USA > Connecticut > Fairfield County > New Canaan > Landmarks of New Canaan > Part 58
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Timothy Raymond not only had good taste
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and a nice sense of proportion, but was prac- tical as well. The house was strongly built to endure. The low ceilings make it easy to heat, the steep narrow stairs that climb straight up from the kitchen to an open chamber above, waste no space, and the door at the foot of the stairs keeps all of the heat from the great fire- place right where it will do the most good. That kitchen must have been cozy in the bit- terest weather.
From the open chamber upstairs you can reach four bedrooms and a tiny attic all snugly tucked in under the low roof. The original wide floor boards can still be seen in these rooms.
The Raymonds and Gregorys have always had the reputation of being gracious, hospi- table people and their home has been the scene of many gatherings, great and small. It was there that Timothy Elliott Raymond and his wife Ruth, celebrated their golden wedding anniversary. Ruth Rohacik and Clara Gregory still have one of the charming invitations prin- ted in gold.
Timothy and Ruth had a son, William, famil- iarly known as Jakin, who married Margaret Pritchard of Stamford, in the Methodist Church of New Canaan. Jakin had a fine voice and sang in the choir of St. John's Episcopal Church in Stamford. The Pritchards were staunch Episcoplians.
For miles around there was no one as expert at grafting trees as Jakin. He carried his tools in a basket on his arm and was never seen with- out them. He worked for the Hoyts and also grafted some apple trees for the Fairtys, that bore both Greenings and Baldwins.
Jakin and Margaret had four daughters, Jane Amelia, Elizabeth, Sarah, Mary and a son, Clarence. Their house was on the other side of Millport Avenue, a little nearer the mill and until recently these were the only two houses in that location, and formed quite a social center.
To return to Andrew Jackson Gregory who had inherited the place through his marriage to Jane Raymond, we know that he was born in 1846 and was a descendant of prominent early
settlers of Norwalk. Andrew's grandfather was an expert cabinetmaker of wide repute. Gre- gory Boulevard in Norwalk was named for the Gregorys. An Elisha Gregory owned the calf pasture property from which "Calf Pasture Beach" takes its name.
Andrew Jackson Gregory, it seems, had a scientific mind, and attended the New York College of Pharmacy, from which he was grad- uated in 1869. He practiced his profession for several years and was considered one of the foremost men in his field. Unfortunately his eyesight began to fail, and before long he was obliged to give up pharmacy. Along about this time he came to New Canaan, met and courted Jane Amelia Raymond. Jane realized what a problem it was for him to find a means of liveli- hood, now that he was nearly blind. She found a splendid solution to the problem; she helped him to learn telegraphy.
In 1877, they were married in the Methodist Church in Pound Ridge. It is interesting to note that two of Andrew's sons, Seth and George, were later married in this same church.
After their marriage, Andrew and Jane lived in Danielson, Conn. They returned to New Canaan in 1893, when their daughter, Clara, was five years old. Sarah Anne Provost, Mar- garet's sister, had come to live with Ruth Ray- mond after Timothy's death and she stayed on with the Gregorys.
Andrew ran a test station for the Postal Tele- graph Company. The little building where he worked still stands on the place. Andrew was a small man with a fine, dry sense of humor and his son Seth is much like him. Andrew Gregory was on Governor Jewel's staff and received the honorary title of colonel in 1918.
Jane was a friendly, hospitable person with a remarkable memory and wide interests. She congratulated President Harding at the time of his inauguration, having been an intimate of Mrs. Harding during her early days in New Canaan.
During the time that the Gregorys lived in the old house, changes have taken place. The only fundamental one was the addition of a kitchen at the back, then converting the old
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kitchen into a dining room. Electric wiring, plumbing and central heating were also added, but none of these changes has hurt the fine proportions and general character of the old house.
Andrew died in 1923 and Jane spent the last seven years of her life in a wheel chair, uncom- plaining and a fine character to the end, which was in 1930.
Andrew and Jane had six children who are worthy descendants of two fine old families. Clara, now retired, taught school for 37 years, 27 of them in New Canaan. She also taught at St. Mark's Sunday School and still helps there in her spare time, gardens, and makes hooked rugs. Ruth married Paul Rohacik and runs the house. She gave a beautiful candlewick bed spread, made by her great grandmother, to the New Canaan Historical Society. The lovely "
spread was made according to the same pat- tern as one at Mount Vernon.
Seth, a brother, now retired, was the mail carrier in the village and knew and was very popular with everybody. Moses, another brother, followed his father's earlier profession and is the pharmacist at Cody's drug store. George was a professor at Duke University for some time and is now teaching at the New York Maritime Academy at Fort Schulyer, N. Y., and the sixth member of this large fam- ily, Percy, runs an automobile agency in Nor- walk.
So that is the story of a house held for 129 years by the same family of kindly, gracious people who have contributed so much to their community. It is to be hoped that the old house will remain in the same capable hands for many years to come.
THE STEVENS-VERLEGER- DEERSON-SAXON HOUSE
DAVID EVANS, Author
CHARLES D. SAXON, Artist
[July 19, 1951]
ON the west side of Weed Street, just north of Knapp's Lane there stands one of the older New Canaan houses. Originally small and simple it has had many additions and today is identified to the passerby by a white picket fence and a well close by the old kitchen and not far from the road. Lack of detailed records prevents us from determining the exact date of its construction but careful examination of the original part of the house would indicate that it was built prior to 1750.
Most of the land along Weed Street from what is now known as Jeliff Mill Road, almost to the top of the hill where the present Harold
White house has been built, was owned by the Stevens family in the early 1700s. Among the first recorded grants in this area were twenty- one acres to Obadiah Stevens in 1700 and ten acres to Ephraim Stevens in 1709, comprising land between what is now Old Stamford Road and Weed Street and the Noroton River.
In retrospect it will be noted that it required about sixty years after the founding of Stam- ford for the colony to expand less than ten miles up the valley to the north. Records show that there were numerous farms and houses on the plains just to the south of what is now the Darien-New Canaan border around 1700 so
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Saxon
The Stevens-Verleger-Deerson-Saxon House
that it would be logical to assume that the Stevens lands were among the very first part of New Canaan to be settled.
The Stevens family genealogy, as prepared by Vera C. Halstead in 1946 and published as a part of the story on "Old School District No. 6" by Mrs. Robert D. Dumm in the New Canaan Historical Annual of June 1946, traces the family from Thomas who came to Stamford in the 1640s through seven generations to Ann Stevens who married Eber Brown and who was known to have lived in the house around 1840.
Ann's great - grandfather, Joseph Stevens (1730-1810), owned sixty acres where this house now stands with buildings and fruit trees passing to him from his father David in 1761. This David was the son of Obadiah and the grandson of the original settler Thomas Stevens. Thus, it can be assumed that some of the Stevens family occupied this house from the time it was built until Ann's daughter Mary J. Kipper sold it in 1892.
The Stevens family cemetery, where a score
or more of the family have been buried for over one hundred years, is located several hundred yards away from this house and can be reached from Knapps Lane. A solid covering of myrtle in this almost forgotten cemetery is valiantly trying to stem the inroads of sumac and poison ivy.
It does not appear possible to trace which members of the Stevens family occupied the house prior to Ann (Stevens) Brown. A map of Canaan Parish, Circa 1772, prepared by Stephen B. Hoyt and published in the June 1944 Annual of the Historical Society shows two Stevens houses on the west side of Weed Street, north of Jeliff's Mill which were indi- cated as "Visitation Houses." They were once occupied by David Stevens Jr., and Samuel Stevens. The David Stevens, Jr. house, accord- ing to a diary of an old woman who knew it well, has since vanished. Thus perhaps the house we are describing is the Samuel Stevens home, and careful examination of its construc- tion and architecture lends credence to the be-
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lief that the original part of the house was constructed in the early part of 1700.
The builders of this time were simple and direct in their planning. The exterior dimen- sions measured exactly twenty-four by twenty- four feet. It had two windows and a door in the front along Weed Street. The first floor is just seven feet high and the second floor several inches less. The upstairs woodwork has been restored to the original soft pine finish. Also in keeping with the very early construction are the small half windows in the front of the house on the second floor, which while providing light, do not provide ventilation since they do not open. Cold night air was believed unhealthy in those days and perhaps they were right con- sidering the wind that came in the cracks of these early houses.
In common with the houses generally built prior to 1750, there was a massive central chim- ney with a large kitchen fireplace and a smaller one opening into the earlier formal parlor. The original kitchen has been changed into a larger living room by an extension to the south in which hand hewn timbers from the old barn have been used for open framing. Wide planks from the barn provided flooring and side pan- elling in this room which has recreated the soft, warm atmosphere which was enjoyed by the Stevens families many generations ago. A sim- ilar lean-to extension was added to the north enlarging the formal parlor, now used as a dining room. The earlier first floor bedroom to the rear has been converted into a modern kitchen which was also enlarged at a later date. Within the past twenty years, a two story addi- tion was made to the southwest of the old house.
The second floor of the old house, restored to its original form with white plastered walls
offset by the soft pine woodwork of the doors and beams, provides a quaintness that cannot be duplicated.
To the rear of the house, not visible from the road, a semi-formal rock garden extends down the slope ending in a pool, which adds much to the privacy of this charming place.
Since the last Stevens lived in the house in 1892, ownership passed to the James L. Mullers who lived there until 1924, then to the William F. Verlangers who sold it to the Arthur I. Deer- sons in 1931. The Deersons who lived in the house until 1941 were responsible for restoring the old house to its earlier form and for most of the improvements and additions. After sev- eral subsequent owners, the house was pur- chased by the Charles D. Saxons in 1948 who now occupy it with their three children, Amanda, five and a half, Rogers, four, and Peter, three.
It is interesting to note that while Mrs. Sax- son was a Rogers from South Carolina, she is a direct descendent on both sides from Gov- ernor Thomas Wells of Connecticut who held office in 1655-6 and 1658, of Matthew Wood- ruff, pioneer settler of Farmington, Conn., and of Garrard Spencer, one of the early settlers of Haddam, Conn. Mr. Saxon, a magazine editor and cartoonist, served during the war as a bomber pilot in the Eighth Air Force.
Members of the Stevens family now living in New Canaan include Miss Edith M. Stevens upholding the family tradition by living on Weed Street, Miss Ella Stevens who is Librar- ian at the New Canaan Library, Mrs. Robert B. Morse and Mr. George H. Stevens. Lt. Col. Ralsey Stevens, son of George Stevens, has recently returned from Korea, where he was a leader of the paratroops.
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- In hay
THE METHODIST PARSONAGE
Rev. WILLIAM CHRISTY CRAIG, Author
LORENA NAYLOR, Artist
[August 30, 1951]
A brief history of the founding of the Methodist Society in New Canaan, has been written by Clifford W. Hall, whose great uncle, John N. Hall, was treasurer of the church, when the parsonage was purchased in 1841. The purport
of this article is to collect the broad associations so intimately woven into the story of this old house and to see some of the homes of Dan- town, Silver Mine and White Oak Shade which opened their doors to the "Circuit Riders."
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We shall share also some of the religious ex- periences that transformed the lives and homes in Britain, beginning with Bristol in 1742, com- ing to New York "wrapped in the personal lives" of Barbara Heck and Phillip Embury- converts of John Wesley in Ireland-until their "little house" and then "a rigging loft," became John Street Church (1766).
Here we must refer to the coming of the intrepid Francis Asbury to America in 1771, of his taking his mount as far as Rye before Christ- mas of that year on the first lap of 275,000 miles in the saddle and on foot in 45 years. After the Revolutionary War, he was to come to Wilton, Redding and to Boston. Then to our own com- munity came the Oxford scholar and preacher Bishop Thomas Coke, who visited the home of one Captain Joseph Lockwood, Pound Ridge, after the first of fourteen trips to America- all at his own expense.
But Dantown was most fortunate, too, in the coming of Henry Eames, a convert of John Wesley in Ireland, and lately of Long Island. His home soon becomes an oasis of spiritual life and a mecca for the "Itinerant Methodists." By 1790, Jesse Lee, who had preached in Nor- walk, Redding, New Haven and Boston in his 1789 travels, had marshaled his leaders from Maryland and Long Island for the historic Quarterly Conference in Dantown.
From Dantown the leaven spreads to "Ca- naan Parish," which, through the able leader- ship of the Rev. Justus Mitchell, was striving toward a new day of tolerance. Five years after Canaan Parish threw off the Stamford-Norwalk yoke, a religious experience came to a leading citizen that was so earth-shaking in its consc- quences that not only one door was opened, but many. Also the program of Chrisian Democracy became a reality in a beloved community.
Perhaps the first home of Canaan Parish to open wide its doors to the "Itinerants," was that of one Abijah Hoyt. This is the record: "Al- though a poor man, with open-hearted hospi- tality he received the Methodist ministers in his little house and provided for their needs and their horses."
On the marker in the Crofoot God's Acrc, Valley Road, we read Mrs. Hoyt-d. 1820 and
Abijah Hoyt 1840. Nearby, in the Crofoot plot we find another marker with the name Sally Crofoot, d. 1812-first wife of Ebenezer Cro- foot; adjacent is the imposing and ornate monu- ment of Ebenezer and Mary Crofoot with the unusual inscription giving the exact time of their passing, November 9, 1828-just three hours apart.
However, it is the spacious and well ap- pointed home of Ebenezer and Sally Crofoot, Silver Mine Avenue and Valley Road, to which we direct your attention. The epic story of the Ebenezer Crofoot's Pauline conversion, and the little "Church in their house" from 1806 is taken from the "Memoirs of Mary and Ebenezer Cro- foot," and is reported in "The Christian Advo- cate and Journal," November 24, 1828 (in the archives of the Silliman family until 1948) and is written by Daniel DeVinne, pastor of the Stamford Methodist Episcopal Church. This report was given to the present writer by Miss Anna St. John, a great grand-daughter of Ebe- nezer Crofoot.
We quote: "Among the numerous obituary notices, we seldom meet with one so rare and distressing. Both heads of one family cut off in a day. Died of typhus fever ... Mr. and Mrs. Cro- foot ... so rare a providence in the removal of two, so generally beloved and respected called together at their funeral a larger collection than had been known in the town on similar occa- sions (Mr. C. was magistrate, First Selectman 1817-19, tax collector, etc. ) Their remains were followed by this numerous and afflicted assem- bly, and laid beside each other in the same grave .... "
This follows: "About 1806 in the thirty-first year of his age, bro. C. joined the Methodist Epis. Ch. Previous to this period, it was the farthest from his thought to attach himself to a people everywhere despised and spoken against. Nor was his situation in life favorable to such an unfashionable course; from property, family, and other adventitious circumstances his prospects of rising in the estimation of his fellow citizens were very flattering .. ..
"From early life, having cultivated a taste for society and the fashionable recreations of the day, in the erection of a new house, he had
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fitted a large room in the upper story for the amusement of his numerous friends. At his age and under these circumstances, for the first time in his life, he attended the ministry of the Methodists on a Sabbath morning in a school house not far away from his residence. (He previously had forced the unlocking of the school at Canoe Hill and Carter Street, closed against the Methodists.)
"The word of the preacher was deeply im- bued with the sense of eternal things-attended by the Holy Spirit-over against the dull, monotonous reading of sermons, and Ebenezer Crofoot thought for the first time that he heard of the sufferings of Christ and the love of God to mankind. Under the sermon he felt emotions new and strange. Fearing that he should be discovered by the congregation, he silently withdrew before the services were closed and attempted to return home. On the way, how- ever, apprehensive that his family would ob- serve his state of mind, he turned into a lane leading into his father-in-law's barn, and in this place, at noonday, and all alone, he fell to the ground and began to cry to God for mercy.
"Great was the wonder of those who ran to see him, for in his country at that time, it was a rare occurrence for any to call aloud for mercy; if any did, it was attributed to weakness or some unworthy motive. But in his case neither of these could at all be urged .... A greater and more permanent revolution had been effected in his mind during the hour of this plain sermon than could be brought about on the principles of human education during his whole life. . ..
"On the Wednesday of the same week he found peace, and after some opposition at- tached himself to our church, in which he has been twenty-two years an active and acceptable member. His wife, having attended a Quarterly Meeting, at which her prejudices were re- moved, joined with him, and now, to their hos- pitable abode the weary and despised itinerant ministers of the Gospel were invited .... Some of their friends thought that their zeal would injure their pecuniary affairs; but in this they were mistaken .. . they never prospered better in wordly affairs than when they honored God
with their property and had the preaching of the Gospel in their house."
Sometime after the death of Sally Crofoot, her husband married Mrs. Mary E. Thomas. She and her first husband were ardent Metho- dists and had entertained some of the first "Itinerant Ministers" in this part of New Eng- land. "As a wife and step-mother she was loved and honored" and greatly assisted in the things that "belonged to the Church in their house," over which her husband was all the years "Class Leader."
The first of two White Oak Shade houses which became the "Home of the Itinerants" as early as 1819, was the home of Lucretia and Holly Seymour. Holly Seymour, a prominent citizen of the town, saw the "Society" grow until the Silver Mine and White Oak Shade "Classes" were united and found a place of worship in the town hall (now the residence of Dr. Lud- low), and was a trustee when the First "Meet- ing House" was erected at the present site on Main Street. He also saw the organization of the Sunday School in 1832. He died just five years to the day after his friends, the Crofoots, November 9, 1833. His wife Lucretia died in 1849.
The other White Oak Shade hostel, or "House of Grace," for the wayfaring preacher, was that of First Selectman Holly Hanford, a de- scendant of the Rev. Thomas Hanford of Nor- walk. He was converted in a great revival of 1828 shortly before the death of Mr. and Mrs. Crofoot, and by 1833 he was a member of the Board of Trustees that purchased the land for the new Church-Home from John M. Hanford for $135 "legal money." Thus, through the gracious hospitality of these four homes to the "Itinerant Methodist Preachers," and the "So- cieties" or "Classes" that met in their homes, the Methodists of New Canaan grew strong enough to have their own "Meeting House," and within eight years, their own "Parsonage" next door to the meeting house for their "settled ministers."
Again in 1834, these trustees purchased from John M. Hanford seven acres near the meeting house for $750. On March 29, 1841, the trustecs, Holly Hanford, Seymour Comstock, Charles
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Carter, Minott Crofoot, David S. Rockwell, Selleck Y. St. John and Henry Wardwell, pur- chased from Aaron Hoyt the lot and house ad- joining the Meeting House for the sum of $1,716.
The Rev. John Ashton Selleck had been ap- pointed to New Canaan in 1840 and became the first preacher to occupy the new home, at 210 Main Street. One can well imagine the enthu- siasm of the trustees, stewards and the entire flock as they saw the house all aglow with can- dlelight for the first time, as they came to the "house-warming" or "donation party." Mrs. Samuel Abernethy of Weed St. is a great grand- daughter of this Rev. J. A. Selleck.
The neighbors were not many. There stood the "Old Red House" ( salt-box) with its great chimney of field stone on the corner opposite the Meeting House, built in 1752 for one Levi Hanford and his bride, Elizabeth Carter, daughter of Captain Ebenezer Carter of Clap- board Hill. Just to the south stood the houses now owned by C. E. Neher and Mrs. Thomas R. Whitney, practically of the same vintage as the parsonage. The Neher house was Harvey Bouton's-the Boutons were grandparents of Mrs. Warren G. Harding. Also to the north, were three Raymond houses: the Russell L. Hall, 1826, Caroline Green, 1833, and the Dr. Ralph L. White, 1834, homes. All may be classed as "Federal" as over against the "Colo- nial" type of architecture. The old R. L. Hall house is now owned by the Allen E. Saafs.
Up to this point we have been dealing with the coming of the Wesleyan movement from Britain to New York, Dantown and to New Ca- naan, and the "open doors" that made possible the house that has been the home of thirty- eight Methodist ministers and their families within the span of one hundred and one years before the coming of the present incumbents December 1, 1942. To do justice to the richly furnished men and women who have preceded us and built themselves into the moral and spiritual fabric of the church and community would mean the writing of many books. To them we are all debtors. Therefore, we have selected a few outstanding events, and these very largely before the dawn of the present
century. We have known personally the twelve ministers who have lived in the parsonage since 1900 and three before that date, and of neces- sity, must appraise them all too inadequately.
We should add by way of explanation that the large number of ministers to occupy the parsonage, is due mostly to the two-year-tenure by the laws of the Methodist Episcopal Church until 1864, three years until 1888, and five years until 1900, when the time limit was removed. Two of the ministers, Calvin B. Ford and J. M. Carroll each occupied the parsonage twice.
The meagre salary of the 1840's is indicated by the following excerpt from the Trustees Record of that period:
"At a meeting of the Board of Stewards at the Parsonage June 27, 1843, for the purpose of making an estimate of the Table Expense of our Preacher, the Rev. Jesse Hunt, for the en- suing year, it was agreed that One hundred and Thirty Dollars be the amount of the estimate.
David S. Rockwell, Clerk" (Grandfather of David S. Rockwell, now president of the First National Bank. )
Again, for the year 1844-5 James H. Romer, preacher, as of July 6, 1844, "estimate" only $100. However, J. N. Hall reports that by Au- gust 1, $164 had been paid to Preacher Romer. Of course the "donations" greatly augumented the table expense estimates. Grandma Shaw, wife of Jacob Shaw, often told her grand- children, Mrs. W. A. Wheeler and her brother, S. B. Hoyt, in later years, about the luscious barrels of turnips, side meat, cabbages, and other edibles left on the back porch.
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