Landmarks of New Canaan, Part 11

Author:
Publication date: 1951
Publisher: New Canaan, Connecticut : The New Canaan Historical Society
Number of Pages: 522

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"The six-year high school to meet this challenge, demands a carefully selected group of teachers, each highly cooperative, technically trained and educated as a specialist in his field of work. The head of such a school must have an extended knowledge of secondary education, a training in administration, psychology, and diplomacy. In him all departments are unified and administered; through him the school grows and develops into a factor in the community."

The six principals of the high school were: O. W. Grafmiller, September 1926-June 1929; Harry W. Blake, September 1929-June 1937; Fuller H. Austin served part of 1937-1938, as he died during the Spring vacation of 1938; Edward J. Waldron served September 1938- June 1943; Dr. Howard R. Jones, September 1943-June 1946; Harold S. Kenney, September 1947.

New Canaan has been fortunate in the cal- ibre and training of its head men as they have all been men of high ideals, having the interest of the individual pupil at heart. Upon the resig- nation of the late Henry W. Saxe as superin- tendent, Mr. Blake became superintendent as well as principal of the high school. This com- bination of superintendent and high school principal continued through June, 1946, when Albert P. Mathers was appointed superinten- dent and Harold S. Kenney principal.

The fine public spirit shown by Mr. and Mrs. Barend Van Gerbig has been continued by others many, many times. To quote the words of the editor of "The Star" in March, 1927: "To maintain a school of high standing, it will re- quire team work between the faculty, students and townspeople. With an energetic, capable

principal, an earnest, efficient faculty, a zealous student body, and a sympathetic interested public, all working together, there will be no question of our school attaining a high stand- ard in scholarship and citizenship." This fine community helpfulness is still markedly true in New Canaan. The first flag presented to the high school was given by the Woman's Relief Corps; while the Hannah Benedict Carter Chapter of the D.A.R. this year equipped all the rooms in the building with new flags and gave one also for the flag-pole. The high school library was begun by contributions from in- dividuals and town organizations. The PTA groups have added year by year to needed equipment. For several years one of the par- ticular interests of the PTA was a scholarship for girls, inasmuch as the Harvard Club offered a scholarship to boys. Eventually this scholar- ship was changed to a loan fund available for borrowing by any boy or girl of the high school who desires further training and needs finan- cial aid. This year there have been additions to this scholarship list: (a) the veterans are giv- ing a $100 scholarship to a girl entering nurs- ing, (b) the Marjorie A. Parkhill Scholarship of $250 for a boy or girl, established by Miss Parkhill's mother and sister. The grounds around the high school were graded and put in shape through the liberal financial aid of A. Hatfield and again Mr. and Mrs. Van Gerbig. Miss Dorothy Boyle paid for most of the plant- ing on the high school grounds. The New Ca- naan Garden Club gave two large sugar maples; the New Canaan Grange, the purple beech; the Historical Society, the linden; the moline elm by the park commission as a memorial to President Washington. Mr. and Mrs. Van Ger- big also donated the dogwood and laurel in the back of the athletic field. S. Pearce Brown- ing, jr., this year, has contributed radio equip- ment.

The success of the high school is due not only to the outstanding principals, the cooperative and interested spirit of the townspeople and organizations and parents, but to an excellent faculty, and last but not least, interested jani- tors. From superintendent to janitor, there has been a group of adults interested in seeing boys

and girls achieve their best in routine work, in sports, in social life. One of the marked fea- tures of the New Canaan High School faculty has been the willingness of its members to give unstintingly of time and effort. The building is in its present good condition due to alertness and interest on the part of faculty and janitors.

The curriculum has changed somewhat from time to time, but has always sought to provide a well-rounded program for boys and girls in- terested in college in commercial training, or practical arts training. Under Mr. Waldron, a joint work-school program was initiated through agreement with many local offices. A testing program, used in the guidance set-up, has been utilized for many years. The aim is to try to help the individual pupil attain his best where he is best qualified. Clubs have provided for avocational interests and in some cases have grown into vocational interests. Dances, assem- blies, class plays have served as part of the school life. The pupils, at first, shared in the management of the school through Boys' and Girls' Service Clubs. During Mr. Waldron's principalship, a Student Council supplanted the Service Clubs. Dr. Jones established a Na- tional Honor Society to stimulate interest in

(a) scholarship, (b) service to school and com- munity, (c) leadership, (d) character. New Canaan High School is not a static organiza- tion, but a changing one when that change is of benefit to the pupil or community.

As to the graduates of the local high school, they have entered many fields; of course many have had to leave town as opportunities are limited in a residential town. Graduates have entered the University of New Hampshire, Harvard, M.I.T., Holyoke, Smith, Connecticut College for Women at New London, Connec- ticut University at Storrs, Syracuse University, N. Y. U., Columbia University, St. Lawrence, Colgate, Bucknell, Goucher, Swarthmore, Duke, University of Michigan, etc. The com- mercial graduates are nearly always placed in jobs by graduation as they are in demand. Two of our graduates have won Regional Scholar- ships, one for Carnegie Tech, and one for Goucher College, Baltimore, Md.

The purpose of training in the New Canaan High School in the words of Dr. Alderson, who gave the Baccalaureate address June 8, 1947, is that the school may send out its boys and girls "with something to live on, to live by, to live for."

DISTRICT IV SCHOOL-THE ROHDE HOUSE

RUTH S. LYDEN, Author

EDWIN EBERMAN, Artist

[June 19, 1947]

Part of the charm of an old house is not only its appearance but the story it has to tell. This is the tale of the outmoded schoolhouse, brought to the rescue of a family, burned out of their farm, which now serves as the core of a substantial Connecticut dwelling. The land in early days belonged to the Frank Weeds, the Samuel St. Johns and, before them, John and later his son Nehemiah Benedict. Nehe-

miah was given sixty acres by his father John and later bought an additional pie-shaped piece of "Commonland" from proprietors ap- pointed to dispose of such land (in 1764).

The present Rohde House, at the second bend in the road, just a half mile off Oenoke Ridge on Lambert, is, as you see by Edwin Eberman's drawing, lovely to look at. The his- tory of the central part of it goes back almost

Edwin Eberman -

District IV School - The Rohde House

a hundred years to the time when it was the little schoolhouse of District IV, facing the cor- ner of land between Weed Street and West Road on the same site as the Garden Center. (The Garden Center is the brick schoolhouse built to replace it. )

When this core of the Rohde house was built in 1848 to serve as Old Church School, it had the two windows which you see to the left of the front door in the present structure. The roof rose to a peak between those windows. There was a main entrance door and vestibule on the

right under a slightly lower sloping roof. This was matched by a sloped roof and door to the built-on woodshed on the left. A photograph of it hangs on the wall of the Garden Center, illustrating a New Canaan Advertiser article. It shows the building and part of the class group standing out in front, with Stephen B. Hoyt of New Canaan, as the teacher in 1897.

The interior is described by Mrs. Alton Chi- chester, a pupil in 1850 and incorporated in a paper on the Old Church School District read by Mrs. Gerald I. Cutler at a meeting of the

Historical Society this June of 1947. It gives it as being ... "a small wooden school" which had behind that entrance door a place where "cloaks, hats, dinner pails and dipper were kept." Inside were three rows of desks seating two pupils each. On the left was a good sized blackboard. "There was a wood stove in the center and the teacher's desk up front on a slightly raised platform. The room sat thirty children. The view from this school was over a very wonderful country."

The names of many people connected with the history of New Canaan are listed as pupils or teachers. Hezekiah Weed taught here for thirty-ninc years, from 1834 to 1873, which car- ries him back part of that time to a still earlier structure, the one in fact, which was moved to the property now owned by Frederick A. Fisher on Oenoke Ridge, about a mile up from God's Acre on the right. Miss Lucretia Bouton was teacher in 1875 while Mrs. Urban Sey- mour, now in town, was a student. Herbert Sco- field, the furniture dealer, carried his lunch box to this same school and Stiles Wood of Tal- madge Hill, father of Chester F. Wood, the electrician in town, was a student there.

The main story of our schoolhouse turned dwelling however, continues with one little boy, Jimmy Scott, who attended school there and was later to sleep under that same roof when it became his own.

One cold night in January his mother woke him and told Jimmy to put on his boots because their house was on fire. This was the old farm- house down on Lambert Road. "I couldn't be- lieve her," Jimmy says, "but when I went out there was our barn blazing so that it had blown off its roof and burning shingles were floating through the air and landing on the top of our home. We pumped water from the well and carried it in pails to the roof but it did no good. So my little brother and I got busy and helped my mother and father put nearly all the furni- ture out onto a snowbank. About an hour later people came but we were burned flat." Part of the cellar and foundation stones still can be seen half way up the hill in front of the Rohde house.

The Scott family had no place to go so Neil-

son Olcott, father of the present Miss Helen K. Olcott of New Canaan, opened to them his summer home which is now owned and occu- pied the year around by Dr. Nathaniel Green. It is the beautiful white house at the fork in the road where Lambert leaves Oenoke.

There the Scotts remained through the Win- ter until the schoolhouse of District IV was put up for sale by a special committee appointed by the School Board. Jimmy Scott's father, William, bought it for all of fifteen dollars. This information given us from his books by Henry Kelley, sr., would interest many a homeless G.I. and houschunter of today. This was in 1910.

Jimmy's father moved the little schoolhouse himself down from West Road on two wagons side by side with broad planks across, drawn by two teams of horses. "We drove down the hill and around the bend," Jimmy says, "but instead of landing her up on the old burned foundation we put her where it was cheaper not to carry up the hill. We moved right in and dug our cellar later." The school, therefore, came to Lambert Road and was placed where it now stands.

At this point, it is interesting to note that the original road as one approaches from Oenoke, headed in on the left above the Rohde's pres- ent driveway and ran up a steeper grade fol- lowing the line of maple trees, finally making a loop around the house and down the hill. Many of these humps and sharp turns are still being cut through to straighten New Canaan's roads, adapting them to the modern car.

The little house itself saw many changes as it grew. The first thing the Scotts built on was a kitchen, keeping the schoolhouse for parlor and bedrooms. Several years later they added a dining room, and then two bedrooms up- stairs. They built barns and ran a small dairy farm while Jimmy's father worked as greens- keeper at the New Canaan Country Club, a position now held by his son.

After William Scott, the father, died in 1927, his wife, Annie A. Scott, moved away (about 1929), leaving the house and outbuildings to be rented or vacant. Eventually they came into the possession of Samuel H. Watts who bought

the land for protection of his own house and property. It was sold by him to the Misses Florence and Edith Hall on January 3, 1933. They were the ones largely responsible for re- modeling it from a small farmhouse to a mod- ern Connecticut country place.

First they removed the front porch which shaded the door and one window on the right. Then, by lengthening the gable on the right to match the one on the left, they added nine feet of floor space both upstairs and down. Later they built a one-story wing out onto the kitchen at the left with servants' quarters over a breezeway. The drive led through this breezeway up the ramp into the barn behind.

When Harvey L. Rohde returned from World War II, a naval lieutenant (j.g.), he bought it from the Coveneys, who had pur- chased it from the Halls only one year before. He needed more room and obtained it by filling in the open-arched breezeway and broadening the connecting wing by pushing it out six feet in back.

Throughout all these changes which have been made with much care and skill, the little old schoolhouse still stands on its own broad- board floor adding charm as well as support to one of New Canaan's historical dwellings.

Next year it should celebrate its centennial.

THE INDIAN ROCKS

WARREN HOAGLAND, Author

EDWIN EBERMAN, Artist

[June 26, 1947]

The "Indian Rocks," with their phenomenal series of large rounded excavations in the solid granite, are of unique interest in any review of New Canaan's historical landmarks. For so long as mankind has dwelt in this vicinity, they have been a source of continued interest and speculation, and even today they present an historical and geological mystery which has never been fully solved.

As tradition and historians have long as- serted, these Rocks were probably used for centuries by the Indians as a meeting place, particularly because grain could conveniently be pounded in the curious cavities which are prominent in the rocks, and this work was no doubt done by squaws with their papooses playing nearby. But while the cavities may have been enlarged by the Indians, through long use, it seems likely that they were origi- nally made by nature long before their discov-

ery by man. Possibly the origin of these strange rounded cavities in the Rocks dates back to the Ice Age when most of what is now New England was engulfed by glaciers which vastly changed and marked the landscape.

While they have been somewhat forgotten in recent years with the distractions of modern automobiles, radio and movies, the ancient path to Indian Rocks was for many generations a favorite for Sunday and holiday excursions. Those earlier generations, as well as our own, and particularly the boys and girls of New Canaan in hundreds, have left their initials carved on beech trees which grow beside the Rocks.

The adjacent trees have become so covered with initials and other carvings, such as a large Indian head, that they in themselves provide an interesting novelty. Among them may be found the initials of many of New Canaan's

Edwin Elerwar

194%.

The Indian Rocks

older residents, sometimes in pairs, remaining as mementos of pleasant outings in years gone by.

The Indian Rocks themselves may be de- scribed as a precipitous outcropping of solid granite, about forty feet high and twenty-five feet wide, which appears on the hillside a few rods east of the Five Mile River. They are easily reached by a short walk from the point where Lambert Road converges with Country

Club Road. The Rocks lie to the north in the wooded valley of the Five Mile River between Oenoke Ridge on the west and the Country Club's golf course on the east. The ancient path which in earlier years was followed by horses and carriages, as well as strollers, going to In- dian Rocks, will soon be opened for automo- biles and residential property in the area will be sold by the Fairway Corporation which ac- quired all this property in 1946 from the Coun-

try Club. The Indian Rocks had previously been part of the wooded property of the Coun- try Club since 1902, having earlier been in- cluded in the farm of Dr. Samuel B. St. John.

On the face of the Indian Rocks, which are divided in the middle by a horizontal shelf about twelve feet wide, there are at least five clearly defined cavities or excavations of the kind the Indians are said to have used for grinding grain. These cavities range in capacity from about one gallon in the smallest to per- haps sixteen gallons in the largest. One of them, the lowest in elevation, has been split open and fully exposed when a large piece of granite was broken off at some time past, perhaps by the pressure of ice forming in the cavity.

The Indian Rocks have been a favorite topic for more than a century in historical books and discussions dealing with the New Canaan vi- cinity. They figured prominently in the article on New Canaan which appeared in 1836 in a volume entitled "Connecticut Historical Col- lections," by John W. Barber of New Haven. He wrote:

"About two miles north of the Congregational Church, in a tract of woods, was a place of resort for all the Indians in the vicinity. There are three excavations out of the solid rock, the largest of which will contain about eight gallons, and one about five; the third will contain about one quart. The cavities are on the side of a rock, one above another, the largest being at the top. Pestles, stone axes, and other Indian implements, have been found about this spot; the rocks bear the appear- ance of fire. The cavities above mentioned were doubtless formed by the Indians, for the purpose of pounding or grinding their corn."

It may be noted that either Barber's details as to the cavities were inaccurate, or else addi- tional cavities have appeared during the last one hundred years and their size has increased;

and it seems more likely that his information in 1836 was incomplete.

In the New Canaan Messenger of January 24, 1891, appeared a scholarly article by Pro- fessor E. H. Lockwood of New Canaan, who was then teaching at Yale. His article, which had been first read at the New Canaan Histori- cal Society in October, 1890, described the In- dian Rocks and their strange cavities at con- siderable length and in detail, with careful il- lustrations made by the author. Professor Lock- wood speculated in his article as to the meth- ods and tools used by the Indians in pounding grain, and suggested that the cavities had been worn down by stone pestles used by the In- dians. He did not discuss the possible geologi- cal origins of the rocks, and the cavities in them.

Mrs. Esther Bouton (who was born in 1795 and died in 1891) lived near the top of Oenoke Ridge and had many memories of early days in the community. She recalled stories of Indians who camped near Indian Rocks, and particu- larly an Indian woman with a papoose on her back who came from their camp to the Bouton house.

The comparatively recent volume "Canaan Parish," 1733-1933, which was published by the New Canaan Advertiser in January 1935, contains (on page 25 of Part I) a photograph of Indian Rocks. It also reprinted, among other interesting articles, the Historical Address which had been given on July 4, 1876 by Pro- fessor Samuel St. John, in which he referred to the Indian Rocks and the excavations in them used by the tribes for pounding their corn. Professor St. John's address also con- tained a full description of the original pur- chase from the Indians of the lands which now form New Canaan; and it is interesting to note that prominent among the Indians participat- ing were the Sagamores, Ponus and his son Owenoke.

Edwin Eberman 1947

THE OLD JUSTUS HOYT HOUSE

EDWARD WEBB KEANE, Author

EDWIN EBERMAN, Artist

[July 2, 1947]

On South Main Street, directly across from the library, stands one of the earliest houses of the Hoyt family, who settled in New Canaan more than 200 years ago. Although it has been re-

modelled and enlarged many times in its long history, it keeps much of what must have been the spirit of the early New England houses hereabouts.

The present living room, once the entire house, was three small rooms, as indicated plainly by stained beams across the ceiling and along the walls. The fireplace, once as high as the ceiling, has been greatly reduced. The floor is laid in wide oak boards, which have replaced the former wider (27-inch) pine. The ceiling is very low, not much over 6 feet, although it seems to vary in every room of the house. Cer- tain details in the construction, such as the "jury mast" treatment of corner timbers, and a board upon which is traced the outline of two ships would seem to indicate that the carpen- ters who built it were ship's carpenters. It is not generally realized now to what extent New Canaan was a sea-faring community in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The sea was constantly a part of New Canaan life, and many a Hoyt mother, I imagine, feared that her young son might run away to sea.

The evolution of the Hoyt house is an inter- esting architectural problem. It was built about 1750 by Rev. Robert Silliman on "White Oak Shade Path to Ye Meeting House," now South Main Street. Because of the colonial custom of building houses near the road and because of an old cellar which evidently belonged to it, it seems certain that the house was originally built where S. B. Hoyt's flower shop now stands.

Rev. Silliman sold the new house to Justus Hoyt, who dwelt there with his wife, Elizabeth Fitch, as long as they lived. These were the first of the long line of Hoyts who have owned the house to this day. Justus moved it to its present location about 25 years later and al- tered it to a larger "salt-box" type of house. He also attached his cobbling shop to the south end. This is now the dining room.

A fragment of the long roof line is visible today on the East side of the house, and which, if extended, would meet a roof purlin which probably bore the rafters of the salt-box roof. In an upstairs room, where the plaster was re- moved some years ago, the old roofline was vis- ible. Nine years ago, when the house was again remodelled, there were discovered feather- edged boards painted that rare shade of green so difficult to reproduce today. These had later

been lathed over with hand split oak lath and then plastered. The lath and plaster were re- moved in 1939 and the boards restored and painted the original color.

Stephen, the son of Justus, heightened the north end of the house to two and a half stories about 1825. It must have remained thus long enough for the outside shingles ( three feet long with one foot to the weather and held with hand wrought nails) on the south end of the gable, that rose above the salt-box roof, to weather, for these may still be seen as part of a partition in the attic.

Sometime before 1850 the salt-box roof was removed and the south end raised to a level with the part already two and a half stories high. This addition left the house virtually as it is today, although it was remodelled in 1938 by Justus Hoyt and his sister Elizabeth Hoyt Harding, great-great-great-grandchildren of the first Justus Hoyt.

The house is a standing example of a home growing with the needs of the family which owns it. Really three houses, it has served the demands of one family for 197 years-six gen- erations of Hoyts have lived in it and five have lived in it and five have been born there. That it has been in the hands of only one family throughout its history, is quite unusual; this fact also makes it comparatively easy to trace its history.

The present occupants are Dr. John G. Frothingham, the son of Judge L. P. Frothing- ham, and his wife, daughter of the late Max- well Perkins. The house, however, is still in the Hoyt family. It is now owned by Stephen B. Hoyt's children, Justus and Elizabeth, who were both born in the house and named for the first Hoyts to settle here.

There were, in 1866, about sixty-nine hun- dred descendants of Simon Hoyt, ancestors of Justus, according to the book, "The Hoyt, Haight and Hight Family," published in that year.

On December 29, 1938, Stephen Hoyt and Stephen B. Hoyt sent the following invitation to as many members of the family as could be traced.

"The old South Main Street house of Justus

Hoyt and his wife Elizabeth Fitch, has recently been renovated and remodelled. Because so many of the younger descendants of this old Canaan Parish family have never visited the cradle of their progenitors, Stephen Hoyt and Stephen B. Hoyt, great-great-grandsons, with their families, will hold open house there on New Year's Day, January 1, 1939."

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Landmarks of New Canaan, Part 11

Author: Publication date: 1951 Publisher: New Canaan, Connecticut : The New Canaan Historical Society Number of Pages: 522

Author:
Publication date: 1951
Publisher: New Canaan, Connecticut : The New Canaan Historical Society
Number of Pages: 522