USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > Meriden > An historic record and pictorial description of the town of Meriden, Connecticut and men who have made it > Part 12
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It was between this Nathaniel and Captain Thomas Yale that the quarrel arose in 1696 regarding a watering place which involved so many of the Wallingford planters.3 The watering place was, doubtless, where Misery Bar road crosses the south branch of Pilgrims' Harbor Brook. His house, perhaps, also stood on this road, for at that date there was no other highway in the locality. In 1701 Ensign Nathaniel gave to his son, Benjamin, a farm of seventy-two acres, a part of this same tract. There is no record of where his house stood and it must have disappeared many long years ago.
East of the farm of Nathaniel Roys was one belonging to Ebenezer Prindle. The house was situated near the north end of Misery Bar road, a little south of its junction with Pomeroy avenue, but has long since disappeared. Mr. Prindle came here from Milford about 1722 and evidently in some way was connected with the William Jones family, for he obtained his first land in Meriden as a Jones heir. He was the owner of another large tract of land extending quite a dis- tance north of old Liberty street and east of the Daniel Baldwin farm in the so- called Country land. His two daughters married Abraham and John, sons of Daniel Hall.
Mention has already been made in a former chapter of the farm of Daniel Hall.+ Murdock avenue runs through the heart of it and it contained a very large tract
1 See Sheldon's History of Deerfield, Vol. I, pp. 283-284.
2 These Englishmen were used to small rivers at home, hence they commonly called Harbor Brook a river until a considerably later date.
3 See page 63.
4 This Hall family were descendants of the same stock as Rev. Theophilus Hall ; a very prominent race in the annals of Wallingford and Meriden.
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A CENTURY OF MERIDEN.
of land. The house owned by Daniel Hall was undoubtedly the first one erected in the east part of Meriden-perhaps as early as 1685. It stood immediately south of the present dwelling of John P. Hall,1 a descendant, but became uninhabitable and was pulled down many years ago.
The line of the Halls, owners of this farm is Thomas, Daniel, John, Joseph, Julius and John P. and his sisters. The farm is still a large one and undoubtedly represents the longest continued ownership in the same family of any land in Meriden.
South of this Hall farm, perhaps three-quarters of a mile, on the east side of Murdock avenue, and just north of the dwelling of George B. Murdock, stood the house of Benjamin Whiting.2 He came to Meriden in 1725 from South-
HOUSE OF DANIEL HALL.
ampton, L. I., and bought some sixty acres which he subsequently added to until he owned a large farm which extended on both sides of the highway. For many years he served as a deacon of the church and died in the year 1773 at the age of seventy-eight. Of his three sons only Samuel remained in Meriden and he died more than a hundred years ago. He left no sons, so the name became extinct in Meriden, but his two daughters, Lucy and Sarah, married two brothers, Joel and Levi Foster, respectively, and it was thus that some of the farm is now owned by George A. Foster,3 a descendant. The old house built by Benjamin Whiting dis- appeared many years ago.
1 The writer here acknowledges his indebtedness to John P. Hall for much valuable information re- lating to the ancient farms in East Meriden.
2 Deacon Whiting was a son of the Rev. Joseph (Harvard Col. 1661), minister at Southampton, L. I. See. Pres. Ezra Stiles' diary, Vol. I., p. 289.
3 Foster Bros.' pond is on this old Whiting farm.
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EARLY HISTORY.
South of the Whiting farm was the large one belonging to the Ives family. The old house stood, in fact stands, in the dwelling of George B. Murdock. Bur- ied in the depths of this modern house is the kernel or nucleus of the one built by John Ives at an early date.1 In the year 1723 he appears to have taken up his residence in the parish of Meriden. He died in 1738 and the house and east part of his farm passed into the possession of his son, Captain Bezaleel. He died in 1798, and his only child, Captain Samuel, then became the owner and at his death in 1803 it became the property of Ivah Curtis, who had married his daughter, Hannah. Here was born Rev. Samuel Ives Curtis, whose son, Rev. Samuel Ives Curtis, Jr., lately deceased, was probably as great a Hebrew scholar as this coun- try has ever produced, and professor in Chicago Theological Seminary. About the middle of the last century the farm was bought by Zina K. Murdock, and he made the changes and additions to the old homestead. The farm of John Ives was a large one, comprising several hundred acres and stretched down on both sides of the highway nearly to the town line or farm of Amos Camp. His son, John, in the division of his father's estate, took the western part and probably built the house many will remember as the Othniel Ives place, a few hundred feet west of the dwelling of Mr. Murdock. It was erected very likely about the year 1745. It was bought many years ago by J. George Schwink and perhaps ten years ago was burned to the ground. In it was born Levi Ives, who was the father of Levi Silliman Ives, who became the Protestant Episcopal bishop of North Car- olina. In the year 1852 he produced a great sensation by leaving the church and embracing the Roman Catholic faith. The Ives family has always been numerous and influential in Meriden and the old records abound in frequent evidences of this fact. Almost due south from the house of George B. Murdock stands the home of John Francis, just inside the Wallingford line; it occupies the site of the house of Cato Freeman, probably a brother of Chatham Freeman ; both were freed negro slaves; from the road just west of the house there was formerly a laneway leading to the house of Amos Camp, perhaps three hundred feet to the north. Consequently it was just within the Meriden line and was one of the land- marks used in describing the first boundary of the parish of Meriden. He came here at an early date from Durham and bought at different times land from Sam- uel Hall, William Cole and John Gaylord, which was variously described as near Burnt Swamp, Clapboard Hill, etc. Most of this land is now in Wallingford, but the house stood within the Meriden line and, consequently, he belonged to the parish. His family moved away fully a hundred years ago, and they were very distantly related to the Deacon Elah Camp family that moved to Meriden in the middle of the last century.
Paddock avenue north of where Misery Bar road leads to the northeast is called a comparatively modern road, nevertheless, there was a road running north
1 Some doubt has been expressed as to this statement ; at any rate the sites are the same.
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A CENTURY OF MERIDEN.
perhaps a little further west, at an early date, on which a Gideon Ives was living in the middle of the eighteenth century. His farm was bounded south on the Berry farm (to be described), and land of Dr. Isaac Hall, and east on the highway and not on Misery Bar road. He was a son of John and brother of Bezaleel Ives. Some of the farm was given him by his father and some he purchased of Benjamin, the son of Nathaniel Roys. East of this farm, on the other side of the road, just north of the Paddock homestead, once stood the house of Michael Mitch- ell, one of the early settlers of Meriden.
Miller avenue, which runs west from Misery road (now called Paddock ave- nue) and begins its course between the home of William B. Rice and the south-
Photo by R. S. Godfrey.
SILAS RICE PLACE.
east district school house, is an ancient highway and was laid out in 1723, and runs to Yale avenue. The Rice house occupies the site of the dwelling of Cap- tain Divan Berry, of Revolutionary fame. His father's (Divan, Sr.) home was quite a distance further west on the same road but disappeared long ago ; there are people still living who remember the site by the depression marking the cellar. Divan, Jr., bought the house at the corner of David Ives and six acres also, bounded north and west on his own land. Divan died in 1785 and the house and six acres soon became the property of Levi Ives and it was doubtless here that Bishop Levi
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EARLY HISTORY.
Silliman Ives was born. The house was bult before 1740 by Dr. Ebenezer Coop- er, Meriden's first "phititian." About 1796 this dwelling was destroyed by fire and Levi Ives immediately began the erection of another, but before it was com- pleted he sold the half finished house to Deacon Silas Rice on October 3, 1796.
So that really it is a Rice place and is now occupied by a descendant, William B. Rice. Levi Ives, after selling his home, removed to Turin, N. Y., called at that time in the Black River Country, where so many other Meriden families moved at about the same date. The Berry farm was a large one and extended west on
Photo by R. S. Godfrey.
EPHRAIM BERRY, OR AARON HIGBEY PLACE.
Miller avenue over Little Success hill to Swayne avenue and quite a distance to the north.1
There was another Berry farm not far away, and on it stands a Berry house, a fine substantial dwelling, probably the best type of a colonial house in Meriden. In the year 1743 Thomas Yale sold to Ephraim Berry of "Chilsy" (Chelsea) Mass., fifty-four acres of land bounded south on the ten rod highway,
1 The writer mentioned to Chas. Z. Murdock that his house stands on the old Berry farm and he re- plied, that when he was a child his aunt had called the fields the Berry lots ; he supposed the term in- dicated that berries once grew there-a natural inference.
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A CENTURY OF MERIDEN.
now Ann street and Meeting House Hill road, north on Benjamin Curtis and east on highway (Swayne avenue). With it he sold a barn. Shortly afterwards Berry mortgaged the land and on it then, were a house and a barn, showing that the house had been built in the intervening time. The late Mrs. Julia Knight, who owned it, told the writer that a few years ago the barn was taken down and on a beam was found the date 1735, and that her father, Aaron Higbey, had told her the house was standing when the old meeting house was in use. This fixes the date very close to 1743 and the pedigree of the dwelling is practically certain. Ephraim was, doubtless, a brother of Divan Berry, Sr. He finally moved from Meriden on November 22, 1756, and sold the house and farm to Stephen Perkins.
The Perkins family occupied it many years, the last one being Liberty, who passed a good part of his life developing a character commonly denominated as crusty ; he married late in life as his second wife the widow of one of the sons of Squire Darius Benham of Colony street, who with her son, Henry W. Benham, came to live in the old house. The boy, who had high ideals, did not get on well with Liberty and many stories are told of the hardships endured. The story in detail can be found in Mrs. Breckenridge's "Recollections of a New England Town," page 49.
The lad afterwards became a general in the army and had a very successful career. In the first half of the last century the dwelling became the property of Aaron Higbey. The house has been kept in perfect repair and no one of the very old homes in Meriden is as well preserved as this. There is much fine paneling and everything about the house indicates how carefully it was built and kept in repair. It stands on the east corner of Parker avenue and Ann street.
The name of Captain Thomas Yale has been frequently mentioned in the fore- going pages. He was born in New Haven in 1647, the son of Captain Thomas, Sr. He was a grandson of Ann, the daughter of Bishop Lloyd, of the diocese of Chester, England. Her first husband was Thomas Yale, of Wrexham, Wales. He died about 1719 and she then married Theophilus Eaton, a merchant in Lon- don, who afterwards moved to New Haven and became governor of the colony. Captain Thomas, Jr., was first cousin to Elihu Yale, after whom Yale College was named on account of his benefactions to the institution, and who, although born in New Haven, was afterwards a member of the famous and rich corporation known as the East India Company of London and later became its governor.
Captains Thomas,1 Sr. and Jr., although so well connected, seem to have pre- ferred the life of a pioneer on the frontiers, to that of a man of affairs in the center of New Haven colony, for the senior early moved to a large farm in North Haven while the junior was one of the original planters of Wallingford in 1670 and at
1 No reliance can be placed on the early pedigree of the Yale family, found in the pages of the gen- ealogy compiled by Elihu Yale and published in 1850. See N. E. Hist. and Gen. Register, Vol. XXXVIII., p. 317, Vol. L, p. 72 and Vol. LIII., pp. 82-83. The statement made on page 11 of this book that Thos. Yale's mother was a daughter of Thos. Morton, Bishop of Chester, was a mistake.
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EARLY HISTORY.
various times held almost every office his fellow townsmen could bestow on him ; he certainly was a very important man in the community. At an early date the town granted to Thomas Yale a large farm which cannot be precisely stated because the "ledger book" containing most of the original surveys of Wallingford is not to be found among the archives of that town. There is a description of an addition in 1702, and judging by inference when portions of the farm were sold at a later date, he originally had a tract bounded on the east by Swayne and Yale avenues ; on the west by an ancient highway a few hundred feet west of the southern part of Curtis street (this was really the first layout of the southern part of Curtis street ; it is now closed) and by Curtis street ; on the south by the town line, and on the north by Ann street and Meeting House Hill highway (which were one and
I
Photo by R. S. Godfrey.
NOAH YALE, OR J. HOBART YALE PLACE.
the same road originally). Another section ran north of this old highway. Cap- tain Thomas had his home lot in Wallingford village so he used the large farm in Meriden for agricultural purposes only. In 1703 he distributed a great part of it to his sons, Thomas and Nathaniel, who were shortly afterwards married. For a while they both lived with their families in a house that must have stood very close to the junction of Yale and Miller avenues, for it was just half a mile, or 160 rods south of Meeting House Hill road, as described in a deed when the two brothers divided the farm in 1706. Nathaniel died a young man in 1711, leaving three sons, Asa, Moses and Abel, and it was of these three sons that the
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A CENTURY OF MERIDEN.
committee1 appointed by the church in 1728, bought the western portion of this farm, which they later (1729) disposed of to Rev. Theophilus Hall and which be- came his homestead farm. In the deed it is described as bounded north and west on highways (Curtis and Ann streets) and east on Thomas Yale. Julius and J. Hobart Yale and Levi Yale are descendants of Thomas Yale and much of his old farm is in their possession. The house erected as early as 1706 disappeared many years ago and was probably the one occupied later by David Levitt, who bought quite a farm of the Yales at an early date. There are two Yale houses still standing in Meriden, one on Yale avenue and occupied by J. Hobart Yale that was erected by his ancestor Noah, the son of Thomas, in the year 1761.
The house was certainly a fine one for those days and contains much good paneling and wainscoting, and is yet a comfortable and dignified dwelling and for years has been a landmark in that part of the town. Mr. Yale has re- moved the great chimney and thereby obtained much additional room and has established a water supply in the attic and a steam heater in the cellar, so that it is now as well equipped for comfort and convenience as though it were within the city limits. The house in all its lines shows that it was built by a man who was in good financial condition and desired to make it an exponent of his comfortable position. Another ancient Yale dwelling is on East Main street, that was built by Abel Yale about the year 1735. It is on the north side of the street perhaps 500 feet west of Paddock avenue. The first mention of it on the records was in 1737 when his brother Moses quit claimed to Abel all his interest in the house and farm. It stands on a part of the "town farm," which the brothers had bought in 1728 after disposing of their father's lands to the church committee. It was evidently a comfortable and substantial dwelling and it is still in such shape that it may last many years. Of course, it is considerably changed from its original condition, particularly in the interior.
The old lean-to roof is one of the signs of its antiquity. The last of the Yales to own it was Jonathan2 who died in 1833. Orchard Guy, his brother-in-law, who owned and built the old house, three hundred feet west, about 1793, bought the Yale homestead after Jonathan's death, and in 1844 sold it to S. C. Paddock. It is now occupied by a German family who keep a grocery store in the west room of the ground floor.
Mention has been made of the Orchard Guy home. It is of much later date -probably about 1795. In this house was born the late Joel H. Guy, and also his brother and sister, George W. and Esther. She became Mrs. Melvin C. Lee and mother of Mrs. George S. Seeley.
1 Committee was Bartholomew Foster, Samuel Roys and Samuel Ives.
2 Elihu Yale in his genealogy says that Jonathan died a bachelor in 1833. But Daniel Hall in his will dated June 19, 1804, and proved Nov. 1, 1805, says Jonathan was his son-in-law and husband of his daughter, Esther. Most people will be inclined to believe that Daniel Hall had the most reliable information on the subject.
I21
EARLY HISTORY.
Photo by R. S. Godfrey. ABEL YALE PLACE.
ORCHARD GUY PLACE.
I22
A CENTURY OF MERIDEN.
Between Yale avenue and Misery highway or Paddock avenue and bounded on the north by Miller avenue was a large Curtis farm which had been granted to Sergeant Nathaniel Curtis, whose homestead was near Falls Plain or Hanover.
He was the son of Ensign Thomas Curtis, who was born in Stratford in 1648, a son of the original John, and came to Wallingford, one of the company of first planters in 1670, probably through the influence of Captain Nathaniel Merri- man, whose daughter Mary he married. Ensign Thomas was active and influ- ential and during his sixty-six years of life in Wallingford held at various times almost every office on the list. He died the last of the original planters in May, 1736. This Curtis farm originally extended all the way from Paddock avenue to Yale avenue and was bounded north on Miller avenue and extended south towards Clapboard Hill. Nathaniel divided it between two of his sons, Moses and Enos, but as Moses died young, it finally became wholly the property of Enos, who resided on the farm until 1767, when he sold part of it, and his home to his nephew Abel1 and removed to Stockbridge, Mass., where he settled near the "Bowl" and his farm there is now part of the Anson Phelps Stokes estate, known as Shadowbrook. The Meriden home stood on the summit of the hill on the south side of Miller avenue. It disappeared sometime early in the last century. It was a cold, bleak place for a dwelling, and the magnificent view of the Hanging Hills and Lamentation range in the north and east, with glimpses of East Rock and Mount Carmel in the south can hardly have repaid Enos and Abel for the terrible winter blasts that must have whistled down from the summits of Meeting House and Little Success Hills.2
Another Curtis farm fronted on Curtis street and extended easterly until it climbed the steep sides of Meeting House Hill and ran quite down to Swayne avenue. It had a frontage of only a few hundred feet on Curtis street but spread out fan-like in its easterly course until it comprised nearly 200 acres. It was deeded by Nathaniel to his son, Benjamin, in 1729. This Benjamin was the an- cestor of most of the Curtis family of Meriden. His house stood on a site between the dwellings of the late Lemuel J. and Edwin E. Curtis, Nos. 128 and 112 Cur- tis street. It disappeared about the year 1830, some of the timbers being used in constructing a barn that stood in the rear. Benjamin died a comparatively young man in 1754, aged fifty-one, and his body lies in the old Meeting House Hill cemetery, while that of his wife, who died in 1776, lies in the Broad street graveyard. His son, Benjamin,3 who was born in 1735 and died in 1822, was not a believer in the race suicide theory evidently, for he had a family of fourteen children. As his house was not a large one, he, unlike the "old woman who
1 Great grandfather of Floyd Curtis.
2 Just west of the Southeast district school house and the barn of Wm. B. Rice is a swamp that was at one time much larger than it is to-day and extended north and south for quite a distance. It was called Invincible swamp and is frequently mentioned in the old records.
3 Grandfather of the late Edwin E., Lemuel J., George R., Alfred P., Homer Curtis and others.
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EARLY HISTORY.
lived in a shoe," knew what to do ; for he built a house, probably about 1795, into which he put those members of his family for whom there was no room in the old homestead.
This old house is a substantially built one and is located at No. 54 Curtis street. It is in good shape to-day and ought to last many, many years. That it was positively built in 1795 is not sure. All we know is that in that year he deed- ed a part of it to his son, Benjamin, and called it his new house: this may have been only a relative term to distinguish it from his old one. It was his brother, Abel, who bought of his uncle, Enos Curtis, the farm on Little Success Hill.
The farm bought by Rev. Theophilus Hall in 1729 has already been mentioned. He paid the church committee £250 and as they had given the Yale brothers the year previous £ 300 for the same farm, the difference, perhaps, represents a con- tribution given the minister at his settlement.
Photo by R. S. Godfrey. BENJAMIN CURTIS HOUSE.
This home farm comprised eighty acres, afterwards added to, so that it con- tained all told ninety acres. The north line was Ann street which at that time was a ten-rod highway or 165 feet wide; the east line was on the west slope of Meeting House Hill, east of the brook, and it extended south probably some ways below Booth's pond; on the west it was bounded by Curtis street or the "highway that goeth up Pole hill." His house stood where the Willard Hall dwelling now stands, No. 212 Curtis street, but he did not build it until 1734 in all probability, for he did not come to Meriden to reside until that date (the year he was married), although officiating in the church after 1728. The high- way that now runs south from Ann street through the farm beginning a little east of Parker avenue was not laid out until 1820. Back of his dwelling he later
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A CENTURY OF MERIDEN.
built a "cyder" mill, a chair1 house, a horse house and a barn. In addition to the home farm he bought later the Levitt farm of sixty-six acres south of it, so that his land must have extended well towards Miller avenue. Then he owned the Harris farm which has already been described as around the old Central tavern, or farm house as it was then. This consisted of seventy-one acres, as he made a purchase of additional land after buying out Harris. He also owned forty acres in what was called the Notch Meadow, on the road to Westfield, and a large farm in Killingworth, and also 151 acres in Southington. Consequently he was a gentleman of large landed estate, in fact, wealthy. He owned five slaves, viz : Jack, Phillis, Prince, Primus and Dinah, at the time of his death in 1767, and possessed a total estate of about £4,000, or $20,000. He was a very rich man for his generation and in all his actions gave evidence of being a shrewd man of business. In fact, one is constantly impressed by his strength of character. He was certainly the strong man of his parish and seems to have com- pletely governed his flock in every way. His contemporaries speak of him as a strong preacher and a forceful man, although small of stature and slight of physique. The more one studies the early annals of Meriden the more one ad- mires Parson Hall.
He was born in Wallingford village on April 1, 1707, the son of Samuel and Love2 (Royce) Hall. He was of distinguished stock and many of his relatives became very prominent. His uncle, Hon. John Hall, was for eight years one of the governor's assistants and ancestor of Hon. Lyman Hall, governor of Geor- gia, and a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and he was a cousin to Rev. Samuel Hall, pastor of the church in Cheshire.
Rev. Theophilus graduated at Yale in the class of 1727, and after a course in theology he came to preach in Meriden in 1728 and was ordained pastor on the 29th of October, 1729. The Rev. Dr. James Dana, of the church in Wallingford, who was a contemporary of the Rev. Theophilus for eight or nine years, in his Century Discourse,3 1770, says : "Mr. Hall was a gentleman of strong intellectual powers, much esteemed as a preacher, of great firmness and stability, and a zeal- ous advocate for civil and religious liberty." Rev. Edward Hungerford, in his Centennial Sermon,4 delivered in the Center Congregational church October I, 1876, says: "Theophilus Hall was a man of powerful intellect, and of large heart. As I have searched among old papers, it has been an inspiration to come into con- tact with the earnestness, and the vigor of this man who began to preach a hun- dred and fifty years ago." "This man's words flashed ; his short, quick, clear cut sentences went to the mark. His familiar style with its 'don't' and 'won't,'
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