norwalk. She made no objection when the Bank-
[II]
Greens Farms, Connecticut
side farmers assumed for themselves the lofty-and unheard of !- title of Proprietors, and administered their land as they saw fit. In 1711 the mother settle- ment allowed them to organize an independent ec- clesiastical society, which, as was the custom in those days, exercised both religious and civil functions. This society has an unbroken history down to the present. Theoretically a subsidiary of Fairfield, it has always been practically independent and was the germ of the present town of Westport.
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Otober 26. Anno Down: 1715.
a Church of sherif was then gottired and un Bodied at Hairfuld well Panifle and & Read mr Daniel Chapman ordained their Patter & Read my Decomport gave of Charges, he with & Rwo mir Webb my shove w (alter an mr Hanley (importing hands; + Rw- m" (attu gave fright li end of Fellowship to y Potter aw ML Hanley to y. Слива.
The original We do in & Humble Acute of our deep Un wor- Youwant Courant things of an acknowledgement in y
of wine Grace and alfo of cin quability with the Informace off rutin of & Poly Covenant the) & Hringth and grace of thrift alone heartily and Sincerely engage and promif in & Drefine of God and his People Denying all ungedling and worldly Lufts to live foronly right out and Godly in this present word solemnly dwaling our fully and our Judounta I don't to be his People avouching almighty God for om ist and Nortion avoiding The dow gyuschrift for our only Tropful and Fracht. and for our only Chiefs and Propitiation and Pious Glof for only King dow and dangiver Qvouching & holy for bie Sanctifier propping our bubjuteuse. of Gospel of Prift and If we will walk together In a Confusionable attendance you all & ODinancy if I Gospel and in a Member life Communion upalnej and watch fulness according unto Prift.
Daniel Rayman Joseph Lockwood Jonathan Squire Joshua Jennings Henry grey. Samuel Pouch John Andrews Thomas Nafl
They found among of Is my Chap mans Scattered papers after fin decafe! and now entre upon Recei July of A Down: 1742
Death.
The Are MY Cop man deparco this life November 28- Annodomini 1741 ..
wy Chopaman's
partieth's life fame 10, 1704.
THE ORIGINAL COVENANT OF THE CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH OF GREENS FARMS
From the Church Record Books
The Bankside Farmers
T HESE five proprietors seem to have been the only settlers here for nearly twenty years. They were known and spoken of as the "five farmers of Bankside." Daniel Frost's ten-acre home- lot was located on Frost Point, the home-lot of Mr. F. T. Bedford's estate today. Adjoining this on the west was the lot of Henry Gray; the large old elm tree still standing on Beachside Avenue was probably the corner of his home-lot. Next came the land of Thomas Newton; then the home-lot of John Green; the home of the fifth farmer, Francis Andrews, stood near the residence of the late F. H. Bedford. West of the home-lots of these five proprietors, on a nine-acre home-lot, Simon Couch "sat down" at a later date. In 1650 Thomas Newton sold out his right here to Robert Beacham, also spelled "Meacham." It is in- teresting to note that recently Captain Increase A. Parsell and the author traced the boundary lines of these original home-lots and found that the northerly boundary of these lots is near the southerly boundary of Mr. Parsell's farm.
John Green became one of the largest landholders and in his honor the name of Bankside was changed to Greens Farms in 1732. Previously there had been a movement to adopt the name Machamux by the Gen-
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Greens Farms, Connecticut
eral Court, but it failed. The following is a copy of the record of the landholdings of Mr. John Green at his death:
"March 26, 1669, Volume A, Page 186 gives to the holdings of John Green as follows: Home-lot 10 acres, bounded East by Robert Beacham; North by the Common; West by land of Simon Couch and John Andrews; South by highway. Also 7 acres of meadow, bounded South by the beach; East by Great Island (Sherwood Island); West by Little Island; North by Robert Beacham. Also 5 acres of meadow at the head of Compo Creek. Also 2 acres of meadow at the head of the old Calves Pasture. Also two parcels of 5 acres each, on the Island. Also 1034 acres in the Horse Pasture. Also (August 4 1683) 114 acres at the bank side in the Calves Pasture. Also 30 rods near the Roade bridge. Also by grant of Town March 4 1680, one parcel on the west side of Muddy Creek, being his building and pasture lot together, in quantity 2734 acres, 35 rods, bounded: East by the highway: West by John Andrews: North and South by the Common. Also his Long Lot, being in breadth 24 rods, running from the half-mile Common north- ward to the end of the Town bounds. All the above pieces are described as to boundaries on the records."
Francis Andrews in his will of June 6, 1662, among his bequests mentions three acres of meadow called the "heather bite." Milton S. Lacey, Esq., Title
[ 14 ]
The Bankside Farmers
Officer of the Bridgeport Land and Title Company, gives the following explanation:
"As to the term 'Heather Bite,' I am inclined to believe that the word 'heather' is a corruption of the word 'hither,' meaning nearer. In this connection please note that the earliest record of the holdings of Francis Andrews, June 25, 1669, contains: 'Also one parcel of meadow lying in the hither bite, in quantity 3 acres, more or less, bounded: West with Stony Hill: North with a highway: South with the Creeks and the Common Meadow: East with a highway.' (Vol. A. Page 200.)"
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