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TOWN
DARIEN Founded 1641 Incorporated 1820
M. L.
Gc 974.602 D24c 1516590
6 50
GENEALOGY COLLECTION
ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 01068 5391
Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2019
https://archive.org/details/townofdarienfoun00case
HISTORIC CONGREGATIONAL CHURCH
TOWN
DARIEN Founded 1641 Incorporated 1820
FRANK MILLS.
DRAWN BY
Written by HENRY JAY CASE AND SIMON W. COOPER
AS A CONTRIBUTION TO THE CONNECTICUT TERCENTENARY
Published by THE DARIEN COMMUNITY ASSOCIATION
COPYRIGHT, 1935, BY DARIEN COMMUNITY ASSOCIATION
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY QUINN & BODEN COMPANY, INC., RAHWAY, N. J.
1516590
FOREWORD
The purpose of this book is, in this year of Connecticut's tercentenary celebration, to present to residents of Darien and others who may be interested useful facts and informa- tion relative to its history and government, a roster of the town officers and employees, streets and buildings, with brief chapters on the functions and activities of the town departments and its civic, artistic, social, recreational, and fraternal organizations.
We hope it will serve to answer some of the questions frequently asked about the town in which we live and that it will tell readers something of the very early settlement of 1641 and give an idea of its development since 1820, when by charter it was set apart from Stamford, given the name of Darien, and ceased to be known as Middlesex. From these pages one may visualize its progress since 1839, when a town meeting voted that "swine well rung shall be free commoners."
The work of writing and editing is contributed, the cost of printing provided by voluntary subscriptions. The edi- tion is limited to 1000 copies and placed on sale at a sufficient price per copy to cover the underwriting charges.
The book is not a commercial enterprise but a community effort. Nor is it in any sense political; hence there is no list of such organizations. The book is offered to the people of the town with apologies for any errors or omissions.
We are grateful to Mr. Henry S. Gorham, Col. Thomas Crimmins, and Mr. William Ziegler, Jr., for the use of their files; to Mr. C. Ernest Lounsbury, Mr. Gardiner Trowbridge, Col. Howard Stout Neilson; to the officers and department heads of the town, the Tokeneke Associa- tion, Wee Burn Club, Ox Ridge Hunt Club, Kiwanis Club, Hon. Mark W. Norman, Mrs. G. P. MacNichol, and to many other persons and organizations who have given generously of their time in helping to gather much of the material presented in the following pages.
THE DARIEN COMMUNITY ASSOCIATION
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PART I HISTORY
MIDDLESEX PARISH was the early name of this community, which was originally a part of Stamford. The name is preserved in one of its oldest highways, Middlesex Road, which probably was the first highroad connecting it with Stamford and New Canaan. Records show the first clear- ings to have been made by men from the New Haven and Wethersfield colonies and from Norwalk about 1641, but it was not until 1740, a hundred years later, that the Middlesex Society of the Town of Stamford erected a house of worship on what is now the site of the present Congregational Church. One of the first pastors was the Rev. Moses Mather, who died in 1806, after having served the parish for sixty-two years. He was a son of Richard Mather and related to the- Rev. Cotton Mather and Dr. Increase Mather, one of the presidents of Harvard College.
Some of these early pioneers bore the names of Bates, Bell, Bishop, Ferris, Fitch, Holly, Holmes, Gorham, Hoyt, Morehouse, Raymond, Scofield, Seeley, Selleck, Slosson, Walmsley, Waterbury, Webb, Weed, and Williamson.
A few of the old houses still stand: the Bates Home- stead (1749) on Raymond Street; the Mather Homestead (1778) on Brookside Road, then called Gracious Street ; Wayside and the Lone Pine Cottage (about 1770) in Tokeneke; the Frank Fitch house, sometimes known as the Dutch Oven Tavern (1756) ; the Weed house (1749) in Nearwater Lane; the Gorham house (1789) on Ring's End Road; the Wardell house on the Post Road at Noroton Center (1756), and the House under the Hill (1750) on the Post Road.
On the west side of Five Mile River, near Tokeneke Creek, stood the original Williamson house, built in 1700, now part of a more modern structure. In the rocks near
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this house is a pothole used by the Indians and early settlers for grinding corn. Another of these potholes is on Butler's Island near by, and a third, well preserved, on Contentment Island, near the home of John Sherman Hoyt.
Travel up to that time was mostly overland by horse- back and ox team, but because of detours along the shore to get around boggy ground, the settlers very early turned to the water for transportation, and both freight and passenger traffic was carried up and down the Sound by sloops. The nearest harbors to the Middlesex settlement were Five Mile River and Pear Tree Point Cove, where Good Wives' River meets the tide at Gorham's Pond. At Five Mile River oyster sloops took on their cargoes at Loadin' Rock, a huge boulder, part of which still remains a landmark on the western shore of the river.
Pear Tree Point Cove seems to have been preferred by the settlers of Middlesex Parish, probably because of a higher and drier road leading to it. The landing there was called Clock's Landing and later Ring's End. Clock was a German who came from the Palatinate. Ring's End was the name of a town in England from which some of the early colonists came. A tidewater dam was built at Ring's End very early in the eighteenth century and a grist mill erected. This soon became the community center ; so Ring's End Landing shares honors with Middlesex Parish and the Five Mile River fishing-port as the location of the first settlements of the present town.
Sloops sailed in from the Sound up Good Wives' River to Ring's End Landing. Freight and passengers came here under sail from ports both east and west and from Long Island across the Sound. Produce of the settlers was shipped from this point to New York and Boston. At one time wharfs or stores were owned and operated here by Capt. Isaac Jones, Selleck Jones, Jesse Selleck, Epenetus Walmsley, Isaac Gray, Elisha Seeley, John Holmes, Nathaniel Clock, and Bell and Waterbury. Here the farmers brought their grain and made their purchases at stores. Here the grinding was done.
Blacksmiths had their forges here. The last to survive was Spellman's. Before him there was a forge kept by William Barker, and the foundations of his smithy may be
SITE OF OLD RING'S END LANDING
GORHAM HOUSE, 1789
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HISTORY
seen to the left of the road near the Gorham house as one approaches Ring's End Bridge from the north.
One of the captains of the community was Samuel Sel- leck, a descendant of the original Jesse, who lived at the place later called Tide Ways, owned for many years by Mrs. Crimmins Jennings.
Many of these early settlers were buried in a plot of ground where Stony Brook empties into Good Wives' River. Several years ago, the town moved the old head- stones to Spring Grove Cemetery on the Post Road, where they remain in a good state of preservation.
It was in 1708, according to the Stamford town records, that Richard Scofield and John Youngs were granted deeds to "Ye Streme at Good Wives' River so much as is needful for a grist mill," upon condition that they should build the mill within twelve months and grind "Ye Town's Graine for a Sixteenth Part, and to grind for Ye Town's people before strangers," provided also that Youngs build a highway from the upland hard road to his mill. Youngs failed to agree to the road as laid out by the town. In IZII, Richard Scofield was granted permission to set a house on this highway at the site of his town mill. In 1722 the town again laid out a road down to the mill. This highway was deeded to the town in 1725 by Joshua Scofield.
A year later a second mill was built at Ring's End Land- ing. These early mills appear in the Town's records as having been first owned by Richard Scofield, John Youngs, and John Clock, son-in-law to Scofield, and Deborah, his wife.
In 1777 one Daniel Gorham, mentioned later, shipped flour to the Commissary General of the American army. On January 10, 1778, H.M.S. Diligent, an armed brigan- tine, captured the American sloop Eagle, 30 tons, while she was ashore in Good Wives' River. She was loaded with wheat and flour belonging to the Continental Con- gress and being shipped to Norwalk, Connecticut. Lev- erett Stevens of Killingworth was commander of the sloop and Jonathan Brigdon of Charlestown, mate. Three per- sons aboard the sloop were taken prisoner and afterward exchanged in New York for British prisoners.
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The British from Long Island, aided by Tory sym- pathizers in Norwalk and Middlesex, continually harassed this Connecticut shore. On July 21, 1781, the Rev. Moses Mather and a number of his congregation were captured by a band of Tories and British who surrounded the church after services had begun. These raiders had assem- bled at what is known as Tories' Hole in the Delafield Woods, near the shore of the Sound, and from that hiding- place made their way to the church and effected the cap- ture. The prisoners were tied together and with horses, cattle, and other plunder were marched down to Scotch Cove (now called Scott's Cove), east of Ring's End Land- ing, off the present Tokeneke shore, and taken in boats to Long Island. Later they were removed to New York, and Dr. Mather, with others, was confined for a time in prison ships in New York harbor and later in the old Provost Jail, then standing in what now is City Hall Park, New York.
It is evident that many families in Middlesex remained loyal to the Crown government at the outbreak of the Revo- lution. These fled to Canada ; a goodly number to Nova Scotia and their lands were forfeited. Their descendants are leaders in the Provincial and Dominion government today.
In 1816, the town of Stamford leased a piece of ground extending from Jesse Selleck's store to the causeway of Selleck Jones's house to John Bell and John Waterbury; part of the causeway still remains to this date. The house occupied by Mrs. Elizabeth Lounsbery stands on this site. A condition of this lease was that Bell and Waterbury agreed to reduce, within the year, the grade over the knoll north of the Gorham house and to use the fill for enlarging the wharf at the landing. Bell and Waterbury were mer- chants and conducted a general store for trading at the landing; Selleck Jones lived in what now is the Mrs. Junius Browne house near by. Up to as late as ten years ago an old grist mill stood at the dam by the bridge. The group of houses which stand near the bridge today, very old, probably contain many timbers from the original structures, which years ago were badly damaged by fire. One is the old toll house; another is called the Customs House; another, a general store.
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HISTORY
The first mill erected was known as Scofield's mill, but on March 19, 1740, the property, including the dam site, house, mill, and two acres of land, was purchased by George Gorham from one Thomas Hill, then owner. It has been in the continued possession of the Gorham family ever since.
The original house bought by George Gorham has dis- appeared, but the pleasant, square white house now stand- ing on the old site was built in 1789 by Daniel Gorham, son of George. Much of the material in the old house was used in constructing the new one, and members of the Gorham family live in it to this day. The grist mill and pond from then on were known as Gorham's Mill and Pond, and the road leading to it from King's Highway became known as Ring's End Road. What is now an easy grade leading down to the present bridge was called Clock's Hill.
Until 1825 there was no bridge across the dam. The only road from the upland to Long Neck followed a trail (now Good Wives' River Road) on the far side of Good Wives' River, which it crossed by a ford just below Glen- breekin Farm. On February 3, 1825, Joseph Gorham, grandson of George, leased to the town of Darien for ninety-nine years the right to cross the dam with a bridge, and a rough bridge was then thrown across this water. This lease was renewed by the heirs of Joseph Gorham for a period of ninety-nine years on February 4, 1924. The town agreed as before to maintain and keep the dam and flood gates in repair. The first wooden bridge which ran across the dam remained for three quarters of a century, when an iron bridge was built, and this was replaced in 1930 by the present artistic stone structure.
In the meantime, the residents of this growing com- munity had become involved in a quarrel with Norwalk settlers over timber cutting on the town's eastern boundary line. It is said that a serious conflict was barely averted. This trouble was ended by Stamford's addressing a peti- tion to the State Legislature. After several conferences the Legislature passed an act in May, 1820, defining the boundary lines of a new town and giving it a charter, all of the land for the new town being taken from Stamford.
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This document was signed at New Haven and brought to Darien on horseback by Thaddeus Bell, great-grandfather of Clarence W. Bell, present chairman of the Board of Finance. Thaddeus Bell was descended in the fifth genera- tion from Francis Bell, one of the leaders of the Wethers- field men who began the settlement of Stamford. He pre- sided over the first town meeting of Darien and during his long life held many positions of trust and responsibility in the town.
Many residents wanted to call the new town Bell Town. The name Darien, which was chosen, is a heritage of the early shipping industry along its shore, and undoubtedly came from some sailor man's fancy.
Oyster, clam, and lobster fishermen were active off this shore up to the beginning of the present century. The Illustrated London News of October 29, 1859, reprinted an article from the Norwalk (Conn.) Gazette of Septem- ber 27 telling of Darien skippers discovering a new and large bed of oysters between Eaton's Neck and Green's Reef Light where they dredged bivalves as big as a garden spade. A big fleet of fishermen was on the new ground and the excitement equaled that of the oyster war between Ring's End and New Haven fishermen on a similar dis- covery thirty years previous.
For nearly a century, the Middlesex and Darien country- side was dependent upon sail and later steamboats for its communication east and west. Men had not yet learned to construct drawbridges to let river traffic pass underneath and the many navigable streams through the Connecticut shore country, likewise ridges separating the rivers, were prohibitive barriers to railroad construction. At the height of this water-borne traffic, there were forty to forty-five steamboats in the Sound trade, when, in 1834, the Long Island Railroad started to build a line from Jamaica to Greenport, by way of a ferry across the Sound to Stoning- ton, to reach Boston eventually. The new passenger, mail, and freight service advertised its time as follows :
4 hours-New York to Greenport
2 hours-crossing to Stonington
4 hours-Stonington to Boston
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HISTORY
This line was successful at the start, but its pros- perity was short-lived. It took so long to plan and build it that by the time it was completed, engineers had learned to bridge the Connecticut rivers, to run grades over its hills, and to complete a railroad the length of its shore. This new railroad was then known, and is still, as the New Haven. It was opened in 1848 and immediately took all the Boston business away from the Long Island route and cut deeply into the business of the Sound steamships.
Then the new town, Darien, which had succeeded Mid- dlesex Parish, suddenly had two railroad stations, at Rowayton and Darien Center ; later two others were added, Noroton and Glenbrook. Business activity shifted from the shore to the country back by the new railroad, and Ring's End Landing lost its trade. The wharves were deserted. The grist mill and smithy hung on, but gradu- ally business moved toward Old King's Highway and the new railroad line. For a while the Town Hall was located at Noroton Center, and then it, too, was moved to a site on the Post Road at the corner of Mansfield Avenue, on the eastern end of the Town, where it still remains.
The Lounsbury hardware store is one of the oldest buildings in the town. Most of its timbers, possibly the whole building, formerly stood on the site of the tennis courts near the old Congregational Church at the corner of Brookside Road and Old King's Highway, whence it was moved over the railroad tracks, by horse and windlass, in 1886, to its present site by Senator Charles W. Louns- bury, who founded this sheet-metal and tinsmith business in Darien. He originally came from Baltimore, but had lived in New Canaan, and started his business in Darien after he was discharged from the army at the close of the Civil War.
This building was originally used for a church, later a parish house, and then a school. The church site was the original business center of the old Middlesex community.
Within the memory of the older residents of the present town there was a general store kept by a Mrs. Otis back of the old church on King's Highway, and across the pres- ent Post Road, on the northwest corner of Brookside Road, there still stands a house which in the early days was also a general store. Just north of this corner house, on Brook-
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side, stood another, only recently torn down, where Luke Davis lived. He farmed in the summer and in the winter made boots, going to New York by sloop in the autumn to buy his leather and other supplies.
On the north side of the Post Road, just west of the Brookside corner, was a hat shop; the water of the creek was used to soak the felts. On the site of the Review office was a tannery. When the railroad was built, Old King's Highway crossed it at a grade, and later when the tracks were raised the Selectmen refused consent unless the road would build an underpass. They gave their consent only after the court threatened to arrest all of them if they persisted in holding up the completion of the railroad.
The first railroad station was a wooden building and stood farther east, nearer Old King's Highway, and the original Ivanhoe Lodge of Masons had its rooms in the second story.
In those very early days the Mansfield Avenue road and Middlesex road did not run straight north to New Canaan as now but near the Lapham property, this old road bore to the east down to the present West Norwalk-New Canaan road in the valley.
As the water-borne traffic affected the physical construc- tion of the new town, so with the railroad when it was opened; and the coming of the motor car changed it again. Old King's Highway, twisting and turning up hill and down dale, which remained for years a rough route for oxen and horsedrawn vehicles, was cut here and there by detours which made for straighter lines, greater width, and easier grades, eventually evolving into what is now called the Boston Post Road. The center of activity shifted again. The new high school was located and built nearer the geographical center of the town. The new police headquarters building followed a few year's later, bringing the court room with it nearer the center of the town.
Whatever further changes the future brings, the town has the satisfaction of knowing that it has a competent Town Plan and Zoning Commission at work, an able Highway Department, a Board of Education, and a new Park Commission, and that its business affairs are in the
KING'S HIGHWAY, WASHINGTON'S ROAD TO BOSTON
SCOTT'S COVE FROM GREAT ISLAND
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HISTORY
hands of a capable body of Selectmen and competent Board of Finance.
The history of Darien since its incorporation has been one of steady progress, in particular during the decades following the Civil War. Its growth as a place of resi- dence has increased from year to year. It has always been a residential and farming community, no manufacturing interests of any importance ever having been located here.
Darien has excellent train service to New York and Boston, an emergency landing-field for airplanes close by, two deep-channel harbors on the Sound shore, and bus- line connections for all points; and the completion of the new Merritt Parkway will bring it within an hour's run, through a beautiful parkway system, of New York City.
Darien has become noted for the number of its clubs of various kinds, which have drawn many persons to it, and for the excellence of its school system, the purity of its water supply, its fine system of highways, and its splendid trees and charm of landscape. As a result persons of wealth and culture have been drawn to it in large num- bers, have purchased land and erected homes, and have become a part of its fine community life.
LONG NECK
LONG NECK ties close into the early history of Ring's End Landing. A high promontory, bare of trees and stretching far out into the Sound, it was a landmark for early naviga- tors. Difficult of access from the mainland, it contained few habitations. Forage was cut here by the settlers for their cattle and horses, and prior to 1708 they reached it by ferry across Good Wives' River at Ring's End or by a ford for the heavier ox-team loads a mile farther east, near Glenbreekin Farm. Originally Great Island and Hay Island, Salem Straits and Delafield Woods, were all a part of it in the first purchase from the Indians by two settlers, Ward and Law. They and the Sellecks appear to have been the first land-owners recorded, but on the very early warrants and deeds appear also the family names of Abraham, Isaac, and Leeds Pennoyer, Theodosia Gray,
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Gould Selleck Silliman, the Widow Gould, and David Raymond.
The first large subdivision of Long Neck within the last hundred years was made in 1836 when, by will, Samuel Selleck, widower, a descendant of Jesse, left a 50-acre tract of his original farm of 125 acres and near-by islands to his son George, and five daughters, Nancy Bell, Phebe, Theodosia, Angeline, and Caroline. This will, dated Aug- ust 5, 1836, is a voluminous document, and in it Samuel not only divided the land among his children, but his house as well. Angeline, for example, was left, in addition to a piece of the land, "the south front room of the lower floor; the south back chamber; the south quarter of the halls and the lower and chamber floors; one-fourth of the garret, southeast; the west end of the shed; the south half of the cellar, with privilege to pass through any other parts of the house that is necessary, and to occupy the back house, and also the green to put out clothes one-fourth of the time ; the privilege of both wells for the water, likewise the cisterns and tubs under spouts, one-fourth of the time. Also the south half of the outdoor kitchen; east half of the water house; south half of the carriage house; east half of the hen house; south half of the smoke house" !
The next transfer of ownership of this southern tract of Long Neck is dated 1865, when Harrison Olmsted, son of John Strickland Olmsted of Port Chester, purchased it from the heirs of Samuel Selleck. Olmsted held it seven years.
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In 1872 Hugh W. Collender, who was known as a "forty-fiver" from Ireland and had been a participant in one of the several disturbances that swept that country, acquired the property from Olmsted. Previous to this pur- chase, Collender had owned the northern section of the original Selleck farm. He was evidently a man of ability and one of the first to begin the work of landscaping and beautifying Long Neck. He built several houses and mar- ried into an industrial family in New York who manu- factured, among other things, pool and billiard tables, and he used considerable of their finely grained wood in the interior decoration of houses he built on the Point.
Up to Collender's purchase, the road to the end of Long
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HISTORY
Neck followed the west shore. Early residents erected their barns and out-houses along the shore, using the Sound for drainage and refuse. Collender began the first rearrangement of the roads, moving all buildings farther back and toward the center of the Point.
In 1890, John D. Crimmins, in the fourth subdivision of Long Neck, acquired from Collender his first holding of this original fifty-acre tract, and in the further development of the property, built more roads and a number of houses for members of his family.
Later, three brothers, James A., Edwin, and Dr. George A. Trowbridge, all Connecticut-born descendants of Thomas Trowbridge, who settled in New Haven in 1639, became interested in Long Neck. James A. and Edwin purchased from Collender land adjoining the Crim- mins tract and joined him in the development of the Neck. One daughter of the late Hugh Collender is now living in Italy. Mrs. Luther Brown and Benjamin F. Collender, grandchildren, also survive, as does Mrs. William Col- lender, a daughter-in-law of the founder of the family, who lives for part of each year in Westport, Connecticut. The Crimminses and the Trowbridges intermarried and still own a large part of this original tract.
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