USA > Connecticut > Fairfield County > New Canaan > Landmarks of New Canaan > Part 56
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The members soon realized that a more ade- quate building was needed and decided to try and secure property and erect a chapel.
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PONUS RIDGECHAR
A ..
COMMUNITY HOUSE
HHHHI
Lorena naylon '51
The Ponus Ridge Chapel
Through the generosity of Levi S. Weed and Charles E. Hubbell "for the consideration of one (1) dollar and other good and valuable considerations received, etc., etc. - " each donated a piece of property, approximately 25 feet by 100 feet, which, combined, forms the tract where the present chapel now stands.
Charles E. Hubbell and Charles A. Luck- hurst were the architects. Money was raised, stone from neighboring farms donated, manual services were rendered and on September 10, 1911, impressive ceremonies marked the dedi- cation of the new stone chapel before an assem- bly of some 200 people.
Church services and Sunday School classes
were held regularly up to and for some time after the coming of the automobile. Suppers and fairs and young people's get-togethers formed part of the regular activities. There have been christenings, weddings and one funeral service.
During the first World War members of the Ladies' Aid Society, a mere handful of house- wives on the ridge, met weekly to do Red Cross work. At the time the old public school was demolished and a new one erected in its place, school was held in the lower room of the cha- pel. When St. Luke's was located where the present New Canaan Country School now is, Ponus Chapel was used for religious services
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by the school when its chapel had burned.
For some period of time the building saw little activity and in the late 1930's a group of the Ridge residents, headed by the late Wil- liam Shaw, realizing the need for a Community House, discussed with the chapel trustees the desirability of using the building for such a purpose.
The original trustees were most happy to have the building put to this worthwhile use and Mead and Mead, Stamford attorneys, were retained to draw a suitable set of by-laws, taking over the assets of the Ponus Chapel and forming it into the Ponus Ridge Chapel and Community Association.
This program had ben running for a long while when a fire in a nearby field spread to the Community House, burning off the roof and damaging the interior of the building. The shell of the building was restored by funds re- ceived from insurance, and through the help of neighbors and interested friends other im- provements, such as a new basement floor, a flight of stairs from the lower room to the ground floor, a new warm air heating system, painting and decorating have been accom- plished. Plans are now under way for the dril- ling of a well and the installation of a modern kitchen and toilet facilities.
The present board of directors, consisting of
four officers and 12 directors are Charles W. Naylor, president; Lawrence Byrne, vice presi- dent; Mrs. Peter C. Goldmark, secretary, and Miss Emma C. Thurton, treasurer. Mrs. Char- les F. Moore, Jr., Mrs. Alfred J. Allen, Mrs. Harold B. Swindells, Col. Charles A. Luck- hurst, Joseph Rucci, Clifford Blanchard, R. W. Davidson, Robert Chamberlain, Jr., Mrs. Christian Miller, Jr., Mrs. Mary B. Shaw, Mrs. Herman Lesh and Mrs. Randolph Cruzen are directors. Monthly board meetings are held on the third Tuesday of each month and a mem- ber of the board heads each of the active com- mittees as chairman.
Regular meetings are those of the "Little- folks" on Tuesday afternoons, "Teenagers" on Wednesday evenings and an art class, under the direction of Mrs. Charles W. Naylor, on Saturday mornings. Usually three religious services are held each year and special holiday parties are held for the benefit of the commun- ity at Hallowe'en and Christmas, as well as other times during the winter season.
The building has also been used by a num- ber of outside organizations, the Farm Bureau and the Fish and Game League being the most extensive users. Plans are underway to re- dedicate the building this September which will mark its 40th anniversary.
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elbow
THE ST. JOHN-FAITH BALDWIN CUTHRELL HOUSE "Fable Farm"
MISS ANNA ST. JOHN and MELBOURNE BRINDLE, Artist -
MRS. JANE BARRY, Authors
[May 31, 1951]
The St. John family has been so well docu- mented in other articles of this series that it would be redundant to go into the whole genea- logy again. So if we may break into the middle of the family tree, we come to Benoni St. John, the first of the family to live in the place with which we are concerned.
On September 3, 1787, James Burchard of Wilton bought 100 acres and a dwelling from Matthew Fitch for 633 pounds. The present house is on a large corner section of this pro- perty on Silver Mine Road. Mr. Burchard came there to live, with his daughter Elizabeth,
Elizabeth's husband, Benoni St. John, and their three children. Benoni and Elizabeth subse- quently had nine more children, and their eldest, James, named no doubt for his maternal grandfather, matriculated at Yale College in 1801.
The present house was "raised" in the mid- 19th century, and the original house became the wood house or wood shed. The new house, a mansion of 14 rooms, remained in the pos- session of the St. Johns until 1928, when Be- noni St. John's great-grandson, Darius, sold it to Mr. Stanton Griffis, who, though he never
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lived in the house, did live in another house on Smith Ridge. He has kept a residence in New Canaan and still does, now on Ponus Ridge, throughout the years of serving as U. S. Ambassador. At the present time Mr. Griffis is our very popular Ambassador in Madrid. The house changed hands several times until it was sold in 1936 to Mrs. Hugh Cuthrell.
The lovely spacious rooms and the wide rolling fields and gardens underwent many changes and charming improvements. As the house is built at a turn of the road, the property can be seen and appreciated at all times of the year, unlike many of New Canaan's fine resid- ences which only spring into view when the leaves fall.
Though Mrs. Cuthrell is the extremely busy and very popular author "Faith Baldwin," she entered enthusiastically into the life of the community, as did her children.
In June, 1949, Miss Baldwin wrote an in- spiring article for the New Canaan Historical Society Annual. It expresses so clearly the feel- ing and purposes of the group who felt this book of records should be printed for all of us, that we are reprinting part of her article.
"Many of our neighbors live in what we call old houses. These are old only by comparison. They are old, perhaps, to the people living in the more recently settled middle west. I have a friend now living here among us, who was born in a newer country; when she first came to us she was a little frightened by the fact that she could not look away, across great distances; she was shut in by trees and by ridges; and she was startled by our graveyards 'so crowded,' she would say in bewil- derment, 'no elbow room'. For in this part of our world more people have been born and have died, than in hers. In other countries, Australia, for ex- ample, a house which has survived for a century or more is very old indeed. But to the Englishman it is a new house; or to the people of Europe; for there we have what we call an old world. Yet all the world is old. It is only places, the towns and the cities, and the people which are new.
"Some who live in this parish are more deeply aware of their relationship to it than others-be- cause they are not the first of their names to live upon a certain piece of land or indeed in their very house. They can look backward into the mirror of the past and see people very like themselves,
bearing the same name, walking this road, tilling this soil, pruning this tree, opening this door. Others of us have come but recently. We have taken over a plot of land which has been long in another family or has passed through a succession of ownerships. We have bought or rented a house which we did not build but in which, perhaps, generations of unknown people have lived and died, before us.
"Nevertheless our mark is set upon any place which we call home, either briefly or for a lifetime. We may remain, we may see our children born here and come to maturity, or, after a little while, we may move on to a city, a neighboring town, another state. Yet, we have left our signatures.
"I like to think back, too. I like to think of this neighborhood from the beginning-growing, busy, fruitful, the home of people who worked hard and who had pride in their work. I like to think of the first men who built here, on soil hostile to the plough. I look at stone walls, the old ones which still exist and checkerboard the fields of this town- ship and state. These are good walls, nowadays you can build, or cause to be built, strong walls of stone, but they are not the same. These old walls speak of sweat and toil, each stone shaped by eternities in the dark, then wrested from its own place, and set with others. When I see stone walls I think of people; of square houses and deep wells; of the smell of lilacs in the rain and wild straw- berries in the sun. I think of the mole in his blind- ness and the earthworm busy about his benevolent pursuits, bringing air to the earth. I think of chil- dren playing and a woman calling her menfolk, to midday dinner.
"They are gone, these people, and perhaps the lilacs, too, the mole in his velvet coat has long since returned to darkness. But the stones remain, the strawberries smell of the sunlight and another woman, in the same house-or another house, it doesn't really matter-calls to her children from the doorway.
"What I am trying to say is simple enough, yet difficult to phrase. We go on. And if we are aware of this, if we are conscious of our relationship with the people who have vanished, we have learned something invaluable. These people may be of our own blood. Or they may be alien to us, in so far as their blood and ours is concerned. Yet we set foot upon the paths they have made, we look to the same sky for sun and for rain and the still, falling snow. We are somehow of them. We are, however short our stay, of the place. We belong to it far more than it belongs to us.
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"The house in which I live is not very old, yet before I came people had been born there and had died there and their roots went deep into the soil and reached far back into the past. There was once an older house and I have stumbled on an-
cient wells, and the acres are criss-crossed with the stone walls built by patience-that too, is a continuance, for the stones themselves were formed by a patience at which we can only dimly guess."
THE ABRAHAM WEED-EVANS HOUSE
RUTH STEVENS LYDEN, Author
LEONARD ROBBINS, Artist
[June 7, 1951]
The little gray house on the corner of Weed Street and Frogtown Road with its hand-made shingle siding, the big maple in the yard and the old lilac hedge between it and the family burial ground down back in the valley is said
to be one of the oldest houses in New Canaan. Charlotte Chase Fairley in her "History of New Canaan from 1801-1901," tells of John Weed, who lived in Stamford, giving his son Abraham in 1727 a large farm on the road
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which later became Weed Street and helping him to build a house there. We later read of Abraham's son, Abraham the second, dying in 1757 and leaving his 12-year old boy Peter a house which is believed to have stood on the north side of Frogtown Road.
The Rev. Stephen E. Keeler, in "An Historic- al Address" reprinted as Mrs. Fairley's article was, in "Readings in New Canaan History," makes a footnote to substantiate these facts saying that Abraham Weed came from Stam- ford with his father and built a house on Frog- town Road near Weed Street about 1727.
One thing certain is that the photograph labeled the Abraham Weed house in Stephen B. Hoyt's article "From the Connecticut to the Rippowam . . . a Story of Jonas Weed and His Descendants," printed in Vol. 1, of the New Canaan Historical Society Annual, June 1943, is the house with which we are concerned.
It is an Abraham Weed house and very old, More than that, it stands as a symbol of early homesteading done in New Canaan by a family which prospered and lived in the houses it built for over two hundred years.
Although the house had been rented to a variety of families during this past generation it did not actually pass out of Weed hands until 1948, four years after Amanda Weed died leaving no heirs.
When Miss Amanda, one of seven children and the last of the famous clan, was laid to rest from her house next door, she was carried across the fields to the largest single family burying ground in New Canaan.
There it stands on Frogtown Road with its stone steps and walls and big iron gates, one piece of land that will always remain in Weed hands. And the Weeds loved land.
From earliest days they had gone far afield to acquire land and fought and worked to keep it. Here is a family that not only had the initial drive to establish itself firmly but the habit of industry and frugality to survive in affluence for nine generations. They were dairy farmers for the most part but scattered through the generations of from eleven, seven or three children, were soldiers, bankers, law-
yers and even a forty-niner (of whom more anon).
Just why the Weeds came to America from England has been suggested in Stephen B. Hoyt's "Story of Jonas Weed and His Descen- dants" in Vol. I., No. I, of the New Canaan Historical Society Annual".
The desire to have adequate farm lands and religious independence was strong in them. Jonas Weed, grandfather of Abraham, was al- ready a man of property and influence when he sailed with Sir Richard Saltonstall in the Winthrop fleet and arrived in 1630 and helped to settle Watertown, Mass. A few years later he moved with a church group to the Connec- ticut valley below Hartford and with a group, founded Wethersfield. After further divisions of opinion in the church, Jonas Weed threw in his lot with Stamford where he took a prom- inent part among the leaders of the colony in 1642. It required about 80 years for the Stam- ford settlement to grow strong enough to ex- pand ten miles inland to what is now New Ca- naan.
Abraham the first, acquired from the com- mon lands of the colony considerable acreage in "Canaan along ye Noroton River, Ponasses Path and ye Gret Plains and ye Clifts."
From then on the Weeds continued a policy of consolidating their holdings in land, the most substantial form of wealth in those days. As owners of "the rights of commonage" they were always ready to accept their allotments from the divisions of common land from time to time. The speculative ones bought the rights of those less fortunate. This the Weeds con- tinued to do until by the middle of the 18th century Abraham Weed was credited with owning some 500 acres. The land was described as lying along the Noroton River from lower Talmadge Hill north to West Road, all of it west of the Perambulation Line dividing the Norwalk from the Stamford side of Canaan Parish.
Abraham the second, who died in 1757, is sometimes confused with his father. The sec- ond is the one who built the many houses along Weed Street for his children and set aside
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"Buriel Hill" for himself and his descendants. He may have built the house in which we are interested. So let us return to it, the one pic- tured in Mr. Hoyt's historical article as the Abraham Weed House, and consider the double mystery which it presents.
The first one concerns the possibility of its being on the site of the first house built in New Canaan. Charlotte Chase Fairley speaks of "the original house built about 1727 for Abra- ham by his father, John Weed who lived in Stamford" as being the oldest house in New Canaan. Others point to the house built by John Benedict, Jr., 2nd (1724-26) on Carter Street, Clapboard Hill in New Canaan as hav- ing been authenticated by deed and other records as the oldest. It would take newly dis- covered material to prove the point in favor of the Weeds.
The other question concerns the position of the house. Rev. Stephen Keeler's reference to the Abraham Weed house has it "built on Frog- town Road near Weed Street."
Is this just a trick of phrasing mentioning Frogtown first since Frogtown held an ancient position of importance having been the main thoroughfare between Stamford and Ridge- field, known as Ponases Path. Or did it actually mean that the house faced on Frogtown?
Today the Abraham Weed house, although it stands on the corner lot at the intersection of the two streets, does stand nearer to Weed and does have its front entrance there.
Closer examination of the interior construc- tion, however, suggests that it may have been otherwise. Facing Frogtown there is a small hallway opening onto a porch. To the east there is a small formal parlor and to the west the original kitchen with its large fireplace and brick baking oven. In addition to this, the "summer" or main beam which conventionally lies parallel to the front door, is parallel to Frogtown Road.
The summer beam, at ceiling level on the first floor is not only important structurally, since it spans the entire width of the house, but, in its English prototype, is a single piece of hand hewn oak left exposed to view as a con-
stant reminder of the strength of the home. This beam in the Weed house is about six by six inches and in fine condition as observed when some of the panelling put on to modern- ize the house many years ago was removed.
Once these questions have tickled your pal- let the charm of the old house and its construc- tion take over.
Built on the square, measuring 29 feet each way, the house surrounds a massive central chimney. True to type this rises pyramid style measuring nine by nine feet in the cellar, seven by six and a half on the first floor and so on up through the second floor and attic. On the way up it takes care of three fireplaces on the first floor and one on the second. And besides, this supports all the beams running from it out to the four walls. As the walls have settled, the floors have sloped outward, giving the door jambs a few rakish angles.
Although the chimney and foundation walls were laid up with clay and an early type of mortar (made out of ground up oyster shells), they have held remarkably well with only minor additions of modern cement. And the central chimney continues its age-old service of warming the house beyond the call of duty from the oil furnace.
Much of the detail of the house remains the same as in the early days, with the low seven- foot ceilings, broad board floors and small- paned windows hung so that only the lower half is able to be moved. But the back of the house facing down the hill to the west was changed. At one time, the lean-to back, barely covered the well. Some 50 years ago it was built up three stories to the height of the rest of the house, covering the well with a porch, adding a kitchen and providing space for bath- rooms above.
Rest assured that so long as Miss Amanda lived there were no material changes made in this house. All of her tenants understood this and were driven upon occasion to provide additional closet space by building false walls of plywood and covering them with matching wall paper.
Not until stormy blasts rose between the
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handsome broad floor boards did they get the second floor covering which today masks the original. You have to go to the cellar to see that.
The attractive little house seems remarkably little changed from that house in the original picture but it has seen plenty of excitement.
One day back in 1880, according to "The Messenger," Seth Chauncey Weed, the father of Amanda, was walking through the woods down behind the house on Frogtown Road when he found gold glittering in the rocks. With a new fortune in view he hired a relative George Weed, who had gone west with the
forty-niners, to investigate it. When George said it was gold they got some trained engi- neers to look into the possibilities of developing a real gold-mining operation. But they came back with the report that there was not enough to make it pay. And so it was forgotten.
Perhaps David Evans may use some of his engineering skill and have better luck. Mr. and Louise, Sarah and Daryl, have lived in the Mrs. Evans and their teen-age daughters, house since 1944 when Amanda Weed died. In 1948 they bought the property from the Weed estate.
THE HUSTED-WELLING-BAUM HOUSE
MRS. WALTER BANGHAM, Author
HANS AXEL WALLEEN, Artist
[June 14, 1951]
Prudence Crissey Husted, daughter of Jesse Crissey and wife of Thomas Seymour Husted, purchased from Silvanus Seely what is known as "The Husted Home" on lower Park Street on April 1, 1851.
The deed reads: "I, Silvanus Seely, for con- sideration of $800.00 received to my full satis- faction of Prudence Husted a certain piece of land ... with a new dwelling house thereon situate in said New Canaan southerly from the village containing one acre more or less bounded northerly by the heirs of Hiram Crissy deceased, east by highway, running westerly dividing the premises from my own land in a direct line to a bound set by the rail fence northerly from the spring and westerly by a direct line from said bound to the butment of the west end of the stone wall bounding said premises on the north reserving the right to pass and repass across the western part of said tract for the purpose of getting wood from the swamp. The first day of April 1851." This land originally belonged to Levi Hanford. In 1808
it was transferred to Jesse Crissey-later to Hiram Crissey and eventually was acquired by Silvanus Seely.
Prudence was not young when she took pos- session of this new home, being 60 years of age at that time. Her husband, Thomas, had died three years before. Where they had lived pre- viously we do not know, nor do we know why Silvanus Seely parted with a new house. Per- mitting a bit of supposition, we wonder if Sil- vanus Seely had originally built it for his wife, Sally Crissey Seely, sister of Prudence, who died on September 14, 1850. The house, at that time, would have been ideal for one left alone, whose family was grown and away.
It is a quaint house, quite individual, fol- lowing no accustomed style but adapting itself to the contour of the land. Characteristic of the period, the house was built close to the road, in this case taking advantage of the fall of the land. The main floor, being even with the street, consists of an entrance living room and a back living room.
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A narrow, short flight of stairs greets one just to the left of the front door, and leads up to two small bedrooms. The ceilings are very low, both in the bedrooms and the main floor. On the lower level, stepped back is the dining room-kitchen. In this room the old beams are now covercd, as they are throughout, but in the process of renovation it was discovered that the main beam was divided, indicating that there were two rooms originally.
The only old beams now exposed are those in what is now a furnace room. Although there is little apparent trace of a Dutch oven and cupboards now, evidence of their existence was found when the present kitchen was being remodelled many years ago by Mrs. Welling. The house itself was put together with wooden pegs. These are visible in the attic. Wide, old plank floors with wooden pegs were through- out the original house. There is a marked feel- ing that it had been a cozy home-a home of warm friendliness.
We know little of Prudence and Thomas Husted other than that they were married in 1813 and had seven children, three of whom died before Prudence or her husband. They were members in good standing of the Con- gregational Church for about 19 years, after which they transferred to St. Mark's Episcopal Church, the traditional church of the Crissey family. Prudence was a Crissey.
The Crissey families were numerous. They were prominent land owners on the south side of New Canaan. Their connections and in- terests seemed to have centered in Stamford and Darien. Prudence, as remembered by her descendants, had a dominant personality. She was very much beloved by her family as at- tested by the desire of her daughter-in-law to have her first granddaughter called "Prudence Crissey."
The Husted family genealogy is more com- plete. Robert Husted, born in County Somer- set, England, in 1596 came first to Massachu- setts in 1635. He remained there but a few years and then removed to Stamford. Shortly after that he settled in Greenwich. His son, Angell Husted, became quite prominent in
civic interests. He was a witness in July, 1640, to the Indian deed of Greenwich, Old Town, to the early Greenwich settlers. He was one of the original patentees named in the patent granted to the town of Greenwich in 1665.
The present D.A.R. chapter of the town of Greenwich is known as "The Angell Husted Chapter." The names of Robert Husted and his son, Angell Husted, are conspicuous throughout the history of the early days of Greenwich, establishing them as forthright and respected citizens. They were prominent in the securing of the property from the In- dians, and in settling problems that entered into the settlement of the country in pioneer days. In 1650 the Dutch ceded to the New Haven Colony their claims to territory now within the State of Connecticut. Huntington's "History of Stamford" contains this note:
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