USA > Connecticut > Fairfield County > New Canaan > Landmarks of New Canaan > Part 52
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Charles Finney deceased, by land of Gregory Fillow (who has given his name to a road which is not too distant from the present house), by land of Josiah Kellog and west by land of Daniel Beers.
The record further indicates that "said pro- perty being the same conveyed by William St. John and his wife to me by deed dated March 19, 1865." A few years later-1868 to be exact- we read that Josiah Kellogg sold five acres (situated almost opposite Josiah's residence) to George Lockwood but although the numeral "five" is attractive to the researcher, the sum involved-$200-would indicate that no build- ings were upon that piece of land at the time.
The Lockwood-Kellogg transaction, how- ever, leads us to an earlier purchase, one in- volving Josiah Kellogg and William St. John. In this case 100 acres (no buildings are men- tioned) exchanged hands as William sold to Josiah land bounded by the lands of George Lockwood, the heirs of Charles Finney, other land of Josiah Kellogg, lands of Gregory Fillow and David Beers. Since the sum involved was $6,000, one might well assume that a building or buildings were on the property and through the size of the property and the description of boundaries, one might even guess that it was exactly the same land which was later to be mentioned by George Lockwood as having been conveyed to him by William St. John and wife in 1865 (a year later than the Kellogg-St. John transaction).
What exchanges, barterings and family un- derstandings occurred during this period would be hard to say. And because one cannot say with any surety that shifts of ownership of the specific property we are studying occurred, one cannot say that the house in which Mary Martin now resides is exclusively a part of the Lockwood heritage or that it owed something to the St. Johns as well as to the Lockwoods. It is left to the reader to solve the mystery for himself, at least until other records, other memories, other legends emerge to dispel the mist of the past.
This we do know about the house; that it is old, that it served the old families of the Clap-
board region when Ponus Avenue was called Clapboard Hill Path and that it was called the Lockwood Farm for good reason. We can only guess at its exact age, guess about its pre- Lockwood owners (if any) and surmise that it was built by sturdy and skilled New England hands and mattering little whether these hands belonged to a Lockwood or a St. John, a Hoyt or a Kellogg.
Gateposts at the entrance to Mary Martin's house bear these unique decorations
The builders of the old house might be sur- prised-but not alarmed, I think-at the changes which have been made. It is now a modern house, geared to contemporary needs and only here and there does one catch a glimpse of the past. Perhaps the most startling addition (at least the New England builders might find it so) is Mary Martin's "Texas Room." It is a little room opening off Miss Martin's bedroom and, acording to Richard Halliday when his wife feels too keenly the re- moteness of her native Texas, she retreats to this little cubicle into which the sun pours on two sides. There, lying on an army cot, she can bask in the equivalent of a Texan sun and, looking out over the rolling fields, experience drowsily the spaciousness of Texas.
The house has been changed by more than the addition of very modern conveniences and fresh decor or by the "Texas Room"; it has been changed by Mary Martin herself. A new
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heritage for an old home is being created by a mistress as industrious and surely as lovely as any of her predecessors. Her laughter and her singing are to be heard and, apparently un- tired by her record-breaking performances in "South Pacific," she finds energy to dance about the rooms with young Heller, to teach her, perhaps, something of the secret of buoy- ant and beautiful movement which helps to make her the star she is.
This new heritage of song and dance and acting, of theatre has taken its place along with the ancient heritages of the old Lockwood
Farm, for Mary Martin has filled the old house with her own special spirit and as her daughter and her son, already so gifted in the arts of the theatre, prepare themselves for careers-per- haps as dancers or actors or singers or all three! -under their mother's guidance, the good and exciting spirit of theatre arts will settle even more firmly upon the old New England house. With such a spirit inhabiting it, a house could hardly seem old and perhaps that is why it seems to respond so comfortably to the echo of "Younger Than Springtime Am I."
THE OLMSTED HOUSE
ROBERT L. BLISS, Author
CHARLES E. O'HARA, Artist
[July 8, 1950]
There are probably few houses in New Canaan whose present tenants are owners who trace back to Indian days hereabouts. The Olmsted House on Lakeview Avenue is one. The pres- ent generation, Lewis Seeley Olmstead, Sr., was born in the house, as was his son-and his father, Henry Lewis Olmsted, was born and died there.
Situated at 14 Lakeview Avenue, the house sets on a high lawn, curbed about by a four foot dry masonry stone wall as sound as the day it was laid down. The carriage stone, where ladies of yesterday could alight, is still set in the wall. The bridal maples, in all pro- bability crowding 150 summers, still shade the lawn and house front.
The house is typical of the general farm homesteads of the early 19th century. Its age is lost in a maze of records, or rather lack of them, but the present occupants guess it at about 140 years. It was first mentioned in a will in 1909, but intestate decedents and lack
of specific mention make it difficult to pin down even a probable decade. Its resemblance to the honest, useful, unadorned general farm- steads of the Erie Canal period in the Hudson Valley would lead the writer to hazard a guess at 1815-30.
Its ten rooms are small, but cheerful, and as was customary at a time when taxes were sometimes levied according to the number of stories a house possessed, use of space within the house leaves no waste area. The house sets on a square, dressed stone base, with a ground level port from the root cellar to the gardens to the east. The "summer kitchen" has now be- come the main kitchen, and on one wall of the room the hand split shakes are still visible.
The old dining room is now the living room, with a "front parlor" on the opposite side of the central hall. The original central fireplace with its oven is gone. Here pre-holiday cooking bees are reported to have turned out 30 to 50 steaming mince pies for wholesale consump-
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yu
O.H.
The Olmsted House
tion over the holidays by a large brood of Olm- steds. The Olmsted line bears witness to lon- gevity and large families.
The most distinctive feature of the house is the old well now curbed in on the side porch (built later) where one may look down into the circular water mirror at the bottom. The dry masonry is intact, the water usable, although the house has "city water." The second floor rooms, much as they originally were, are neat- ly packed in under the eaves, no nook unused.
Behind the house are the conventional wash house, wagon shed and cow barn, with the old barway to the wood lot. Except for storage, they are unused today. Here the main well pump still stands from which water was drawn for the cattle and stock. In the fall the butcher- ing took place in this area, with the lard render- ing handled in the wash house.
About two acres of the house plot remains from the original Olmsted holdings which
rambled all around the cemetery and the old mill on Five Mile River to the east. Deed re- cords show the sale of many parcels in what was the old cow pasture along the river, now part of Millport Avenue, Olmsted Court, the old mill site, and other pieces.
But this simple farmstead is a New Canaan link with a great family that bears tracing for posterity. The development of this part of the country out of the Hartford colony may be credited in large measure to its progenitor- Richard Olmsted. Olmsted is Saxon-"Olm" for "elm" and "sted" for "place"-"a place of elms."
The family came to America from Fairstead, Essex, England, parish of Bumsted-Helion, where Olmsted Hall, now property of Queens College, Cambridge, was still standing early in the 20th century. It was from Essex that the Rev. Thomas Hooker took leave for Holland to escape religious persecution-a fate not avoided by one of his non-conformist asso-
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ciates who was "pilloried, whipped, branded, slit in the nostrils, and deprived by successive multilation of his ears.'
Up to that time, 1630, emigration to Ameri- ea by the Puritans had been slow, but now they moved in inereased and unprecedented numbers. Nor were the arrivals of the broken class-criminals, adventurers, and bankrupts- but included heavily of the middle class, pro- fessional men and men of estate. Of the latter group were the Olmsted arrivals, James, with two sons, Nieholas and Nehemiah, two ne- phews, Richard (founder of the New Canaan line) and John, and a niece, Rebecca. They landed September 16, 1632, on the ship Lyon, after a voyage of 12 weeks from Braintree, England.
The family first settled at Wallaston, (now Quincy) Mass., by court order within a year they moved to Newtown, now Cambridge. As former parishioners of the Rev. Hooker in Essex, they soon petitioned him to come to Newtown and establish a pastorate in the New World, which he did, arriving in Boston Sep- tember 4, 1633.
Hooker stayed in the Braintree Colony, as it was termed, three years, and then, dissatis- fied with the Massachusetts Colony's form of government-and entieed by glowing aceounts of the Connecticut Valley-he struck off through what is reported as "one hundred miles of trackless wilderness" to Hartford.
Without guides and earrying packs, arms and utensils through thiekets, swamps, and over the mountains, subsisting on the milk of the 160 head of eattle they drove before them, the journey took two weeks. Mrs. Hooker, who was ailing, made the journey on a litter, the trip being frequently slowed while paths were eleared for her bearers.
Richard Olmsted, born February 12, 1612, was a young man of 24 at the time of the Hart- ford trek. He was probably married about 1640, as the records indieate he had quit his unele's house, and he had one of the home- lots on Main Street in Hartford as early as 1640, when he conveyed a portion of it to the town for extension of the town burying ground. His
uncle was buried in the lot shortly thereafter, thereby elosing the earliest generation of the Olmsted family in America-although Richard being a nephew and not a direet line descen- dant is the first generation for this line and study.
June 19, 1650, articles of agreement were drawn up for the purchase of "Norwalke" from Roger Luddow, of Fairfield, Conn., and at a session of the General Court of the Colony of Hartford one week later, Richard Olmsted and Nathaniel Ely asked the court's leave for the planting of Norwalk. An affirmative answer was given September 11, 1651, and "it was ordered that Norwalk should be a town."
Richard Olmsted moved to Norwalk in 1650 or 1651, as his name appears on the deed from the Indian Chiefs, dated February 15, 1651. The Ludlow purchase comprised only the east half of Norwalk, the other portions being added by rectification of earlier purchases which had been unsatisfactorily completed with the Indians.
The western part changed hands with the red men for "thirtie fathum of wampum, tenn kettles, fifteen coates, tenn payr of stoekings, tenn knifes, tenn hookes, twenty pipes, tenn muckes and tenn needles." The first land held by the Olmsted family in Fairfield county then beeame Home Lot 15 and half of 17, deseribed as four acres and 1 rood, with 219 acres com- monage, in Norwalk town.
Mr. Selleck in his history of Norwalk says "It speaks well for the new company's enter- prise and loyalty that it was able to send its maiden delegatc, Richard Olmsted to Hart- ford, even as early as May 1653." "To make it personal, it is recorded that the day after Court sat, Richard Olmsted was appointed Sergeant, and deputed to 'exercise' the Norwalk soldiers and 'to examine their arms.' Richard Olmsted bore the test of power well and his first year as representative was supplemented by a 'doz- cn other sessions to 1679.'"
His list of civil honors and duties is long and impressive, as he was frequently called on by the powers at Hartford to oversee fence and boundary disputes, arbitrate land matters with
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the Indians, and colonists' disputes over own- ership of cattle. At one time when it was rumored that by his Majesty's order De Ruyter might assault the colonies, the General Court at Hartford ordered the colonists to put them- selves "in a posture of defense" and Lt. Richard Olmsted was given responsibility of represen- ting the colony on the coastal portion between Stratford and Rye.
In 1665 he was appointed to view the lands pertaining to Hastings and Rye, for a new plantation. In 1666 he ran the line between Fairfield and Norwalk. As official surveyor of Norwalk, he had laid out the town, the original home lots, streets and commonage areas.
Frequently called on for civic missions which ranged from procuring ministers for the colony to paying off the soldiers after King Philip's War in which he served, he was often rewarded with grants of land, one instance- May 13, 1669-in which he was granted "60 acres of land, where he could find it." It is possible but not probable that this Commis- sioner of Norwalk (with magisterial powers) was given a grant that included the New Ca- naan site of the present house, as his orbit seems to be from the eastern reaches of Fair- field county to the Hudson River boundary of Westchester.
He received a grant of land as a soldier in the Pequot War (1637); and his military record further reveals that he was commissioned a Lieutenant May 1659; and a Captain for six years in 1680. In 1681 he was appointed one of a committee to dispose of the affairs of the plantation upon the Hop Ground (Bedford, Westchester County); and again in 1659 he was one of a committee which laid out 80 acres in Bridgeport (Golden Hill) as a permanent dwel- ling place for Indians.
He sold his home-lot in Norwalk, shortly after acquiring it, to Thomas Fitch, 3rd, father of the governor, whose home adjoined the Olmsteds on the north. All the Ludlow agree- ment planters lived along "Towne Street" which Richard, as town surveyor, had laid out.
When he arrived in Norwalk, Richard was 42 years of age, having two sons, James and
John, the latter not two years old at the time. It is noted that Richard took two wives, the children being by the first but the names of his wives are not known; nor is that of a daugh- ter who died before he made his will, in which he disposed of many "spring lots," "gratuity lots," "meadow lots," etc. to his two sons.
He mentions the 60 acre grant of land, land as Sticky Plaine, Sacatuck Plaine, Pequiog-in short the old gentleman had parcels of land all over Fairfield county. As a surveyor he no doubt collected a piece of real estate here and there in lieu of fee. He speaks of land in the "great swampe," and in this realty maze, may be the Lakeview Avenue property, but more likely it was purchased or inherited by the family 200 years later when they came to New Canaan via Wilton.
Here then is the line from Richard Olmsted: Second generation had two sons-Captain James and Lieutenant John, Captain James marrying Phebe Barlow in 1673. He was town clerk of Norwalk for 29 years, Town Judge, and repeatedly deputy to the General Court at Hartford. Some degree of his prominence in Norwalk affairs is indicated by the custom of enacting a town ordinance requirement for anyone who wished to share his pew in church.
James had five sons, the youngest, John, carrying this line. John (third generation) born at Norwalk in 1700 married Mary Small, and the third of their eight children, Reuben, car- ries the line. There is little record of John. Reu- ben (fourth generation) was born in 1722, mar- ried Ann Stuart. A member of the congregation of the Church in Greenfield Hill, Connecticut, he died in 1799, father of seven children.
A daughter Phebe married Thomas Jelliff. A son Reuben, died young, and the last child, another son, was named Reuben also. This last Reuben, Jr., carries the line. Reuben, Jr., (fifth generation) born at Norwalk 1763, and married Hannah Bass. He served in the Revolutionary War in a force to defend Norwalk, March 1 to August 1, 1782. Seven children born to this union included Seth, who carried the line. Reuben, Jr., died in 1824.
Seth (sixth generation) born 1792 married
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Polly St. John, and they lived on Chicken Street in Wilton, having ten children, the second of which was to become an illustrious citizen of New Canaan for many years until he died, its oldest inhabitant at the time of his passing, at the age of 94, in 1912. He was Lewis St. John Olmsted (seventh generation) who was born at Wilton in 1819. He married Hannah E. Hoyt, daughter of Justus and Sarah Betts Hoyt.
Justus Hoyt, as the blind miller of New Ca- nan, deserves mention even greater than this portion of the Olmsted story. The old Millport Mill on what was known as Hanford's Mill- path (now Millport Avenue) was written about in an old letter on file in the New Canaan His- torical Society by one William B. Hanford of Franklin, N. Y., a descendant of the earliest owners.
"The first mill in Canaan Pond stood on the site of the present mill and was built by Levi Hanford in 1757. He was the first miller in the place. His son, Levi Hanford, Revolutionary patriot, was born in the old red house that stood opposite the Methodist Church on the site of Dr. Bronson's house. The family later moved to Walton, N. Y. The property (mill) was sold to Cook St. John who later sold it to Justus Hoyt, who also bought with it the pond. Cook St. John later moved to Walton (where he lived to be 104, a town festival celebrating his birthday."
Of the old mill-F. W. Lockwood (unidenti- fied) said "The south end was an old shop which had been used elsewhere by Abraham Crissey for a shoe shop and Justus Hoyt moved it from its original site to the south end of the mill. Justus Hoyt, the blind miller, was noted for his wonderful ability to go about the mill alone and carry on the business alone. His sense of touch was so acute that no one could deceive him with spurious money, and he never made a mistake in returning the right grist to the owner. He was stone blind-greatly depressed by electric storms, having dread of being struck by lightning. He was remarkable for his justice and uprightness of character."
Stephen B. Hoyt has contributed notes on his collateral ancestor, Justus. The mill (situ-
ated just north of the new bridge) was of course a great business and social center for the farm- ers whose wagons of a Saturday would line up for half a mile at the mill either for grist work or to have logs sawed. It was also a saw mill, with a cam wheel which drove a straight saw blade up and down in a vertical position, unlike today's circular saw wheels. The mill was a great news and gossip center before railroads came to New Canaan.
Lewis St. John Olmsted was a partner with his blind father-in-law for several years, and later as partner of his wife's brother Justus Fitch Hoyt, he ran a flour milling business there with a thriving trade. Though the mill has long since disappeared, spillways and foun- dations are still visible.
It is likely somewhere in this period that the house came into the Olmsted family through Hannah Hoyt, daughter of Justus, wife of Lewis St. John Olmsted. It may have been built by Abraham Crissey for Justus Hoyt, or Crissey, a cabinet maker, may have built it for himself and later sold it to Hoyt.
At the time of the incorporation of Lakeview Cemetery Association in 1871, Lewis St. John Olmsted left the milling business to become superintendent of the cemetery, a position he held for nearly 40 years until ill health forced him to relinquish his duties just before his death. At one time he owned the tinning busi- ness later to become F. J. Wolfel's operation.
Lewis and Hannah sold the mill-"one cer- tain tract of land with a saw mill and gristmill, pond and dam and water privileges, and about five acres" to Hannah's brother, Justus Fitch Hoyt, thereafter for $1,000 on July 11, 1876. At that time they resided in the house on Lake- view Avenue.
The present tenant of the Lakeview Avenue house recalls that his grandfather would dress up in his wedding clothes each year on the anniversary of his marriage, coming into the New Canaan streets in top hat, tail coat, white gloves and scarf. Although in later years the top hat showed battering and the tailcoat had gotten a bit rusty, the gloves and scarf, a hun- dred years old today, were almost as good as
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new when they were exhibited to your reporter. As stated, Lewis St. John Olmsted, certainly one of the most colorful of his generation (the seventh), died in the homestead, aged 94, in 1912.
Before his death on July 5, 1909, Lewis and Hannah deeded the undivided two-thirds of the property of two acres more or less with buildings thereon, "being the homestead where I now reside" to their son, Henry Lewis Olm- sted, and the undivided one-third to their daughter Nancy. Nancy, a revered school teacher for many years in New Canaan, died in 1917.
Son Henry (eighth generation) father of the present tenant, was born in the house January 1, 1859. He assisted his father in the flour mill and in the Lakeview Cemetery assignment after the closing of the mill. For a number of years he was employed at the C. H. Fairty grocery store.
A man of great bearing, being six foot in height, with piercing dark eyes, his build con- trasted with that of his wife, Josephine Mead, who stood a scant five feet. He died in the homestead, August 11, 1932, having completed
73 years there. His wife died there March 3, 1945. They had three children, the present Lewis Seeley Olmsted, a tool maker with busi- ness in Norwalk, and two daughters, Katherine (Mrs. Harry C. Bailey) of Hawthorne, N. J., and Louise (Mrs. Raymond H. Brady of Auburn, N. Y.)
The present Lewis, (ninth generation) born April 9, 1898, who proudly husbands the map of the Hartford home-lots showing the Main Street grant to the original Richard, as well as the gloves and scarf of the dramatic Lewis St. John of the 19th century-married Gladys Broadway of Long Ridge, in 1925, and they have one child, a son-Lewis Seeley Olmsted, Jr., (tenth generation) who, like his father and grandfather, was born in the homestead. He is presently with the 9th Military Police, US Army, Fort Dix, N. J., adding another military stripe to the illustrious Olmsted sleeve.
The house is good for another century- sound, true, sitting its two acres like part of the land. It has resisted any modernization beyond the necessities of the 20th century, and the Olmsteds aim to keep it so.
THE JOHN BENEDICT-GREENLEY- COLBRON HOUSE
ALLAN and NANCY MITCHELL, Authors
WALTER B. KIRBY, Artist
[October 5, 1950]
Almost since our first visit to New Canaan, long before we moved into town, one of our favorite houses has been a vine-decked, beautifully kept home on Silver Mine Road. The second house east of Route 123, it sits behind a row of tall maple and linden trees, looking down over
a stone wall to the road. It's a rambling, friend- ly, grayish-white house of wholly unidentifi- able architecture. And we were very pleased when it was given to us "to do" by the Histori- cal Society.
Its present owner is Mrs. Alma D. Colbron,
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who has seen many changes made in the house during the 38 years she has lived there. In the accompanying drawing you see the house as it is today. Mrs. Florence Reed of Glenbrook, whose grandfather owned the house for more than 30 years, has an old, old photograph which shows it almost as it must have looked in pre-Revolutionary times.
The full-width front porch shown in the photograph looks as if it were added on in the 1800's. But if one strips this away and visual- izes a severe little salt box with black weath- ered shingles, the front perched on a high stone foundation, he'd have a fair picture of the house in its very early years.
In front of the house ran a 'highway" which, we are told, first began as "ye Clapboard Hill Path to ye Meeting House" up on God's Acre. Beside the house on the east a path led up and over the hill to Brushy Ridge Road and the Benedict establishments. This path or "drift- way," incidentally, still does cross over the hill. Mrs. Colbron's driveway leads to it now.
The interior of the house followed the con- ventional pattern of those days. Two rooms in the front, one being "best," and the other the "keeping room" or the regular family sitting room. In the rear of the house was the kitchen flanked on either side by a small bed- room. A center chimney provided fireplaces to warm the rooms and a brick oven for baking in the kitchen.
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