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 35
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HISTORY OF STAMFORD.
ant probably in the sixth generation from Jonas Weed, whose name occurs among the pioneers of the town. At the early age of fifteen years he went into New York city, where he engaged as clerk until he should become of age. Before this period arrived he had won such confidence in his business integrity and skill, as to secure flattering offers to engage in new business enterprises ; but he characteristically decided to fulfill his engagements with his employer to the end of his minority. When his time was out and he had enjoyed a visit to his parents for a few days, his former employer proposed engaging him still longer, as a clerk. His prompt answer was, " I shall be no man's clerk hereafter. I can manage for myself, and if it must be, with a buck and saw, I can still do better than to clerk it longer." With this spirit he entered the dry goods business, and success was with him.
In 1827 he was chosen president of the North River Bank, and soon organized the Ocean Bank, of which he was for years president, and which he left in 1850, greatly to the regret of the directors. He still has among the cherished memorials of his business life the elegant vase which they gave him on his re- tirement from that office.
Retaining his interest in the town which gave him birth, he built the elegant mansion which he still occupies in Darien, only a few rods east of the place on which he was born. Here, since 1850, he has lived, respected and honored in a graceful old age.
He married, first, Hannah Smith, of New York city, in 1810, by whom he had a son, Harvey A., who graduated with first honors of his class in Columbia College, New York, and became a lawyer; and a daughter, Caroline, who died at the age of twenty-six.
Mr. Weed married for his second wife, in 1840, Mrs. Mary (Smith) Weed, a younger sister of his first wife, and the widow of his younger brother.
WEED, SAMUEL, son of Ananias and Sally (Brown) Weed, was born it Stamford in 1794. He fitted for college at the North
NATHANIEL WERT
-4 41
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LATER BIOGRAPHY.
Salem Academy, and entered Yale College in 1809. He grad- uated with his class in 1813, taking a good stand in a class con- taiuing such names as Geo. E. Badgor, L. L. D. ; Elias Cornelius, D. D., of whom he was the room mate while in college; Norris Bull, D. D. ; David B. Douglass, L. L. D. ; William T. Dwight, D. D .; Prof. Alexander, Wm. Fisher, Charles Hawley, Esq. ; Augustus B. Longstreet, L. L. D. ; Elisha Mitchell, D. D. ; Prof. Denison Olmsted, L. L. D., and Dr. George Sumner.
He commenced the study of theology with Rev. Ebenezer Philips, of East Hampton, L. I., and after being licensed to preach, supplied the church in Babylon, L. I., for a year. While here he received a call to settle in North Stamford, his native parish, and had decided to accept it. Being already under ap- pointment to the general assembly of the Presbyterian Church at their first session in Philadelphia, he started to attend the meeting and was taken with the sickness from which he never recovered. IIe died in Philadelphia in June, 1820.
WEEKS, JONATHAN DIBBLE, was the son of Lewis and Sarah (Guire) Weeks, and was born in Stamford, Feb. 2, 1811. His youth was spent in comparative poverty. His advantages were only those of the poorer boys of our poorer rural school districts. But he had in him that which gives the poorest boy a certain passport to most substantial prosperity and wealth. Industrious, honest and persevering, he was equally faithful to himself and his employer.
The talent entrusted to him, thus faithfully used, was soon more than doubled. Beginning as an apprentice in the rolling mills at Rippowam foundry, he went, at about the age of twenty, into the employ of Davenport & Layton, at Roxbury mills, where he soon became an equal partner with John A. Davenport.
During his apprenticeship, by unwearied application, he had made such progress in his studies that he had read the neces- sary Latin and Greek for admission to college at his twentieth year; and had, also, by his industry and economy, besides con-
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HISTORY OF STAMFORD.
tributing to the support of his father's family, laid by what he supposed would enable him to take a collegiate course, prepara- tory to the study of law, in which profession he hoped to spend his life. But unexpected sickness thwarted this cherished plan, and regretfully, yet with earnest purpose, he still gave himself to the business which Provideuce seemed to appoint him. After a successful career at the Roxbury mills he became joint part- ner with the Davenport Brothers, in the extensive rolling mills at Stillwater. Here he spent the rest of his life. In the duties of his extensive business, whose business was mainly entrusted to his care, and in quiet and private acts of his noble generosity, he accomplished great good.
He was universally beloved by the many laborers who were in his employ. They were all mourners when he died. Multi- tudes of the poor of his native town were the objects of his gen- erous benefactions. He seemed most pleased in giving, and, to those who most needed it.
He never married, but he found or made for himself a home in the family of his younger brother, James William, where he found all that he wanted in a home. Here he enjoyed himself, and here he was the joy of those whom he spoke of as his own family. Nothing could fempt him to leave it. For the last eleven years of his life he had not spent a night away from the home he so much loved.
Here he gave himself to his business and reading. In both he was diligent and thorough. Every hour was employed, and well employed. His reading was carefully selected. He could not be entertained by the fashionable light literature of the day ; he needed something more substantial. History, biography, philosophy and science, were the works which engrossed his time, and in them his reading was quite extensive.
Two characteristics prominent in his whole life, made him one of the most beloved and trustworthy men of the town. Ile was conscientious and benevolent. After he had reached manhood, learning that a school bill of his boyhood had never been paid,
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LATER BIOGRAPHY.
he carefully enquired after every possible arrearage of those early years, and cashed them with full interest. His benevo- lence was unbounded, and much of it was unknown. Though he gathered a handsome estate, he had, while living, the truer joy of distributing in benefactions, where he knew they would do good, probably a still larger amount.
Ilis sudden death occurred Jan. 21, 1864, and the multitudes who gathered at his funeral were the best witnesses a good man could have, to the esteem in which he was held. Uuaffected and universal mourning attested the public bereavement.
WELLES, NOAH, D. D, was born in Colchester, Jan. 23, 1718, and graduated at Yale College in 1741. His scholarship is in- dicated in his appointment as tutor in his Alma Mater in 1745. After receiving his license to preach he was settled as pastor of the Stamford Church, as our chapter on ecclesiastical matters, shows, Dec. 31, 1746. We have already in our history been obliged to report his success in the work of the ministry here. Ile attained a high rank among the ministers of Connecticut, He was chosen a Fellow of Yale College in 1774, and received the degree of D. D., the same year from the College of New Jersey.
Dr. Dwight thus testifies to his ability and standing.
"Dr. Welles was early distinguished for his talents. His imagination was vivid and poetical, his intellect vigorous, and his learning extensive. His manners at the, same time were an unusually happy compound of politeness and dignity. Ia bis conversation, he was alternately sprightly and grave, as occasion dictated and entertaining and instructive. At the same time he was an excellent minister ot the Gospel ; exemplary in all the virtues of christian life ; an able preacher ; a wise ruler of the church ; and an eminently discreet manager of its important concerns. He was one of the three chosen friends of the late Governor Livingston of New Jersey, to whom he addressed, when young, a handsomely written poem, prefixed to his Philosophie Solitude."
Dr. Welles was somewhat fond of theological controversy. And as his ministry was in that period in which Episcopacy was working its way into the colonies, and particularly into Fairfield County, he felt himself called upon, in virtue of his
55
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HISTORY OF STAMFORD,
office here, to defend the church organization to which he was attached. His discourse on Presbyterian ordination, printed in 1763, at the new printing office, near the Royal Exchange, by John Hoyt, was an able justification of his authority as a minister of the church of Christ. It had been preached on two successive Sabbaths to his own people. Subsequently, he published a still more lengthy, and perhaps still more spirited defense of the authority of the Congregational clergy, and of the polity of the Congregational Church. Though earnestly entering into their discussions, he was never diverted by them from the great work of his profession; nor was his spirit ever soured by them towards the Episcopal clergy or the denomiua- tion. The work just named stirred up considerable denonina- tional feeling among the Episcopal clergy, and called forth fromn the earliest clergyman of that denomination here, the Rev. James Wetmore, a work of some spirit entitled ; " A Vindication of the Professors of the Church of England in Connecticut, against Invectives contained in a sermon by Noah Hobart, of Stamford, Dec. 31, 1746." The name Hobart in the title of the work is of course a mistake of the printer, for Welles. (See Wetmore Family.)
Dr. Welles, married in 1751, Abigail Woolsey, daughter of Rev. Benjamin Woolsey, of Oyster Bay, by whom he had the following children : Sarah, born Nov. 9, 1752 ; Mary Sylvester, born Oct. 20, 1754; Theodosia, born Oct. 22, 1758; Abigail, born Oct. 1', 1760; Noah, born Oct. 3, 1762; Betsey, born Feb. 23, 176. ; Rebecca, born July 5, 1767; William, born Jan. 22, 1769 . Melancthon Woolsey, born Dec. 9, 1770; Apollos, born Det. 10, 1773; John and James, twins, born April 7, 1776. )r. Welles died Dee. 31, 1776, and his wife Oct. 28, 1811, age 1 81.
CHAPTER XXV.
MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS.
UNION LODGE.
This is one of the oldest institutions of the town, and de- serves its place in our history. Its charter bears date, Nov. 18, 1763 ; and was issued by "Geo. Harrison, Esq., Provincial Grand Master of the most Aneient and Honorable Society of Free and Accepted Masons in the province of New York." It authorizes Sylvanus Waterbury, "our worshipful and well be- loved brother," " to form a lodge, to choose his wardens, and appoint other officers, with the consent of the brethren assem- bled in due form, to make masons, as also to do all and every such acts and things appertaining to said office, as usually have and ought to be done by other masters." He is to pay over to the Provincial Grand Lodge at New York, out of the first monies he shall receive, three pounds and three shillings ster- ling, to be applied to the use of the Grand Charity. This lodge was designed for Stamford and Horseneck, (Greenwich,) and parts adjacent.
The records of the lodge from 1763 to 1780 are lost, the only name of the members for that period, preserved, being that in the charter, Sylvanus Waterbury. Since then there have been four hundred and sixty names added to the membership.
The worshipful masters of the lodge, according to the records preserved have been, Sylvanus Waterbury, John Anderson, Israel Knapp, Jabez Fitch, Wm. Bush, Isaac Reed, Sturges Perry, Samuel Bush, Noyes Mather, Alexander Mills, James Stevens, Isaac Loekwood, Samuel Keeler, Simeon H. Minor, Benj. HInested, Isaac Bishop, Charles Hawley, Erastus Weed. John W. Leeds, fourteen years ; Peter Brown, Sands Adams,
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HISTORY OF STAMFORD.
A. A. Holly, nineteen years ; W. H. Holly, Roswell Hoyt, II- Bulkley, Philip L. Hoyt, T. J. Daskam , John A. Scofield, James HI. Olmstead, and Dwight Waugh.
RITTENHOUSE CHAPTER.
This chapter of royal arch masons was chartered at a grand chapter of royal arch masons held in New Haven, Oct. 18, 1810, on a memorial presented to them by JAMES STEVENS and sundry other brethren, now residing in, and adjacent to, Stam- ford. The officers installed by the chapter are the most wor- shipful brother JAMES STEVENS, II. P .; the right worshipful brother, ISAAC LOCKWOOD, K-g .; and the right worshipful brother EZEKIEL LOCKWOOD, S -- e.
The high priests of this order have been: James Stevens, Isaac Lockwood, Simeon H. Minor, Joseph Keeler, Wm. J. Street, Charles Hawley, John W. Leeds, Nathan Camp, Wm. IIolly, Smith Scott, Geo. B. Glendining, Luke A. Lockwood, and James H. Olmstead.
ROADS.
At this day we have no conception of the difficulties connect- ed with travel in the early period of our history.
For many years the travel was on foot or on horseback; and the roads were only meandering paths, such as afforded easiest progress for the weary feet. For many years they were marked hardly more than to clear off the trees and bushes, and this was done by each landowner before his own lot. How rapidly these paths or roads were laid out we have no means of know- ing. One peenliarity of the highway of that carly day was the fact of a gate across the road, wherever a side road entered the main one of the settlement-so that for several years, one could not probably have traveled a half mile in any direction from the center of the town, without meeting one of these gates. After a few years, by special action in town meeting, these gates were removed, generally on petition of some of the outsiders who found them a serious annoyance.
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MISCELLANEOUS.
The following vote of 28th, 2d month, 1682, is a sample of the votes providing for the support of these highway gates :
"Joseph Stevens is to have on acre and half of land joyuing to ye north of his lot in consideration whereof he is to keep and maintain ye lower south field gate; and ye sd land is bound for ye maintaining thereof, Also the sd Stevens is to keep & maintaine ye rocky neck gate for ye same quantity of land yt before was laid to it & ye land to stand hound for ye gate as aforesaid: goodman Dean & Joshua Hoit aro apointed to lay it out."
The following vote is curious, as showing how even the great coast-route thoroughfare must have been subject to a similar obstruction. It bears date, Jan. 1764. "By vote ye town doth own the prosecution yt hath bine made upon ye state of John Pettit or ye fins for the deffects in a pece of fence by Grinwich bars, markt I P, and neglected by him, viz. John Pettit."
These gates, bars and fences across the roads were found exceedingly troublesome; and when other reasons could not induce their removal, resort was sometimes had to the strong arm. Thus, in 1726, we find this record : "the town by vote agree that they will stand by and justify those men that have been employed by the proprietors to pull down the fence that was set up across the highway near Thomas Stevens."
Without prosecuting the research further, it is due at least to the entertainment of future readers of our town history, that we attempt to sketch the final touches to the great thorough- fare of the town. From the first, the route between New Haven and New York ran through Stamford, mainly where the main road now lies. Yet, from local impediments, it was much more crooked, than now. Our engineering skill had not yet come to test its ability, in the encounter with very formi- dable granite bluffs, nor with what seemed the bottomless marshes and impenetrable swamps of our impracticable sur- face. And so it happened, that as business grew, and demand- ed greater expedition,-as wheeled carriages succeeded eques- trian or pedestrian locomotion, and felt more than they, these
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HISTORY OF STAMFORD.
deviations from a right-lined course, our enterprising towns- men gave themselves no rest until they had done what seemed to them possible, towards leveling and straitening their roads.
Especially on those roads built for the daily passing of the heavy stage coach, did this improvement seem indispensable. Such was our main road through Stamford. The entire popu- lation in Eastern Connecticut, and so on all the way to Provi- denee and Boston, were interested then as now, in shortening the distance and the time over the route. They had succeeded in satisfying themselves with the old roads until about 1795, when the call for thorough improvement began to be heard. The state legislature appointed commissioners, with almost ab- solute authority, to go over the road and lay out a new turn- pike for greater expedition in travel. All along on the road between New Haven and Greenwich, there arose dissatisfac. tion and opposition. In Stamford there seems to have been no very earnest objection to the route adopted by the committee until, in their zeal for reform, they decided that the interest of the traveling publie demanded a strait road through the vil- lage. But here they found themselves arrested by the old burying lot which, from the earliest remembranees of the towns people, had been held sacred for the rest of their dead. This lot covered the ground between the old " Washington House," or Webb Tavern, and the corner occupied by the Methodist Church ; and the old turnpike had followed the present route of Park Place till it enters River street. The enterprising com- mittee insist on laying out the new turnpike right across that hallowed spot. The town opposed, and for years kept the com- mittee and the legislature at bay. But the world moves on and by 1805, enough of our townsmen had been drawn into the eurrent to approve and second the measure. John Daven- port even took stoek in the sacrilegious enterprise, and we find his name at the head of a petition for the summary and au- thorative opening of the desired road. The town oppose and the corporation persevere. The legal authority is granted, and
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MISCELLANEOUS.
the invasion begins. Entering the burying lot, just sonth of the east end of our present Park Place, they plowed strait across, as the present Main street runs, to the Methodist Church, where they again entered the old turnpike. Removing eare- fully the grave stones and exhuming the remains beneath, they commence the thorough grading of the new road. In spite of the mutterings, which betokened serions hostility to the daring aet, the corporation go on in their work. Night over- takes them, and they are obliged to rest. But now is the time for the opposition. Team after team of Stamford oxen, sturdy and true to the sturdy and true men who drove them, filed on towards the newly opened road. Immense roeks were hauled right across both ends of the opening; and when "Uncle Thad," the same who thirty years before had so delight ed his townsmen by shaking his tory neighbor, was satisfied that the turnpike corporation would have a job suffleiently discouraging to remove the obstruetions, the men and teams were withdrawn to rest for another night's work, if it should be necessary.
Twice more this game was played, but the influence of the age and the strong arm of the law were alike against it, and the opposition of the town had to yield. The road was fin- ished ; but the feeling of some of the opposition, at the head of whom were such leaders of the people as Captain Isaae Lock- wood and Captain Thaddeus Hoyt, was so deep, that no pres- sure of business could ever prevail on them to drive over those few rods of what, to the day of their death, they looked upon as deseerated ground.
NEWSPAPERS.
In April, 1829, Stamford took a new step forward in her progress. A printing office was opened here and the Stamford Intelligencer was issued. The editor not succeeding to his sat- isfaction, Wm. H. Holly, Esq., at the solicitation of some of the citizens of the town, and under a pledge of pecuniary support , started a new paper, Feb. 16, 1830, under the title of the Stamford Sentinel. From that date to the present, the town has not.
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HISTORY OF STAMFORD.
been without its weekly paper. Mr. Holly continued in charge of the paper under the title of "Sentinel," " Democratic Senti- nel" and " Farmer's Advocate," until June 27, 1841. It is not too much to say for the paper that its management was marked by great ability. As a pioneer paper, few of its day equaled it.
Alfred W. Pearce succeeded Mr. Holly, under whose editor- ial care it continued until Sept. 20, 1841, when Henry Nichols succeeded him. The last paper issued by Mr. Nichols, which I have found, bears date March 26, 1842, and in June of the same year the " Farmers and Merchant's Advocate" was issued under the editorial management of the former editor, Wm. IIenry Holly.
In May, 1848, Edgar Hoyt and Andrew J. Smith took charge of the paper, and enlarged with the simple title of the "Stamford Advocate," which it has since retained. On the dissolution of the copartnership between Mr, Hoyt and Smith in June, 1849, Mr. Hoyt assumed full control of the Advocate until 1860, when Wm. S. Campbell, who proved an efficient editor, became proprietor. There were few papers in the state more ably man- aged, than the Advocate, while in his hands. He soon took into partnership with himself, Wm. W. Gillespie, the foreman in his printing department. On his death, Mr. Gillespie formed a new partnership with Rev. James J. Woolsey, which was dis- solved in the spring of 1868. Mr. Gillespie immediately organ- ized a new firm, W. W. Gillespie & Co., introduced steam as motive power, and greatly enlarged his facilities for carrying on all departments of his business. How satisfactorily the paper is managed, and how necessary it is found to be to the town are seen in the increasing subscription list, this having more than trebled during the last three years.
STEAMBOATS.
As early as 1825, the Oliver Wolcott was put on the Stam ford line, and for years made trips every other day to New York. But the town has been mainly supplied by boats which touched here on the route from ports further east. In the
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MISCELLANEOUS.
spring of 1849, the Steamboat Norwalk, running between Nor- walk and New York stopped at Stamford. And since then, successively, the Ella, and Stamford, and Shippan, have done a large part of the freighting between New York and Stamford. At first, at low tides, the boats landed on the west side of the harbor, but a short distance above the present residence of our venerable deacon Theodore Davenport; but in 1856, the brothers Knapp-James E., of New York, and John B. of Richmond Hill, opened the channel to their new dock at the foot of South street, to which point the boats have continued to run until now. For several summers, the only steamboat which accommodated Stamford stopped at Portchester.
CANAL.
This work was due mainly to the energy of Alfred Bishop. (See Later Biography.) It was deemed the beginning of bet- ter days for the town, when in 1833, this feat was accomplished.
The first sloop which cleaved its waters was our "May- flower," and we may be sure its young captain, not yet among our oldest citizens, Rufus Wardwell, Esq., felt no little pride as he pioneered our local commerce. Those warehouses which lined the terminus of the canal, were doubtless looked upon as the beginning of no slight commercial prosperity. But a readier avenue to the great commercial center was destined at no distant day to be opened; and our commercial warehouses were doomed to decline into the work shops and low tenements, which we shall have to await the coming of a better time to remove.
Two years after it was opened, our local paper, the Sentinel, thus speaks of its possibilities :
" Through the perseverance of a single individnal, a ship channel has been opened, and the enterprising Messrs. Wm. and R. Hoyt & Co., have despatched the schooner James Star with a full freight for the West Indies, The value of this canal to this vicinity, is not yet fully realized, but every day unfolds to the skeptic new evidences of its utility.
The schooner in due time, about six weeks, returned, " nine days from Eleuthall, well laden with fruit, copper, dye woods,
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HISTORY OF STAMFORD.
&c., proving a profitable experiment for the adventurers." The editor acknowledges his obligations to the captain for a hand- some present of pine apples.
STAMFORD SHIP CANAL COMPANY.
Joseph B. Hoyt and Joseph D. Warren in the winter of 1867-8, conceived the plan of opening a permanent ship canal, from the harbor up, so as to connect easily with the railroad. They ac- cordingly purchased the needed land, controlling both sides of the proposed canal, and entered, in the spring of 1868, upon the work, Beginning in the bed of the old canal, about sixty rods below the Depot of the New York and New Haven Railroad, they are digging some nine feet below the present bed of the canal and opening a channel, down to the harbor, eighty feet wide ; making as they go, solid land as far as the material thus removed will extend, on each side of the channel, for building and business nses. When successfully completed, this enter- prise promises a large addition to the facilities which the town will offer, for mechanical and manufacturing purposes.
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