USA > Connecticut > Fairfield County > New Canaan > Landmarks of New Canaan > Part 13
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Closely associated with Dr. Lambert (and, like the doctor, subscribing one-third of the total initial subscription) was John Brown Gerrish, for whom Gerrish Lane is named. The other incorporators were Payson Merrill (who succeeded Dr. Lambert as president), Willard Parker, Jr., (grandson of the noted Dr. Willard Parker, who had come to New Canaan in 1880 or earlier and lived in the present Congrega- tional parsonage), William E. Bond (who lived in the present Holmewood Inn and who was secretary during the first several years of the club's history) and W. E. C. Bradley (father of Mrs. Merrill Clarke ). These and the other early members of the club were originally only sum- mer residents of the town; for the first 25 years or so meetings of the board of governors were generally held in New York except in the sum- mer. Year round commuters, who now make up so large a part of the Club's membership, were still rare birds indeed in 1900 (although authentic specimens of the genus are said to have been identified as early as 1860, commut- ing by way of Darien).
The St. John farm had not actually been farmed for several years before Dr. Lambert bought it, although fields were rented to neigh- boring farmers; the old farm house was pretty dilapidated and at first not considered worth fixing up. Judge Frothingham recalls that the new seventeenth fairway (the old eighth) was then covered with cedars which he and other members of the club, young and old, spent a number of week-ends in clearing. In planning the course, the club enlisted the aid of Willie Dunn, a famous Scotch professional who had just won the championship of the world and who was America's first practicing golf archi- tect. He came out on Sunday and walked over the property and suggested a layout and gave instructions as to how to build the course. Dr. Lambert persuaded his long-time friend, Ste- phen B. Hoyt, Sr., to supervise the construction of the course during the first year. Mr. Hoyt en- gaged a number of men and, with the help of Simon Krapowicz and his oxen, four holes were built in 1898. These were played clock- wise, beginning on the site of the present ten- nis courts and over the old ninth fairway, part
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of the old fourth (driving across the pond and up the hill), part of the old third and second and then back to the starting place over the first fairway. A "championship round" that first year consisted of playing the four holes four times. (The first club tournament was won by one Lawrence P. Frothingham, who by 1900 had slipped to fourth place in club ranking, with a handicap of three for nine holes.)
By August of 1900 the nine holes had been completed, with a total length of 2677 yards. For the first 12 years or so the first four holes were played clockwise but about 1912 some substantial changes in layout were completed that greatly improved the course and left it much as it has remained ever since, until play started over part of the new second nine on last Fourth of July.
When the new club was formed, there were a number of members of the Oenoke Field Club who remained faithful to tennis and would have none of the new organization. By 1903, however, it was decided to join forces and it was arranged that the Golf Club should change its name to Country Club of New Canaan and build two tennis courts, croquet grounds and a club house. This was done in 1904, at which time the annual dues for a fam- ily membership were raised from $30 to $35.
The club house was obtained by fixing up the old farm house and building a porch on its north side and west end, overlooking the two new tennis courts. The two-story section of the present club house incorporates the old farm house in its entirety, including the big fireplace. Besides living quarters for the care- takers, Mr. and Mrs. Barnes, the second story included two bedrooms for members. They were so popular with week-ending bachelors that their use had to be carefully rationed. Mrs. Barnes cooked excellent meals on order; Sunday morning breakfasts there were very popular with horseback riders. In addition to the club house itself, the old piazza from Oenoke was moved out and set up by the ten- nis courts, later becoming a trapshooting shel- ter.
The budget for these 1904 improvements
was $4,200, made up of $3,000 for the house, $400 for tennis courts, $500 for furnishings and $300 for horse sheds and grading. Funds for this purpose, as for all of the other capital costs of the club during its twenty-five years, were apparently readily raised by the sale of stock to such members as cared to buy it.
One of the problems of the club in its early days was that of Sunday observance. The com- munity at large and many of the older mem- bers of the club had strict standards on the subject. Tennis was never played on Sunday at the Oenoke Field Club nor golf at the new club in the first years. For several years after that the rule prevailed that there should be no sports activities at the club before one o'clock on Sundays and no meals served after break- fast, except to occupants of the bedrooms. It was practically not until the coming of the automobile and of Sunday driving these rules were relaxed and finally abandoned.
For nearly twenty-five years the club grew and prospered and steadily improved its pro- perty; and, with it, grew New Canaan. The club remained simple and conservative, even though many of its members were quite well- to-do and a number of them important figures in the business or professional world. (For ex- ample, the presidents of the American Tele- phone & Telegraph Company, the Southern Pacific Railway and the Texas Company were active members and, at one time or another, governors of the club during this period). By 1922, however, there began to be a strong sentiment for the building of the second nine holes. The matter was studied actively for over a year and a decision to build was made in 1923. A financial plan was also agreed to, under which mortgage bonds would be issued, partly to pay for the new holes and partly in exchange for the old stock, which was unevenly dis- tributed and much of which had by this time passed into the hands of non-members.
The design and building of golf courses, never an exact science, was much farther from being that in 1923 than it is today. The area available was limited and, in large part, ex- ceedingly rocky. The bulldozer, furthermore, was years in the future. The unfortunate de-
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cision was made to have the club be its own contractor and, in the interests of saving time, to work through the winter months. Finally, professional preparation and supervision were seemingly quite inadequate.
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The results of this unhappy combination of circumstances were sheer tragedy for all con- cerned. In the few short months from the fall of 1923 to the spring of 1924 the club passed from high prosperity to near financial collapse. Fifty per cent more was spent than had been expected and a vast amount of work still re- mained to be done. When a competent en- gineering study showed how much more would be required to complete the work, fur- ther money was refused and the project was abandoned.
The next several years were taken up with a hard and happily successful struggle to re- build finances and membership. An energetic debt reduction effort, loyally supported by most of the members, resulted in the cancella- tion of all the old stock and half the bonds, while the remaining debt was paid down to workable amounts. By 1929 the club's health had been restored to the point that it was able to undertake, in 1930, the making of substantial additions and improvements to the club house, which made it, except for the present men's locker room and for detailed interior changes, much the structure we know today. The swim- ming pool was built at the same time, separate- ly financed by a group of public spirited mem- bers. Meanwhile, a noticeable change had taken place in the membership, the year- round commuter gradually having largely re- placed the summer resident.
The harassed officers and governors of the club in the early '30's who were finally suc- cessful in a second grim struggle to keep the club alive, must have felt that it was particu- larly unfair for the depression to have come so soon after the difficulties of the '20's. When the war-and a somewhat similar round of trouble-followed the depression, it meant that by the war's end the major portion of the club's second 25 years had been spent in uphill struggle.
All this hard-won experience was undoubt- edly a major factor in the club's ability to face up in such businesslike fashion to its problems and opportunities in the recent building of the second nine holes. The other factors were post- war prosperity and the fortunate presence in the club's membership of a man with John Doty's unique qualifications and ungrudging willingness to spend himself. The further ele- ment of opportunity in the situation lay in Stanton Griffis' willingness to sell the club 20 acres of adjoining land particularly suited to the needs of the course and without which a satisfactory and modern layout would hardly have been possible.
A word should be said about the earlier his- tory of the club's site and of how it came to be- come the "St. John farm". The land in this por- tion of New Canaan was purchased from the Indians just over 300 years ago by one Captain Patrick "for the usual miscellaneous hard- wares"; Patrick promptly turned his purchase over to the newly formed town of Norwalk as part of its vast common lands. The first distri- bution of these lands in the Country Club neighborhood was that which gave Smith Ridge its name-a series of grants beginning in the 1690's to Samuel Smith, Samuel Smith, Jr., and Samuel Smith's son-in-law, Thomas Bene- dict. The Benedict share fell to Thomas' two sons, Thomas, Jr., and Samuel. Samuel-who comes into the story later-received a tract on the east side of the Smith Ridge Road includ- ing present Williams, Cary and Veissi land. Thomas, Jr.'s share consisted of what is now the easterly 60 acres of the Country Club pro- perty and, with additional land in the west which he later acquired, passed to his son, Ne- hemiah. Nehemiah Benedict acquired still more land and probably owned substantially all of the present Country Club and Fairway Corporation property, except the 20 acres re- cently bought from Stanton Griffis. He built a house which is not improbably the very one which is part of the present club house; he was living there at the time of Drummond's Visita- tion in 1772. Through Nehemiah's only daugh- ter, Hannah, all this property passed to her
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husband, Isaac Richards-merchant, official, money lender and generally prominent citizen of the town. Richards built another house -- probably the one that was long-abandoned but still standing in the early 1890's, farther west than the club house. Then, through Richard's only daughter Hannah, the property passed to her husband, Samuel St. John, and remained in the St. John family until bought by the club. In other words, the St. John sale to Dr. Lam- bert was apparently the first outright sale of this land in the 250-odd years since Norwalk acquired it, all intervening changes of owner- ship having been by proprietors' grant, in- heritance or marriage.
Samuel Benedict, meanwhile, had likewise extended his holdings to the west, to include substantially the Stanton Griffis property, in- cluding the 20 acres bought by the club last year. The building of a satisfactory second nine holes was thus made possible by bringing together under club ownership the lands of the two Benedicts, uncle and nephew, whose farms adjoined over two centuries ago. The westerly ten acres of this twenty, on which the new 13th and 15th holes are located, was sold by Samuel Benedict in 1756 to his son Daniel, whose story has a tragic ending. His son, Dan- iel, Jr., was a Revolutionary soldier who was seized with "camp distemper" while in camp
at Bergen Point, N. J. in 1776. Daniel, Sr. went to look after his son and was similarly stricken and both father and son died.
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A review of the club's history and of its per- sonnel leaves one impressed with the tremen- dous number and interesting variety of people who have been included in its membership and with the pleasant and gracious life that seems to have been lived by the summer peo- ple in New Canaan in the Nineties and early 1900's-the years when the big houses on the ridge tops were built. Being in this group meant almost automatically that most of the club members of those years were in relatively comfortable circumstances and by the same token, that they represented business life and the professions, rather than artistic or literary groups. One also recognizes a surprising num- ber of names of people who lived here for one or more summers and who later became more prominently identified with the lives of other communities. Most of all, however, one is im- pressed with the tremendous amount of thought and work and real devotion that have gone into the building up and preservation of the club over the course of nearly 50 years and, as a consequence, of the great debt that today's members owe to the many such workers throughout the club's lengthening past.
THE METHODIST CHURCH OF NEW CANAAN
CLIFFORD W. HALL, Author
EDWIN EBERMAN, Artist [July 31, 1947]
Although Methodist services were conducted in Canaan Parish by Rev. Cornelius Cook in 1787, and by Rev. Jesse Lee in 1789, the first
Methodist Society in New Canaan was not organized until 1808. The meetings were held in the schoolhouse at Silver Mine; but the op-
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Edwin Eberman
The Methodist Church of New Canaan
position to the sect was so strong that the Meth- odists were barred from the use of the building until Captain Ebenezer Crofoot, who owned the land on which the schoolhouse stood, in- sisted that the District rescind its action. In 1819 another group was organized in White Oak Shade. From 1816 to 1832 New Canaan formed part of the Stamford Circuit. Services
were held at the house of Holly Seymour in White Oak Shade and frequently in the house or barn of Captain Crofoot in Silver Mine. These men and Captain Holly Hanford were the founders of Methodism in New Canaan.
In 1831 when the town voted to rent the Town House for meetings, the Methodists from the different quarters of the township
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held united services in the Town Hall in May. Two years later the first Methodist building was erected in South Main Street. By that time New Canaan was a part of the Norwalk circuit, but in 1836 was set aside as a separate charge by the New York East Conference.
In May, 1822, the Sunday School was organ- ized under the pastorate of the Rev. Henry Hatfield. The constitution, very legibly re- corded, was written by Charles A. Hanford. In several respects it is a unique document. One could partly determine its age by the use of the word "female" for "lady". Its liberality is stressed in Article 5, which states that "per- sons not members of the M. E. Church may be officers and members of the Society." The superintendent was "to regulate the lesson of the several classes, each in his or her own department, so that no scholar need be com- pelled to say, 'I do not know what to learn'." In June, 1835, there were 82 pupils enrolled.
By 1850 plans were being made for a new church building. The first meeting house was moved to a site opposite the hotel on Main Street. Services were held as usual while the building was on its way to its new location, and among the clergymen who preached was the Rev. Jacob Shaw, grandfather of Stephen B. Hoyt and Mrs. William Wheeler. In its new site the building was fitted with stores with an auditorium above and was duly labeled "Con- cert Hall." For many years town meetings were held in the auditorium.
The minutes of the meetings of the trustees of the church for the year 1854 present some- what of a history of the erection of the pres- ent church edifice. The trustees were H. Bou- ton, Samuel Whitney, Henry Wardell, M. W. Fox, John N. Hall, Ebenezer Crissey, Minot Crofoot and Seymour Comstock. The speci- fications for the building called for a structure forty by seventy feet with a suitable projection in front and a four foot recess in the rear of the pulpit. The building with its spire was mo-
deled after the Danbury M. E. Church. Starr and Barnum of Danbury signed a contract to erect the edifice for $6,700. The Rev. J. B. Wakely was the speaker at the laying of the cornerstone; Bishop E. S. James dedicated the church on December 21, 1854. Six or seven years later during a heavy windstorm, the steeple was blown down and was replaced with the present cupola.
There are now 345 members of the church and 240 enrolled in the Church School. The present trustees are Stanley Bartram, Wilbur Dixon, George H. Jelliff, Alexander McKen- drick, Edmund Neher, Harold Swindells and Clarence Wakeman.
The roster of clergymen who have served the church since it became an independent unit is as follows:
1836, John Crawford; 1837, Clark Fuller; 1838- 39, S. W. King; 1840-47, T. W. Selleck; 1942, Charles Pelton; 1843, Jesse Hunt; 1844-45, T. H. Romer; 1846-47, A. H. Ferguson; 1848-49, T. D. Marshall; 1850-51, Jacob Shaw; 1852-53, Lorenzo D. Nickerson; 1854-55, Harvey Husted; 1856-57, Mark Staples; 1858-59, John L. Gilder; 1860-61, Calvin B. Ford; 1862, Alexander H. Mead; 1863, William T. Hill; 1864-66, James M. Carroll; 1867, William F. Collins.
1868-70, Samuel H. Hammond; 1871-73, Ben- nett T. Abbott; 1874-76, James M. Carroll; 1877- 1879, Alvin V. R. Abbott; 1880-82, George A. Graves; 1883-85, William P. Estes; 1886-88, Cal- vin B. Ford; 1889-91, William E. Scofield; 1892- 94, Alvin B. Bowers; 1895, Henry F. Kastendieck; 1896, George L. Thompson; 1897-98, Rufus S. Putney; 1899-1901, Benjamin C. Pilsbury; 1902- 05, Lewis M. Lounsbury, D.D .; 1906-10, Charles E. Benedict; 1911-15, Henry F. Trinkaus.
1916-18, James A. Macmillan; 1919, Ernest C. Carpenter; 1920-23, Benjamin F. Kidder, D.D .; 1924-26, J. Wesley Griffith; 1927-28, Daniel Lewis; 1929-34, E. Foster Piper; 1935-38, Harry H. Beattys, D.D .; 1939-42, Joseph R. Swain; 1942-, W. Christy Craig, D.D.
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THE NEW CANAAN RAILROAD STATION
HARRY B. OFFEN and STEPHEN B. HOYT, Authors
EDWIN EBERMAN, Artist
[August 7, 1947]
One hundred years ago this little town, so re- cently freed from the apron strings of its parents Norwalk and Stamford, slept but rest- lessly in its first economic urge. The country was swept by the spirit of enterprise. Invent, produce, distribute and sell might have easily replaced E Pluribus Union on our great seal. Even the pulpit lent voice and the favorite biblical text was the parable of the talents. Jefferson had doubled the area by the Louis- iana Purchase and now by that unholy Mexican War we had forced our southern neighbor to part with New Mexico, Arizona, Texas and California for $15,000,000, and the map rested as it is at present.
Our town was eager with expectancy and confidence in its industrial future. Factories, though small and scattered were producing shoes, clothes, hats, sash and blinds, tanned hides, wheeled vehicles, sieves and wire screens, sewing machines, yes, even cologne and our mills were grinding more grain than was consumed locally as well as sawing lumber.
There was never the slightest doubt in the minds of our people that we had a great in- dustrial future. We had the genius, craftsman- ship, vision and courage to go along with the best and all we lacked was transportation fa- cilities to tie us with the big world of com- merce. For transportation from producer to consumer represented a wide gap in the pic- ture. Public highways were poor and insuffi- cient, so private capital built toll roads and canals and now that abomination of Calvanis- tic intolerance, the railroad, roared noisily into the scene.
The "main line" left us isolated eight miles away. Something must be done. Did they fal- ter, those men of New Canaan, those men whose fathers had quibbled over the size and
spacing of the timbers for their first town house a few years earlier? No, they burst out of that sluggish chrysalis of ultra conservatism and with determination to build the New Ca- naan Railroad-a connection with the great New England artery of transportation. Yan- kee notions could no longer travel by plodding horse-drawn vehicles of the peddlers, and so the speed disease started.
By 1867, when the Civil War had ended and all the world demanded goods of every kind, depressed currency left the money situation not too easy. But they held the financing of this enterprise to be a vital obligation and so, like the bond drives of our times, they urged shares on everybody at $50 as a public duty and built their railroad.
July 4, 1868 was a day never to be forgotten when the first train drawn by a proud puffing locomotive with an hour glass smoke stack and formidable "cow catcher" answered that first "all-aboard," and moved slowly from the very station we know today with a holiday load of the most confident, happy people in the whole world.
Well, it didn't pay. Man proposes, but the great god of economics disposes. Everybody lost every cent they had invested and that huge giant of transportation, the New York, New Haven and Hartford Railroad, which nearly owned the legislature and state of Connecticut at that time, swallowed up our dream for the bonds.
It enlarged the old station on the west end to make a baggage room, built the covered arcade and a freight house, guinea-pigged the eight miles of rails with its first overhead elec- trification experiment and it was said this be- came the most profitable eight miles of rails in the entire system.
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16 809g IR
Eden Eberman 1947
The New Canaan Railroad Station
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But the old station itself got nothing more than a fresh coat of paint occasionally and, in response to growing pains of our newly formed borough, demanding a new station, the rail- road landscaped the grounds, extended the platform and enlarged the train schedule. In the '20's, that inexorable law of transportation facility was expressing itself in the "50 miles from City Hall" slogan and even hardened old commuters looked up from their papers at Greenwich to "view with alarm" the multitude of autos at the station. Some with prophetic talent speculated upon how long it would take for the picture to be reproduced in New Ca- naan.
The New Canaan Express was posted in Grand Central and clerks in some of the more important city stores began to pronounce our name correctly instead of "Oh yes, New Can- nayon," and they even learned how to spell it. But to them it was but a name and they visua- lized it in accordance with the size of the pur- chase. They could have no picture of the simple little brown station smothered in a mil- lion dollars worth of automobiles.
Well, there it stands today, much as it was when our forbears backed their vision of an in- dustrial New Canaan with their savings and lost. Through its dull walls have passed three generations of us-this atrocious Victorian Gothic monstrosity-confident, expectant busi- ness feet starting for the city each morning; tired and sometimes frustrated feet passing through it at night; happy eager feet going a journeying; sad, reluctant feet leaving with nostalgia-have worn out at least three floors in the old station.
Hideous as it is, we are glad it survived the demolition of the plush celluloid age and we hope it will remain a shrine of rich accumula- tion of human associations. Who has not kissed somebody hello or goodbye there? It is said there are now two kinds of commuters, those who kiss their wives a small hasty peck through the car door, and those who attend to it be- fore leaving home. It has also been observed that those women who taxi husbands to early trains in winter never, never get out of the car.
Some condensed facts regarding the station and the railroad might be important in this brief sketch.
While we have the books of account left by Francis E. Weed, station agent for the New Canaan Railroad, they do not include capital stock records nor secretary's minutes. A quaint advertisement appears in these as follows:
"Produce and small stock of all kinds received at the New Canaan R.R. Depot every Tuesday until 4 p.m. Sold on commission. No danger from frost- fire in the car. Now is the time to ship. Highest prices received."
Between 1867 and 1877 there was no local paper here so the newsy popular reaction to this important decade of the railroad's history is missing. We know that it was incorporated by a special act of the legislature May, 1866, by "Samuel St. John, Alexander Law, Charles Benedict, Andrew K. Comstock, John R. Guil- der, Noah W. Hoyt, Lucius M. Monroe of New Canaan, and Joseph B. Hoyt and Joseph D. Warren of Stamford, and others."
But there are many, many descendants of those associated with the enterprise and of those who subscribed to the capital stock for nearly every old attic strong box contains these impressive certificates with a picture of a loco- motive and Samuel St. John's dignified signa- ture.
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