USA > Connecticut > Fairfield County > Stamford > History of Stamford, Connecticut : from its settlement in 1641, to the present time, including Darien, which was one of its parishes until 1820 > Part 1
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40
Library University of Pittsburgh Darlington Memorial Library
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مع عبد
Abym Davenport
HISTORY
OF
STAMFORD, CONNECTICUT,
FROM ITS SETTLEMENT IN 1641,
TO THE PRESENT TIME,
INCLUDING
DARIEN,
WHICH WAS ONE OF ITS PARISHES UNTIL 1820 ;
: BY Edwin
REV. E. B. HUNTINGTON, A. M.
-
STAMFORD, 1868 :
PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR.
Dar F104 57HO
Entered according to Act of Congress in the year 1868, by ELIJAH B. HUNTINGTON, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the State of Connecticut.
STEAM PRESS OF WM. W. GILLESPIE & CO., STAMFORD, CONN.
TO JOSEPH B. HOYT, OLIVER HOYT, WILLIAM HOYT, GEORGE W. QUINTARD, EDWARD A. QUINTARD, NATHANIEL WEED, AND JAMES H. HOYT, SONS OF STAMFORD, THIS HISTORY OF THE TOWN WHICH THEIR ENTERPRISE HAS DONE SO MUCH TO HONOR, IS GRATEFULLY DEDICATED BY THE AUTHOR.
LIST OF PORTRAITS.
-
I. HON. ABRAHAM DAVENPORT
*Frontispiece.
2. HON. WM. T. MINOR, LL. D.
376
3. ALFRED BISHOP.
379
4. CAPTAIN ISAAC L. HOYT
397
5. HON. JAMES H. HOYT
398
6. JOHN W. LEEDS
402
7. STEPHEN B. PROVOST
405
8. GEORGE W. QUINTARD.
406
9. EDWARD A. QUINTARD.
408
10. CHARLES A. WEED
426
II. NATHANIEL WEED
430
* For our beautiful Frontispiece from a portrait, now owned by Rev. J. S. Davenport, of New York, the author is indebted to the kind offices of A. B. Davenport, Esq., author of the Davenport Family.
CONTENTS.
-
Chapter.
Page.
I. INTRODUCTION.
1
II. THE SETTLEMENT.
14
III. NOTES ON THE SETTLERS, 1640-1642.
27
IV. NOTES ON THE SETTLERS, 1642-1660 ..
48
V. STAMFORD UNDER NEW HAVEN JURISDICTION, 1640-1665. 67
VI. INDIAN TREATIES AND HISTORY. 94
VII. ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY, 1640-1746
116
VIII. SEPARATE PARISH ORGANIZATIONS
143
168
IX. BIRTHS, MARRIAGES AND DEATRS, 1640-1700
155
X. STAMFORD IN 1700.
XI. NEW SETTLERS BETWEEN 1660 AND 1775
177
XII. FRENCH AND INDIAN WARS
197
XIII. REVOLUTIONARY WAR.
203
XIV. CHRONOLOGICAL RECORD OF THE WAR.
222
XV. CATALOGUE OF SOLDIERS IN THE WAR.
232
XVI. LOYAL ELEMENT IN THE WAR
249
XVII. CATALOGUE OF LOYALISTS IN THE WAR 262
XVIII. BIOGRAPHY OF EARLIER CITIZENS
269
XIX. STAMTORD IN 1800. 288
XX. SEPARATE CHURCH ORGANIZATIONS. 294
XXI. EDDCATION
339
XXII. WAR OF 1812-1815.
353
XXIII. PHYSICIANS AND LAWYERS OF STAMFORD.
359
XXIV. LATER BIOGRAPHY
378
XXV. MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS
435
APPENDIX.
A. THE PATENT OF 1685 457
B. GRADUATES REPRESENTING THE TOWN 458
C. OFFICIAL LISTS OF THE TOWN
463
D. BUSINESS LIST FOR 1868
473
E. HOYT FAMILY.
478
F. GHOWTH IN POPULATION AND WEALTH
479
BRIEF NOTICES OF WOOD CUTS
481
ERRORS AND ADDITIONS
483
INDEX
484
PREFACE.
After my Introductory Chapter, which is largely prefatory, there ia need of but a very brief, formal preface. My dedication expressed my sense of obligation to seven of the sons of Stamford, without whose pecuniary aid the publication of the work must have been deferred. To another son of the town, whose name I must not give, I am under the same obligation. To many others of our citizens my obligations cannot be forgotten, as + long as the record remains which they aided mein makiog, or while my long subscription list reminds me of their interest in my work. To all these, I now gratefully submit this History of the beautiful town, which I know they delight to honor.
In doing so, I could wish ita omissions and its faults were fewer: yet I am most of all content, that whatever of either are noticed, were unavoidable. For one omission, ren- dered necessary both by the size and the expense of the volume, and still more by the merits of the subject itself, demanding fuller ard more careful treatment, I trust my readers will find the best possible compensation in the forthcoming STAMFORD SOLDIERS' MEMORIAL.
Of its mechanical execution, the History will speak for itself. For the few typograph- ical errors here found, the considerate reader will surely find large amends in the general accuracy of the work; and both the author and his townsmen have just occasion for pride, that our local press has been able to send forth so large s volume, to which so few exceptiona can be taken.
If nothing further ia done, in this contribution to our local history, the author is happy to submit these firat fruits, at least, of the full harvests of these two hundred and twenty eight yeara.
HISTORY OF STAMFORD.
CHAPTER I.
-
INTRODUCTORY.
Not two and a quarter centuries have passed since the region in which the beautiful village of Stamford now lies, was a sav- age wilderness. No foot of white man, unless it may have been that of some adventurous explorer, had ever treaded its solitary paths. The same blue waters mirrored as now the same gently retreating hill-sides, but they had never photographed as now the cottages and spires of a civilized and Christian people. Ov- erlooking the quiet Rippowam harbor were the same hills as now ; the softly rounded Noroton, towards the rising sun, the higher central Mataubaun, (the morn revealer,) stretching far up towards the north, and the lowlier, yet no less lovely ridge to the west, behind which the setting sun went to his rest for the night. The " Myanos" and Noroton rivers, larger then than now, unhindered by dam, coursed their roaring or babbling way be- neath the tufted foliage of the primeval forest into the sunny waters of the sound; while the rippling Rowalton separated these realms of the jealous Rippowam from the hunting grounds of the lordly Mahackeno. No where from the Rowalton to the Mianus, and from the southern waters along the "four hour's walk" towards the dreaded forests of the fierce Mohawks, coukl one rest his eye upon either the presence or trace of the pale face or his work.
Bears growled where now the hum of industry is heard. Wolves roamed and howled amid thickets which no woodman's axe had ever invaded. Wild birds amid their leafy bowers sang
1
2
HISTORY OF STAMFORD.
their carols to wild beasts in their leafy lairs. No voice of man had for once awaked the echoes of these hills and glens, save when some Indian lover wooed to his side the dark eye of his heart, or when the proud warrior of some savage clan rang ont the defiant warwhoop of his great wrath.
Here had lived and loved, only another race. Here and there, nestling amid ledges and between over-arching trees, was an Indian's home-a wigwam as rude in its structure and finish as the untutored savage who had built it. A few brawny red men with their " dusky mates" and bright-eyed little ones, numbering in all, not to exceed some three hundred souls, were the sole human tenants on this soil. Nor were even they its permanent possessors. Their sagamores, Ponus and Wescussne, held the undisputed title to all the land, and in their paternal condeseen- sion, they meted out for the season to their loyal subjects, such patches as they could plant with corn or beans. Of course there was no general tillage of the ground. The utmost ingenuity of Indian art had no conception of the plow, and could furnish but a sorry substitute for even the white man's axe and hoe and spade.
Nor had the still waters of either Rippowam or Toquam har- bor, yet felt the keel of eivilized commerce. The light bark canoe had for many generations been wont to shoot swiftly from point to point across the shallower indentations of the coast, while the huge trunk of some lofty forest oak, excavated by te- dious seraping with shells and sharpened flint stones aided by the skillful use of fire, had supplied the aborigines with their only safe transport for the rougher sea voyage. At intervals of long period, the waters of the sound had been the theater of fierce and bloody sea-fights. Not in gallant and gigantic ship, moved at the commander's will by steam or sail, but in these rude monarchs of Indian sea-eraft, driven with mightiest stroke of well-trained oar against each other, in fearfully frightful and fatal encounter. One such naval engagement had crimsoned our harbor with savage blood, just before the white man for the first time entered its glassy waters.
3
INTRODUCTORY.
Nor had the sharp erack of the hunter's rifle, nor the roar of modern artillery, over yet disturbed these solitudes; though in- stead, the twang of the sounding bow and the sharp whizzing of the winged arrow had often brought to the ground the eagle in his loftiest flight, or cut short the swiftest footed wild deer in his raec.
Here everything was in its rudest dress-hillside and glen, forest tree and mossy rock, wavy margined coast and arbored, murmuring stream, all were as nature made and meant them- all as their untutored and unambitious occupants had left them. All attempts at improvement by the rude savage had only mar- red the native beauty they had invaded. The homes here built, the paths here opened, all changes here made, begun and ended still in forest homes and paths and change. Nature mainly held her own against the utmost of all that Indian art and industry could do.
And still no intelligent and cultivated eye could have gazed upon this uncultivated domain, without being struck with its singular and quiet beauty. There was not in it the stirring grandeur of Alpine scenery, nor yet the sublime immensity of the prairie's streteh ; but there was something which while it might move the beholder less would not fail to please him more. Rarely, on earth, do pleasant hill-sides swcep up more gracefully from heaven-penciled waters, and still more rarely, do hill and lowland and vale blend in pictures of more pleasing loveliness.
So felt even the Indian, as his sharp eye swept over the broad landscape from his outlook on his favorite Mataubann; and so thought the weary pilgrims of another race as they came to find on this coast the future homes of their own and their children's children.
The Indian passed away, and with him perished the story of his race. All their tender loves and all their stern revenges; every adventure of chieftain or of subject ; noble deeds of affec- tion and of heroism, all alike unrecorded, have gone forever into an oblivion from which no pen of historian can recover them.
4
HISTORY OF STAMFORD.
The last faint traces which his departing footsteps left, are all that remain to witness to the Indian's power and skill.
The white man came. In defiance of the savage race on these borders of a frowning wilderness, in the midst of blood-thirsty beasts of prey, he was forced to seek his home. He counted and accepted the cost. He set up the altars of his faith. He taught the wilderness to bud and blossom ; and bud and blos- som and fruitage he turned to his use. He made of the forest tree his comfortable house. The virgin soil answered his call, and loaded his table with her fruits. Idle water streams soon leaped upon his water wheels, and with tireless gladness helped on his course. The patient genius of education took his little ones in care, and taught their young minds to plan and their hands to execute new trinmphs in his progress.
The old forests and all the profitless savagery of Indian life soon gave way, and farms and schools, industry and thrift, civilization and religion, homes of comfort and of elegance attested the presence of the more intelligent, and permanent race.
For two hundred and twenty-six years that race have now on this ground plied their intelligence, their invention, their indus- . try and their skill. Six or seven generations of their children have here grown up, borne their part in the great work of man on earth, and left the accumulating treasures of their career as a precious legacy to the generation which now have occasion to rejoice in the succession.
And why may we not, why should we not gather up the les- sons which those busy years can furnish ? Who would refuse to trace the record which Providence has here drawn? Who withhold from the hardy pioneers who inaugurated, and from the wise and valiant men who have transmitted with the added luster of their own bright fame, this noble inheritance to us ? Surely, not the worthy sons of names so worthy. Surely, not the natives of other towns, who have been drawn hither by the charms or the promises of good which their earlier homes could
5
INTRODUCTORY.
not offer, and who are now gathering here the fruits of a pros- perity which others sowed. Every just, every filial, every honorable son or citizen of Stamford must respond to the claim which his native or adopted town has to a permanent and instructive memorial. It were as undutiful, as it is unjust to the departed generations, to refuse such a tribute. No pains should be deemed too costly, which can secure it.
It was such a feeling which moved the author, some dozen years ago, to examine the records of the town to learn if they offered sufficient material towards such a work. Though very imperfect, almost illegible in some places and defaced or totally wanting in others; though exceedingly meager everywhere, except in recording the annual lists of town officers, from select- men down to the key-keeper of the town pound, there still seemed enough of the earlier records left to justify the attempt. Thanks to the providence of our town officers twenty-five years ago, by whom the mutilated aud rapidly wasting remnants of the old records were carefully arranged and bound together for preservation.
This township, whose story for two and a quarter centuries I have undertaken to tell, occupies about one-third of that sea- coast parallelogram which stretches off from the southwest corner of Connecticut. By the original grant, made over by the Indians, it must have covered nearly that entire parallelogram, together with a parallel strip lying on the north of it and now . owing allegianee to the Empire State.
But by the excision of several portions of the tract, the Stamford to which my research is mainly limited, has come to occupy the central part of the first grant-a tract now, not far from ten miles in length from N. N. W. to S. S. E. ; and on an average about seven miles in width, on a line running a little to the South of West. It is bounded on the north-north-west by the towns of North Castle and Poundridge; on the east- north-east by the towns of New Canaan and Norwalk; on the south-south-east by Long Island Sound, and on the west-sonth- west by Greenwich.
HISTORY OF STAMFORD.
This entire tract has a gentle slope towards the south-south- west, and its surface is made up of a not ungraceful succession of ridges having the same general direction, yet of the greatest possible variety of length and contonr, yet gradually lifting themselves to greater elevations towards the north, where the central one has by common consent won the distinction of our High Ridge. Meandering among these ridges, as if to carve the surface into forms of most pleasing variety, we find the Mianus and its main tributary on the north-west; the old Indian Rippowam, and now, from its English use, the Mill river, with its eight serviceable branchlets draining ten times as many hill- sides and rippling through many a pleasant vale; the shorter Noroton, laughing its joyous way down through the defiles in the north-east part of the town, to the open plains we call New Hope, and thence toying its playful way around the eastern base of our Noroton hill, into the smooth waters of its own lovely bay; and next, and still less, the gentle brooklets ever to be dishonored by their late born names, Stoney Brook and Good Wife, yet ever to be used for bounding and draining the gentle slopes whose waters find their beds ; and last, as if to warn us that we must find our eastern frontier somewhere, the prosy Five Mile, whose beauties and whose uses, we are doomed to share with our Norwalk neighbors towards the east.
Of all the hills and valleys and plains bounded and separated * by these brooks and streams, the time would fail me to write. To be known, they must be seen; and, seen in the freshness of their summer dress, they will be felt to be a goodly sight. Whoever scans them, clothed with the variegated lines of the early autumn, will call them pleasant and beautiful.
A very accurate eye and a sober judgment the topographist had, who wrote of this town a quarter of a century ago :
"This is a pleasant and fertile township; rich in the resources of agricultural opulence, abounding in the means of subsistence, with the advantages of a ready and convenient market. The surface of the town is undulating, exhibiting a pleasant diver- sity of moderate hills and valleys. The soil is a rich gravelly loam, adapted to both tillage and grazing."
7
INTRODUCTORY.
Somewhat more enthusiastic was the estimate of its topo- graphy, in some favored localities, of the very celebrated Dr. Dwight, who traveled over large portions of our broad land that he might observe and note their excellences or their defects. His judgment is worth transcribing for this prelimi- nary chapter of our history :
"There are three uncommonly interesting spots in this town- ship; one on the western side of the harbor which is called the Southfield, a rich and beautiful farm.
" Another is a peninsula on the east side of the harbor, Ship- pan, the property of Moses Rogers, Esq., of New York. This also is an elegant and fertile piece of ground. The surface slopes in every direction, and is encircled by a collection of exquisite scenery. The Sound and Long Island beyond it, with a gracefully indented shore, are directly in front; and both strefch westward to a vast distance, and seaward till the eye is lost. On each side, also, lies a harbor, bounded by handsome points.
" A train of groves and bushy islands, peculiarly pleasing in themselves, increase by their interruptions, the beauty of the waters. The farm itself is a delightful object, with its fields neatly inelosed, its orchards and its groves.
" Here Mr. Rogers has formed an avenue a mile in length, . reaching to the water's edge. At the same time he has planted on the grounds surrounding his house, almost all the forest trees which are indigenous to this country. To these he has united plantations of fruit trees, a rich garden and other interesting objects so combined as to make this one of the pleasantest retreats in the United States.
"The third, named the Cove, is on the western side of Noro- ton river. On this spot, in very advantageous situations, have been erected two large mills for the manufacture of flour, and a small village or rather hamlet for mechanics of various kinds. The view of the harbor in front, the points by which it is lim- ited, the small but beautiful islands which it contains, the Sound, the Long Island shore, a noble sheet of water in the rear, the pleasant village of Noroton, and the hills and groves in the interior is rarely equalled by seenery of the same nature, especially when taken from a plain scarcely elevated above the level of the ocean."
Such is the testimony of Dr. Dwight, to the beauty of these three still noticeable points in the topography of the town.
8
HISTORY OF STAMFORD.
Nearly fifty years have passed since that judgment was penned ; and during this period the progress of settlement or of improve- ment has added many a locality, whose natural or cultivated beauty equals or exceeds these. Whoever traverses this tract from east to west, over almost any one of our roads will find himself frequently surprised by a sudden view of some charm- ing landscape-whose beauty is only enhanced by the silvery edging of its southern front. Such views one will be glad to linger upon, from our Richmond, and Strawberry, and Noroton, and Summer, and Ox ridge elevations, near the Sound; and from Fort and White hills, from Hunting and Davenport and Long and High ridges, further to the north. And besides these, a score of other summits might be named, each one of which is itself a gem set in the coronal of our summer landscape, yet most of all delightful for what it shows us, of the broad pano- rama in which it lies.
But what gave the name STAMFORD to this township? In his centennial address, delivered here in 1841, the Rev. Mr. AAlvord, who had evidently spent no little time in his historical inqui- ries, gives this explanation of the name. "Our fathers in changing the name," from Rippowams, the Indian name, " called the town after Stamford in England, which place was doubtless the former residence of some of them." This is a most natural conclusion, and one which we shall be able, neither to prove or disprove.
But if it was true, that an English town gave name to the New England settlement, it would yet be a question which of the three places in the mother land, should have the honor. It might have been the Stamford Bridge, in Yorkshire, on the Derwent, a place famous for that successful contest in which Harold utterly defeated the insolent Norwegian invasion. The orthography of the name, as reported by Hume is precisely that which we find on our earlier records; it is not so remote from the theatre of the good Mr. Denton's earlier ministerial labors, as not, for some reason or other, to have been chosen as a fitting name for the new settlement. Or it may have been that other
·
9
INTRODUCTORY.
Stamford of England, on the extreme western borders of Wor- cestershire, as the Connecticut town was, on the same extreme of New England. We know not but the very loveliness of this beautiful town of the charming Teme, may have been seen or fancied to belong, in its elements at least, to the new township on the margin of the New England Rippowam. Good authority, at a later date, has told us that "the situation of Stamford is de- lightful." And still again, "it would be utterly impossible through the medium of words, or at least any words which I can select, to give an idea of the lovely country where I was born and reared." And yet once more, we have the same en- thusiastic admiration expressed by the same gifted pen. It is the hearty and affectionate tribute of the talented Mrs. Sher- wood-her skillful photograph of the dearest scenes of her childhood, in which she would commend to all her readers " the lovely parsonage of Stamford, the elegant home in which I was born." And surely no one who has an eye for the lovely and beautiful in landscape, will deny that some future Mrs. Sherwood may, with equal truth, so daguerreotype the charms of more than one home in the Stamford, yet to be, here in this Southwestern corner of Connecticut. But, perhaps, as has been generally sup- posed, the name comes from the Stamford of Lincolnshire. That, also, was a border town, and like this, on the South- western extreme of the county. And there are, possibly, other local and historical reasons which may seem to indicate this as the original, to whose scenery or to the affection of whose duti- ful children, our New England Stamford owes its name.
As to the English homes of our settlers, our utmost diligence has failed to trace a single family to the Lincolnshire Stamford. Indeed, but one of the earlier names of our pioneers, has been found on any of the Stamford records we have seen. The Browns, a name, universal almost as the Smiths, were early in the ancient English Stamford of Lincoln. And they were also of no little repute. Their monuments still speak of their fame. The church of All Saints, standing on the north side of the Red
2
10
HISTORY OF STAMFORD.
Lion Square, in the old English town, was the gift of John Brown, who was an alderman of the city in 1462; and in the St. Mary's can now be seen brass figures of William Brown and his wife. A hospital, also, founded in the reign of the third Richard, is still a monument here to the humanity of this Wil- liam Brown.
Not far from this Stamford, on the borders of Leicestershire, Mr. Denton had his nativity, and spent his earlier years ; and it is not improbable that some feature of the place made so favor- able impression on his boyhood, that when he came to stand, in manhood, at the head of this yet nameless settlement, he could find no fitter or worthier name for the place which he intended to make the home for his old age.
But sometimes the subtlest of influences establishes a new empire, to which the most trifling occurrence, a mere slight re- semblance even, shall give its name. So, doubtless it was some slight feature of many of the townships in New England, which led to the selection of their names,-their peculiar water margin, their running streams, their hills, or valleys, or plains; and the same unimportant hint which settled the choice of the founders, settled also the name assigned to the town thus founded.
I confess myself to have been not a little surprised by Simp- son's engraving of the Lincolnshire Stamford. It is found in Allen's History of the County of Lineoln. It is a southerly view of the old town, and the first impression it gave me was that of a veritable prototype of the modern Connectieut Stam- ford, as seen from the south-west.
The two landscapes are strikingly alike. The five steeples or towers are almost literally reproduced in the modern engraving of the modern Stamford. A large castellated mansion towards the right of the old picture, occupies nearly the position of the Noroton Hill residences, on our map; and the almost involun- tary decision was, there need be no wonder why the founders ealled these hills and wooded slopes another Stamford.
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