USA > Connecticut > Fairfield County > New Canaan > Landmarks of New Canaan > Part 53
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Perhaps the most unique feature in the his- tory of this house is the fact that all of its early owners were members of eminent families in the little settlement of Canaan Parish long ago. A list of these names reads almost like a list of our town forefathers.
Here is what we mean: Lindall Fitch, 1771- 1774; David Hoyt, Jr., 1774-1793; Enock Com- stock, 1793-1795; Jacob Selleck, 1795-1797; Nathaniel Ells, 1797-1800; Peter St. John, Jr., 1800-1802; Andress Powers, 1802-1804; Ebene- zer Carter, 1804-1805.
We wish we could go further and name the original builder of the house-even the first owner of the land. But, unfortunately, the vague boundaries of those early records de-
feat us. We can, however, after rather exten- sive "pouring over" the matter, reasonably as- sume that it was built by a Benedict.
There are two reasons for our assumption. First, the land on which the house rests seems to be a part of the vast Benedict holdings in the early days of land grants. And secondly, in 1765, the house itself turns up in the land re- cords as the possession of John Benedict, Jr., who was then 89 years old.
As early as 1702, John Benedict, Jr., and his father, John Benedict, Sr., were acquiring land here in Canaan Parish, though they both re- sided in Norwalk. Much of the land which they-and other members of the "Bennidick" clan, too-owned, runs along Brushy Ridge and extends pretty well in all directions from there.
In fact, what is now known as Brushy Ridge and Lone Tree Hill was then called Benedict Hill. Supposedly, the first house to be built in New Canaan was built by this John Benedict, Jr., for his son, John 3rd, and the latter's bride, Dinah Bouton. This was prior to 1726 and the house is standing today on Carter Street. It is Miss Thatcher's home.
Thus it could be that the shingled salt-box on Ye Clapboard Hill Path was one of the earliest homes to be built here, and that its builder was a son, brother or a cousin of John Benedict, Jr.
The house was sold by John, Jr., in 1765 (one year before his death, at the age of 90) to a New Yorker named Samuel Lawrence. The name of Samuel Lawrence, we are told, appears fre- quently in land transactions of those times. He must have traded considerably in country real estate-but due to our inefficiency when cop- ing with "pounds," and also because of a marked difference in acreage, we cannot tell you just how Mr. Lawrence came out finan- cially when, in 1771, he sold his purchase to Lindall Fitch for 93 pounds.
According to the land records, the property was then described as "seven acres of land ly- ing in said Norwalk-Canaan Parish on Bene- dict's Ridge, so-called, bounded South by Highway, East by a driftway, North by James
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The John Benedict-Greenley-Colbron House
Benedict's land, West by my own land (S. Lawrence's). The premises with the appurten- ances."
If, among other things houses possess a sense of pride-and certainly they must-this little house must have burst a bit with pride when first it gave shelter to Lindall Fitch and his wife, Mary. For the name of Lindall Fitch links two fine old Connecticut names in one.
Henry Lindall, who belonged to the rich New Haven Colony and was a deacon in the first church of that colony, left, at his decease, a widow and four daughters. The widow, Rosamond Lindall, and her daughters came to Norwalk where each one of them married. The mother accepted Nathaniel Richards and her daughter, Rebecca, wedded the young John
Fitch, son of Thomas Fitch, Ist, the so-con- sidered opulent Fitch founder of Norwalk. John and Rebecca had a son, Nathaniel. Then Nathaniel and his wife Anna had a son whom they named Lindall.
Lindall Fitch grew to propose wedlock to Mary, daughter of John Bartlett and grand- daughter of William Haynes. Thus it was an impressive background that Mary and Lindall Fitch handed down to their own children. Their daughter, Elizabeth, at the age of 16 married 22-year-old Justus Hoyt. The young Hoyts built a home for themselves on the east side of the street as one approaches New Ca- naan (present Dr. Frothingham residence). There they raised a fine large family.
When "Lindall, his wife Mary, and a resid-
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enter, Ebenezer Bartlett," to quote from the Rev. Drummond's visitation notes, moved into the house in 1771, however, it was without their children who were by then fully grown. Several years previous Lindall had deeded his own homestead (the salt-box now standing at the corner of Carter and Silver Mine, just north of Self's Riding stables) to his son, Seymour. Consequently, Mr. and Mrs. Lindall Fitch must have been rather delighted to have a home of their own again, particularly one as suitable for them as this was.
That Lindall was a hospitable host in his new home is evidenced in William Drum- mond's diary wherein one reads of frequent winter evenings "spent with Lindall." For the ninth time one wishes walls could talk, and tell us a little of what was said between the soci- able Scotch minister with his Royalist views and the aging Connecticut land-owner who, like many others, may have disagreed with Drummond.
But unfortunately it was just a two years' stay in the house for Lindall. In 1773 he died at the age of 56 of a "consumption and gravel" -a combination that sounds pretty fatal even today.
The next year Seymour, handling his father's estate, sold the house "with a large barn and fruit trees" to David Hoyt, Jr. Of this David Hoyt, Jr., we know little except a rather alarm- ing fact about his father. When the good Rev. Drummond noted one of his visits, he reports David Hoyt, Sr., as refusing "to give the list of his family."
Maybe this desire for anonymity continued in his children. At any rate, we feel sure that David, Jr., was young at the time, having just married Rebecca Webster in 1773. They had three children, the first a son, Jacob, was born a year after they started living in their new home. Two more children followed, Rebeccah and Ruhamah. They sold their house in 1793 to Enoch Comstock, whereupon they moved to Greenfield in Saratoga County, N. Y.
Enoch Comstock paid 70 pounds for the house and seven acres, which was five pounds less than David Hoyt had had to pay to the
Fitch estate. Enoch was then 43 years of age, and married to Anna Weed. They had a num- ber of children . . . and all must have been extremely hard on their shoes for Enoch's name turns up innumerable times in an ancient "day book" kept by an early New Canaan shoe- maker. Enoch was the son of Abijiah Com- stock who settled in Silver Mine. The Com- stocks didn't stay long in our house, though. In 1795 they sold to Jacob Selleck for the sum of 80 pounds.
Whether this Jacob Selleck is the prosperous landowner who lived on Carter Street or whether he is the son, Jacob Seleck, Jr., we don't know. If it was Selleck, Sr., chances are that the house was bought just for business reasons. But it may have been that Jacob, Jr., came there to live as a young man much as David Hoyt, Jr., did.
In all events it wasn't a Selleck house for long either. In 1797 Nathaniel Ells, then 25 years old, took over the house and land along with some additional acreage. We find very little about Nathaniel Ells-he was one of 13 children, born in 1772 and baptized by the Rev. Drummond.
He was a son of Lt. Jeremiah Beard Ells and a grandson of the Rev. John Ells whose happy disposition and imagination have already been well documented. Nathaniel Ells held on to the dwelling for three years before he sold it, and later moved to Lisbon, Ohio.
This time it was Peter St. John, Jr., who paid $750 for the house, its seven acres, as well as three acres across the highway and 10 acres northwest of the home. Peter St. John, Jr., was one of 19 children, a son of Peter St. John and Rebecca Crofoot. Peter, Sr., had been educated at Yale, though he did not graduate, the records say.
We have no such educational history of Peter, Jr. We do learn, however, that he was apprenticed to a Tory shoemaker and, at the age of 16, when Norwalk was burned, he shouldered his master's gun and enlisted in the army. In 1800, when Peter St. John, Jr., pur- chased this property from Nathaniel Ells, he was married to Rachel Jones and the father of
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three sons. But he and his family only remained there two years. In 1802 we have the house sold again and some time thereafter the St. Johns moved off to Walton, N. Y., where they settled down amongst other New Canaan friends.
Next Andress Powers is looking with interest at our little salt-box and paying $1,000 for seven and one-half acres with dwelling and barn as well as the other two pieces of land described above. Andress Powers was probab- ly young at the time, also. He had married De- borah Comstock in 1797. Deborah was 20 years old when she was married, and the daughter of Thomas Comstock and a niece of Enoch Com- stock whom we've already mentioned.
As for Andress, he was a grandson of Theo- philus Hanford, one of the founders of Canaan Parish. By trade Powers was a cooper-or a barrel maker-an important artisan of those days. But like the rest, Andress and Deborah soon moved away. They settled near Marietta, Ohio, along with Andress' brother, Theophilus Hanford Powers.
It may be that it was Deborah's influence that moved the two brothers westward. De- borah's father, Thomas Comstock, had thrown open the doors of his Silver Mine home and welcomed refugees of the burning of Norwalk. The state of Connecticut recognized this pa- triotic act, and as a reward granted him 2,000 acres of land where Norwalk, Ohio, now stands.
By this time our house must have considered itself suffering from a disease-a you-are-going- to - be - sold - every- two-years-if-not-sooner dis- ease. Actually, the explanation for this con- tinuous turn-over may be the fact that it was a small house, probably not as costly as some, and therefore entirely suitable to young couples who weren't established or settled yet. In the same way it no doubt pleased the elder- ly Fitches just as many smaller, less expensive places please the grandparents of today.
Whatever the reasons were, the two-year cycle continues. In 1804 Powers sold to Ebene- zer Carter. This Ebenezer was a grandson of the famed Ebenezer Carter who was taken
captive as a small boy during the Indian massacre at Deerfield, Mass. The boy was re- turned to his father when he was ten years old. His father, Samuel Carter, had by that time moved down to Norwalk, and acquired land in Canaan Parish, and thus began a long line of Carters here in New Canaan.
Ebenezer Carter, the younger, paid $1,765 for 30 acres with a dwelling house and barn and outhouses standing thereon. Just one year later the property was sold to Thomas Green- ley. Carter turned over to Greenley for $1,100 a piece of land 12/2 acres with a dwelling house, barn and shop, (we're inclined to think the shop had been erected by Powers for his cooper's business), as well as ten additional acres across the highway.
With the coming of Mr. Greenley and his family, things settle down somewhat. The Greenleys remained there from 1805 until 1846. (Such stable living habits are a joy to title searchers). Another pattern, too, was broken with the arrival of the Greenleys. They were not descended from the forefathers of Canaan Parish, but were fresh from London, England. In the land records we came across the following:
"At a General Assembly of the State of Connec- ticut holden at Hartford on the 2nd Thursday of May. 1805, on the petition of Thomas Greenley, formerly of London at the Kingdom of Great Bri- tain now residing in New Canaan showing to this Assembly that he with his wife and two children moved from said London to Said New Canaan about three years ago and wishes to spend the remainder of his life in this country praying to be enabled by a legislative act to purchase and hold real estate in the same way and manner and with the same privileges that natural-born citizens of this State enjoy as per petition on file. . . . "
Thomas Greenley's petition was granted and in July of that year he, with his wife, Esther, and their two daughters, Emma and Eliza, owned our house. The land records further in- dicate quite clearly that Mr. Greenley prompt- ly entered the distillery business. We find him buying land from Nathan Hanford with "still
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house and distillery thereon." This was more of the property to the south of Greenley's home-to the south and across the road. Later, in 1814, Greenley buys more land-50 rods south of his house-"to accommodate a distil- lery," and in 1823 he is recorded as buying the "still house meadow" from the Husteds.
All in all the Greenleys must have prospered here in New England for a while. It is quite possible that it was the Greenleys who added the long front porch to the house. And certain- ly Thomas Greenley added something to the service in the meeting house.
Here is a quote from Charlotte Chase Fair- ley's "History of New Canaan." Mrs. Chase is commenting on early reaction to any musical instrument in the meeting house and speaks of a youthful member of the church as being "so carried away by the contemplation of Uncle Tom Greenley, a 'fine old English gentleman,' playing on a bassoon about the length of a hearty fence-post, as if the two were 'born for each other,' that he forgot his particular job of remembering the text."
But things didn't continue so smoothly for Thomas Greenley. In 1831 his wife, Esther, died. And something happened to that distil- lery business. Possibly the explanation lies in this gloomy excerpt from a U.S. Almanac which says, "1835-Business panic, hard times in the United States." At any rate the debts began to accumulate. One after another of the tracts of land Greenley had acquired through the years were lost and finally the home itself. From 1846 to 1851 his home was mortgaged so many times and passed through such a welter of transactions, that we were dizzy and bewil- dered.
In 1851, however, clarity returns with the appearance of another Englishman, John Dick- inson. Mr. Dickinson, a native of Burton-on- Trent near Staffordshire County, England, came over to the United States with his wife and three children, two boys and a girl. This in- formation we have come by first-hand through Mrs. Florence Reed whom we have previously named in connection with the photograph of the house. Mrs. Reed is a granddaughter of
Mr. Dickinson's and used to visit the house as a little girl. Mrs. Reed has always loved the house and her recollections have helped us immeasurably.
John Dickinson, it seems, was a shoemaker specializing in colorful satin evening slippers which were sold to the Benedict shoe store. He made these shoes in a little room upstairs, and today it is the one room in the house with the original floor boards. They still bear the marks or indentations of Mr. Dickinson's shoe- making.
Mrs. Reed remembers the rooms well, the front door and a little hallway. Then on the left the "parlor" which was mostly darkened and still-on the other side the family sitting room with a stove. By this time, Mrs. Reed says, the fireplaces were boarded up. Only the large brick oven in the kitchen remained. The stove in the sitting room and a large kitchen stove provided the house with heat.
The upstairs was not finished off. Mr. Dic- kinson worked there, of course, and on rare occasions Mrs. Reed's mother remembered sleeping there, but the "water would freeze in the pitcher." One day, Mrs. Reed informs us, when her mother was a little girl, the chimney caught on fire and the child was sent climbing up the long sloping roof to pour salt down the chimney to quench the fire.
Out in back Mr. Dickinson kept a cow or two, chickens and pigs. Then there was a little garden, and as a child Mrs. Reed loved the smell of mint which greeted her as she would run out the back door. The mint was always kept there fresh for "tea" . . . a bit of England that the Dickinson's brought to America with them.
Mr. Dickinson's English wife, and the grandmother of Mrs. Reed, died soon, sadly enough, when Mrs. Reed's own mother was only 10 years old. Later on, Mr. Dickinson married a Mrs. Quigg who had been keeping house for him and his children. Mrs. Quigg, a widow herself, had come over to this country from Ireland with her six children. Her chil- dren were mostly grown and had gone out to board. It is this second Mrs. Dickinson that
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Mrs. Reed remembers busily at work in the kitchen and baking her bread in the brick oven.
Attached to the rear of the house was a small outbuilding, which you can see at the left in the photograph. In it was the "milk room," a stonefloored room lined with shelves. Here were kept the pans of milk and cream and butter, and on the shelves sat pies of all kinds and preserves.
The photograph also shows a small building which stood very close to the highway beside the driveway entrance. It may be the "shop" noted in the records when Thomas Greenley bought the place. At some time during its span it was doubtless used as a cobbler's shop. Later it served as a small residence, and finally it was torn down.
John Dickinson lived to be nearly 80 years old. He died in 1887 and the following year the estate sold the house to Charles E. Keith- 16 acres for $1,675. The Keiths were an older couple. Mr. Keith is remembered as being a handsome white-haired gentleman. Later, we think, the Keiths rented the house to Irving Mallory, a name familiar to several present residents of New Canaan. Then came the Seeths, Margaretha and J. F. H. Seeth.
In 1912 the Paul Colbrons bought the house. Mr. Colbron was one of the early year-round New York commuters, and Mrs. Colbron was the former Alma Diefenthaler whose parents built and lived in the present Kellam house at the top of Brushy Ridge.
A side-note here, to those who, like ourselves, have wondered about the beautiful property at the corner of Brushy Ridge and Rosebrook roads. The neat lawns and the big spreading trees behind the iron fence indicate the pres- ence of a house-yet none exists today. Mrs. Colbron tells us the place had been the site of a huge, mansard roof house that her grand- father, Benedict Fischer, had bought in 1901. Here for many summers, the large Fischer family would assemble. Finally, however, in circa 1937 the place was torn down, having
become too large and outmoded for present- day use.
Before moving into the little salt-box house on what was then East Avenue, the Colbrons installed modern plumbing and a furnace. Electricity was still not available. Since then the house has been extensively remodelled and enlarged.
The "best room" of pre-Revolutionary days has been converted into a paneled library with a fireplace. The old family room, the bedroom behind it and the kitchen now make up an "L" shaped living room with a second fireplace. The other small bedroom in the rear has been made into a bathroom.
The front porch was taken off and in its place is the addition of a handsome dropped dining room five or six steps lower than the first floor level. A stone wing extends to the west of the house, providing the kitchen and servants' quarters. And the so-called "milk room" in back is by now transformed into a charmingly comfortable study for Barbara, Mrs. Colbron's daughter.
The upstairs has stretched its own confines, too, with numerous dormer windows giving one glimpses of the surrounding country. The roof line, of course, is no longer that of an old salt box, but the house still receives its main support from the original studs and beams.
In fact, Mrs. Colbron pointed out to us one beam in particular which stands out stubborn- ly in an upstairs bedroom. The truth of the matter is that during the remodelling of the upstairs that beam was to have been removed in order to make more space in the bedroom. But when a workman took an ax to it, the ax bounced right back at him. The beam re- mained unscathed, and stands firmly there today to prove it.
Something of that beam's sturdy spirit is felt throughout Mrs. Colbron's home today-a priceless gift from the Benedicts, the Fitches, and all the others down through the years.
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KEITH
WARD
THE WHALEY-PERRY-LYDEN HOUSE "ROSEBROOK FARM"
ORVILLE PRESCOTT, Author
KEITH WARD, Artist
[March 29, 1951]
On Rosebrook Road only a few hundred yards south of its junction with Canoe Hill Road stands one of the old houses of New Canaan. It is white, of course, and looks enormous, much too large for a mid-19th century farm- house built on the foundations of an 18th cen- tury one. But even a hasty second glance re- veals that much of the unexpected size is ac- counted for by the fact that a huge frame barn is connected with the house and the rest of its size by the fact that two more or less con- ventional New England houses have been linked together by a two-story passageway. This gracious home was known for many years as the Whalcy House, but for nearly 50 years
it has been called Rosebrook Farm-under a variety of spellings.
The different kinds of lives led by various families at Rosebrook Farm are typical of the evolution of New Canaan as a community. Roughly three kinds of people have lived there: farmers, gentlemen farmers and commuters.
The first landowner in this neighborhood was David Monroe, who in 1709 had a grant of fifteen acres "of swamp and upland, at the lower end of Smith Ridge," adjoining the land of the two Samuel Smiths (who gave their name to Smith Ridge) and of Ensign Thomas Benedict, just southeast of the present Country Club Corner. Later grants carried his holdings
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farther south and east, to the point of including the swamp that is now on the east side of Rose- brook Road at its low point. The misspelling and contraction of names being the order of the day, Monroe's name was frequently con- tracted, here and elsewhere, simply to "Roe" and in this abbreviated form he unwittingly bequeathed his name to the neighborhood. Many years later (1783) we find Matthew Fitch selling three acres of "Rowe's Swamp" and in 1765 John Benedict, 2nd, sold his son ten acres "lying along both sides of Row's Brook," which flowed to the west out of Roe's Swamp. So, not unnaturally, the road that was opened about 1730 from Brushy Ridge to Canoe Hill, and which crossed this brook, was known as "Roe's Brook Road." So, also, some two hundred years later, Hazen Perry's station wagon carried the legend "Roe's Brook Farm," in obvious protest over a more recent corruption of the ancient name.
In February 1723-4, Monroe sold his hol- dings here (66 acres) to John Fitch, whose family was presumably the first to settle per- manently on this property. There is no exact information identifying the first builder of the Whaley house, but the Rev. William Drum- mond listed in his "Visitation Diary" in 1772 the family of Matthew Fitch, Jr., as living in this neighborhood. In any case, Fitches were living at the bend of the road where the Whaley House now stands and one of them must have built the original house on the site of the present building. And another Fitch, also Matthew by name, married a Hoyt (first name unknown). By the 1840's Chauncey B. Hoyt, who lived a quarter of a mile away at the center of Ferris Hill Road and Canoe Hill Road, was the owner.
Chauncey Hoyt must have bought the pro- perty as a business investment. At any rate, he never lived there himself and he sold it in 1858 to Ebenezer Van Hoosear, a man with an un- usual claim to fame in New Canaan history, undoubtedly the only citizen of New Canaan who was ever killed in a railroad accident while driving home from a Sunday School pic- nic in Rowayton.
But before Ebenezer met so untimely an end he sold his 50 acres to Sam Whaley of Stam- ford (in 1859) and moved on to presumably greener pastures on Oenoke Ridge. It was Whaley who scorned the original Fitch house and moved it some distance back from the road so that he could build a new one on the old foundations. The house he built is the old- est part of Rosebrook Farm today, the part nearest the road.
Sam Whaley was not an educated man; he signed his legal papers with an "x." But he was a good farmer and he farmed his place on Rosebrook Road until 1901. Two of Sam Wha- ley's daughters, Miss Nellie and Miss Mina, spry women in their early 70's, now live in Bridgewater, Conn. They vividly remember the house their father built whose rough-hewn timbers are still plainly visible in the cellar and attic. They remember its floor plan as if it were only one year instead of 50 since they lived there.
There was a front door leading through a center hall back to the kitchen, past two rooms on either side. To the left was a mysterious and wonderful parlor, usually locked, and back of it the parlor bedroom and washroom. On the right was the family sitting room, and back of it the kitchen bedroom, or "borning room," where both girls were brought into the world. And behind that was a milk room.
Sam Whaley farmed his place on Rosebrook Road for 42 years, taking care of his cows, building up his orchard and making a good thing out of cider, cultivating quite an elabor- ate flower garden, sending his daughters to the neighborhood schoolhouse at the corner of Canoe Hill and Denslow roads. When he finally sold his farm in 1901, one year before his death, he got only $3,400 for it, only $600 more than he had paid for it back in 1859. Those were the days when real estate prices in New Canaan were stable and reasonable.
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