USA > Connecticut > Fairfield County > Norwalk > Norwalk, history from 1896 > Part 10
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From the fact that the Norwalk Indians parted so readily and so unremuneratingly with their lands, and from the fact, also, that there are few or no records of signal heroism
'The St. John woods, on the western slope of Smith's Ridge, and now the ownership of Dr. Samuel St. John of New Haven, a son of the late Prof. Sam- uel St. John of New Canaan, are notable as the seat of the " Indian Rocks." These so-called " rocks " are a mass of native granite, into which is Indian-cut a tier of cavities for the purpose, evidently, of pounding into coarse " samp" or " hominy " the grains of corn. The squaw sat at the side of the bowl, and with a stone or heavy wood pestle, performed the process. The St. John " mills " do not bear marks of having been used as " boilers," as is the case, remarkably so, with the Norwalk upper-reservoir rock, some three miles beyond the Pequot Mills, and nearer Winnipauke's Ridge. It is a theory not easily disproven, that the Smith's Ridge basins are the work of the Pequots, and that after Ludlow and Partrick's discomforture of this people in Pequot Swamp. Fairfield, there was a scattering of the survivors, the descendants of whom constituted, in a measurable degree, the Indian "help" of the mid and later eighteenth century period. It is believed that a hand of these refugees found the woods (St. John's) referred to, and there planted themselves. Here they remained - at the last a very dwindled portion-even until the days of the more recent pro- prietorship of that section of Smith's Ridge. It is Bouton testimony that the very last occupants thereat left for the vicinity of Peekskill-on-the-Hudson, and that, once in a while, one or more birth-children of the locality, would revisit, in after years, the old spot. The testimony to this effect was taken from the lips of the aged Mrs. Waters Bouton of Canaan Ridge. This reference to the "Pequot Mills" is tradition and inference-based; but, as before intimated, it is difficult to overthrow the surmise.
Indian remains have not, to any considerable ex-
tent, been discovered within the area of middle Nor- walk. There were Mohegan burying-grounds at Bel- den Point, Barren Marsh bank, Indian Field and Sau- gatuck, but none, probably, of pretence, elsewhere. It seems surprising that with the Indian's innate appre- ciation of the bold and striking, that such a spot, for instance, as the Norwalk Rocks should not have been appropriated for the burial of their braves. There is, however. no reason for believing, that this eminence was so used. At Boutonville (Lewisboro') and Cross River, in the same town, are distinctly marked Indian cemeteries, but their absence in middle Norwalk is, perchance, an additional argument in support of the theory that such territory was largely hunting-ground.
In the brain and breast of the devotee of natural scenery, the view from the referred-to Norwalk Rocks works effects almost talismanic, and one with eye open to the picturesque can there revel mid romantic delightfulness. From the lower end the ascent by the " west rocks road" is gradual, affording growing glimpses of the vast stretch to the west, north and east, so that when the summit is gained there is al- most an inexhaustible range of landscape. The rocks. as the Almighty planted them, are at your feet; there are the charms of bolder slope and scape-irregularity immediately about, and the softness of distant scenery in the far away. The distinguished prelate and grace- ful poet Right Rev. Arthur Cleveland Coxe, became enthusiastic over the scene and there grew demons- trative, and its skirting hill and dale diversified pas- toral country in every point of the compass, finished by the long shining sea line on the south, drew from the able and greatly esteemed Edwin Hall, D.D., his- torian and for many successive years pastor of the First Congregational Church in Norwalk, well-merit- ed praise.
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on their part, as well as from the additional significant fact that while Ponus left his son Onox to reign in his stead, and Catonah his son Wachamene, yet that no intelligence of any such succession on the part of our red children to regal rights or honors exists, (ex- cepting in Naramake 2d., supposable case,) it may be fairly argued that our aborigines were the feeble remnant of braver sires. As pertaining to their parent stock, it is well known that the Mohegans left behind them proof of native greatness, but it is hardly probable that any Norwalk annals will ever be overladen with vivid illustrations of local Mohegan- transmitted purpose or performance-nobility. There is limited notice of this excellence, and it and every authentic Indian mind or manner-mention is a contribution to general information upon an interesting and inviting topic, and therefore worthy of preservation.' Some of these pre-occupants of the soil returned, most probably, to the north, but the majority of them, by degrees, disappeared by death and left no representatives.
Heckett, and his brothers two, whose names cannot with certainty be given, seemed to be among the last of the Norwalk chieftains. Their wigwams stood at different points between Woodpecker's (North Stamford) and Winnepauke's (Vista) Ridges. Heckett is to-day remembered by a hill on Ponus Street, New Canaan, which bears his name. There is a mention that would appear to indicate Ponus-contemporaneousness in his case, but it is vague and seems improbable. Tradition, amounting almost to truth, represents himself and brethren as familiar with the later epoch haunts of the revolutionary Col. Sheldon of Lower Salem and Capt. Joshua King of Ridgefield.
It is possible that these Heckett brothers, as was the case with the Indian " Ezra," who lived above Woodpecker's Ridge, and in what is now known as the "High Ridge" district, and who had a son "Roselle," were direct descendants of Ponus. One of Ponus' sons is known to have strayed from the home wigwam, and it is believed that he went to the Oblong neighborhood. Some seventy years ago an Indian is reported to have appeared (see Hurd's Fairfield County) on the top of Flax Hill, who, after a transient glance over the surroundings, disappeared. Not greatly distant from that time a portion of a tribe was
IOne of the concluding generation of the Nor- walk Indians was out-matched and out-witted by one of the settlers grandsons. Matthew Marvin, who lived on the " Fairfield Path," (Fort Point Street, 1896. next lot west of H. M. Prowitt's land) had a grandchild, David, who was deer-footed. During one of the last century Indian troubles, young David Mar- vin, having been mustered in as a soldier, strayed on one occasion beyond camp bounds. His absence was noticed at headquarters, and a number of white and red men were put in pursuit. The Indians led, and
the wiry David, for some distance, eluded his copper- colored chasers. The latter constantly gained upon him, and finally only a hill's half lay between the parties. The Indians sent up a victory-yell at which their " game " dropped into a litter of leaves and was passed harmlessly by. David lived to found a family, a daughter member of which (Susan) married Mr. James Benedict,* whose home in West Avenue was torn down to make room, years ago, for the LeGrand Lockwood improvements at that point, and the gate- way trees to which old home are still in their places.
*Born Oct. 16, 1707: married Oct. 22, 1819. He was the son of Nathan and grandson of Nathaniel Benedict. His mother was Susannah Sammis of Huntington, L.I., and his grandmother Hannah, daughter of Rev. Thomas Hawley of Ridgefield. One of his sons was the principal of " Hillside " Boarding School,
Norwalk, and himself and brothers may refer with satisfaction to their ancestry. Another daughter of the fleet young David Marvin married Shubal Elwood, father of the late Rev. David Marvin Elwood of Norwalk. Rev. Mr. Elwood had, in earlier life, been a physician.
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accustomed to pay annual visits to Norwalk, and to encamp at the foot of "The Rocks." These may possibly have been the children of "Chicken,"' whose descendants quarters were a little north of Burr Plain. The venerable Horace Staples, with great positiveness, speaks of his boyhood memories in relation to this tribal remainder.2
"" Chickens " was a sort of lesser Sachem. Dr. Ezra Stiles, president of Yale College, mentions that during a residenceship east of the Saugatuck, Chic- kens committed murder, and was on that account com- pelled to flee to Redding. Hle left Redding about 1749, and went to the northern part of the State, where he lived to old age. The Connecticut Assem- bly granted him a small tract, upon which he resided a few years, and died leaving a family of two or three members. The Burr Plain visits were those, prob- ably, of his Redding or Weston descendants. "Chic- ken Street " to-day bears the name of this grandson of the Pequonnock "Chickens" of 1660."
that state of acidity. They would come, Mr. Staples relates, men and women, to the farmers' cellars and stand, Indian file, (the squaws in the rear, ) until each drank his or her portion, which oftentimes was a full quart of the liquid.
"Hockanum," a portion of the more ancient Burr Plain, occupied, in the fathers' vernacular, a Norwalk "adjoyninge," and while the spot au naturel was somewhat " uncanny," yet under the genius-di- rection of its earlier and later proprietors' wildness, irregularity and even intricacy became blended ex- cellencies. The result of every touch of Mr. Ketch- um's masterly hand was a transformation, and the Indian domain of days long agone now formed a splendid landed, lawn and garden estate. One hund- red acres of the rolling area were Burr bequeathed, and its four hundred additional acres were the pur- chase, from time to time, of its new proprietor. The house was Gothic, and its architectural features and
2Some three miles north from Compo's east Sau- gatuck sovereigntyship lay an undulating meadow- stretch broken by a forest patch and bordering the old Norwalk and Fairfield boundary line that Mama- chimon had been called upon to help define. These chieftains had passed away, and left a small fraction of an Indian clan to tenant, in Ephraim Burr's day, : "setting " were in agreeable harmony with its picture environments. along a brook valley not a great distance to the north- east of said Burr's romantically lying area just alluded Morris Ketchum, born in Waterford, N. Y., 1796, the fourth child of Amos and Arabella (Landon) Ketchum of Saratoga County, N. Y., and of line de- scent (see Ketchum lineage) of Joseph and Mercie (Lindall) Ketchum of early Norwalk, was a man of unblemished character, was one of the business mag- nates of America and an ardent and exalted patriot. to. Ephraim was a grandson of Nathaniel Burr, which Nathaniel was a grandson of John Burr, the first of the name in Fairfield. Ephraim Burr's great- grandfather owned and resided at the site of the "Covenant Oak" at the west end of the present Bridgeport. It was one of the fair homesteads of New England, but fell short, promise-wise, of Burr Plain, At the Hockanum height-period, Westport was the site of several well known family seats. Francis Burritt was located at the ancient " Rocky Neck" and he greatly beautified the acreage which, since Mam- achimons' day had, with a slight exception, remained to a large extent, rocky field and forest lots. From that home emerged two daughters, the brides of the two Ketchum brothers, (sons of Morris) Charles J. and Landon. afterward "Hockanum," where Ephraim Burr brought up his son Silas, which son, born May 19, 1771, and having married a daughter of Benjamin Banks, of descent on one hand from John Banks, the settler, and on the other from Richard and Margaret Lyon, of Barlow Plain, Fairfield, was a large landed pro- prietor. Silas Burr's extended Burr Plain home (after- ward the New England manor-like estate of his son- in-law, the late Morris Ketchum) is of Norwalk in- Two miles to the north, on the east side of the Saugatuck, and at the head of the avenue called for the chieftain Compow, stood the Capt. Waite home- stead. This became the purchase of Hon. Richard H. Winslow, a financier of high repute, and who con- verted the grounds into a floral and arboreal park. Mrs. Winslow, who descended from one of the his- tory families of Norwich, cognate to the Thos. Fitch family of Norwalk, survived her husband, and mar- ried, zd. R. C. M. Paige, M.D., of New York City. terest by reason of the fact that it was the neighbor- hood of one of the latest Indian inhabited localities, not alone in the vicinity of Norwalk, but in the entire colony of Connecticut. It is supposed that these red men were the descendants of Chicken, whose name is street-perpetuated to-day, and whose home was near the present Wilton and Weston lines. Mr. Horace Staples ( referred to in the text) well remembers con- cerning the last ones of the race. He states that in his youth it was the custom of the farmers, after their Opposite to "Compo House," resided a typical own use of two-thirds of a barrel of cider, to let the | New England legal gentleman, John Cleveland, of balance stand until it became almost vinegar sour. marked endowments, and whose cleverness was finely unobtrusive. The home was blessed with children, This was kept for the Indians, who preferred it at
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An interesting document was signed in Norwalk in 1660, at the following instance and to the following effect : The sons of Ponus, whose sachimo was situate several furlongs west of the ancient line of Norwalk, and of Mahackemo,' who governed the Norwalk valley, and of Compow,2 who ruled east of the Saugatuck, and of Queriheag, who, with " his predecessors from generation to generation," reigned over the territory to the east of Compo and west of the Unquowa, had, in the neighborhood of 1658-9-60, removed to some extent from the coast inland. At that time there was left at Pequonnock (Bridgeport) only about one hundred wigwams, which, however, represented a larger population than that at any other single point, perhaps, between the Rowalton (Five Mile River) and the Housa- tonic. This red remnant was the cause of so much discussion and disagreement among
the wife and mother being the youngest daughter of Ebenezer D. Hoyt of Norwalk.
The venerated Horace Staples, who owes his po- sition to his own merit, holds, as a nonogenarian, the deep and grateful respect of the community of which he has, down to extreme age, been an honored mem- ber. His days have been actively employed, his years usefully spent, and now at the approach of four-score and fifteen, the issue of his helpful life is serene satis- faction, while the " Staples High School " is his stand- ing memorial.
His descent deserves description. John Banks, a barrister, came from Windsor to Fairfield in 1651. " He was one of the richest men in Fairfield, and one of the largest land-holders in Fairfield County ; that he was from one of the best families of England there is no doubt." His son Benjamin married Elizabeth, daughter of Richard Lyon, and had Benjamin, 2d. Benjamin, 2d. married an Ogden. These had a son, Hezekiah Banks, whose daughter married the father of Horace Staples of 1896. The Ketchum - Staples connection arises from the marriage of Silas Burr to a niece of Hezekiah Banks, (the daughter of his bro- ther Benjamin.) Morris Ketchum and his brother Hiram, with Francis Burritt, were particular friends of Horace Staples. Mr. Staples is of the lineage of Thomas Staples, an early Fairfield settler.
'The impression concerning Mahackemo is that he was a hunter. What might to-day be termed cen- tral Norwalk was, it is logical to deduce, a game dis- trict. U'ndiscovered traces of burial places, "mills," and important relics, such as boiling boulders, cleav- ing stones, etc., so intimate. Nearer the sea-shore, and notably in the South Norwalk of 1896, there are abor- iginal-appearance-remains. Along the upland west of the Tramway power-house, in the present Meadow Street, were Mohawk settlements, possibly. Below Meadow Street two or three Indian cemeteries have
been discovered. In the vicinity of Washington Street graves have been found, and the present Chest- nut Street (see W. S. Bouton's contribution in Hurd's Fairfield County, page 494) was an immolation-lo- cality. There appears to have been but little of the like, however, in Norwalk proper. Stray Indian in- terments* were evidently made in different portions of mid-Norwalk, as stray traditional "Indian rocks" have there been pointed out, but the most that under this head it is safe to say is that the centre of the town was not as densely Indian populated as was the circumference.
There was one genuine " Pockohantes " (a brook- let or rivulet between two heights, and the Indian root-word for Pocahontas, the historic daughter of the royal Powhattan of Virginia, ) near, if not actu- ally in, Mahackemo's empire, viz. : the enchanting glen-run a little south of the Branchville Station, on the Danbury Railroad. From the Ludlow deed, it is right to argue that Mahackemo was the head or chief Norwalk Sachem, and if so, his claim to the haunts 'twixt the northern Pockohantes and the southern Naramake-meads no one could dispute. One fact, at least, entitles him to Norwalk Indian remembrance. He was, beyond doubt, the party who received the " consideration," brought, probably, from Fairfield as far as the east Saugatuck bank, on the backs of pack horses, on the day which saw the deed that thenceforth forever alienated the soil from his race's possession, signed and passed, and the first page of Norwalk's history written. It is probable that at the parting that day between Ludlow and Mahackemo, the former intimated to him that his wigwams need not be immediately broken up, and assured him of undisturbed possession for a time. After the settlers came, ten years later, Mahackemo seems to record- disappear, and Mamachimon to have mention.
2 Sometimes spelled Compoe.
* The base of the hill, (lower end of the 1896 High Street) held several (supposed to be) Indian bodies. Human remains ( possibly Tryon's men buried before the British departure ) have been unearthed at Benedict's farm.
* A Baltimorean, several years since, dug up well-preserved arrow-heads on Town House Hill. These, and sometimes In- dian bones, have been found in various portions of this ancient Township.
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their Stratford and Fairfield contemporaries that the General Court, in May 1659, interfered, and ordered that Gold Hill (now Golden Hill, Bridgeport) should thereafter be the resid- ence place of these diminishing sons of the soil ; and the same Court, for some reason, saw fit to make choice of Norwalk men as a committee to carry out its ordaining. The committee selected was a quartette of the strongest Norwalk settlers, viz. : Matthew Camp- field, Thomas Fitch, Richard Olmstead and Nathaniel Ely. These proceeded to their work, laid out eighty of the, to-day, choice Golden Hill acres, and saw that the dusky people there removed. The committee's Court report was dated "Narwoke, May 2, 1660."
The above arrangement continued in force for about a century. In 1763, the Indians (now fast decreasing in number) made complaints of wigwam destruction and of eviction by the whites. As a consequence everything was sold out to the whites, excepting Nim- rod's' 12-acre spring lot, and none the less than John Huntington, Benjamin Hall and Robert Treat, Esqs., completed the work that the Norwalk committee, one hundred years before, had inaugurated.
Norwalk has no voluminous offering to make to extant Indian lore or legend wealth. Its founders' red brethren, were more or less hardy, physically, and seem to have been endowed with average Indian sagacity. How they appeared in profile we do not know, neither is it ascertained that they were particularly deed or daring prominent. That they were elsewhere, in the new settlements, eclipsed in numbers, is most probable, and that our sea-fringed uplands and lowlands were preserved by them, as in some sort, a hunter's "reserve," is quite possible. The number of stone arrow-heads turned up in the cultivation, in later times, of the Saugatuck soil some distance to the southward of the present Wheeler manufacturing plant, would seem to indicate a native American constituency thereabouts, and from the fact of the existence of "Wampum Hill" in our borders, (Wilton) inference as to an Indian "mint" may reasonably be drawn. But these " straws" are insufficient to establish any very "grand" Indian hypothesis Norwalk-wards ; and while the library shelves of their European successors may never be filled with their annals-literature, yet is the not pleasure-unmixed thought of their "Mohican" blood, and the determination to loyally collect all available tales and traditions concerning them a simple but faithful, and because so, the proper tribute to proffer their memory.
Were it possible to obtain it, one foster red son of Norwalk merits vellum portrait- ure. On Oct. 28, 1646, the Indian apostle, John Eliot, preached his first sermon to the North American natives, and he had so mastered the savage tongue that the aborigines fully understood his message. The name of this first Indian preacher's first Indian precep- tor occurs on page 69, col. 1, line 3, of this work's aboriginal calendar. He was a Long Island inhabitant, but an enrolled 1667 dweller in Norwalk. He was a party in the 1651 Runckingheage covenant, and the original of the patronymic of the easternmost of the
'He inhabited, near the water, about foot of Gold Hill, a short distance north of the Consolidated road's
present station, in the city of Bridgeport, and lived to a great age.
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Norwalk islands, viz. : "Cockenoe." Tooker's exceptionally fine and felicitous story of him has this year been published, and the author's concluding words concerning his hero are calculated to awaken a response in every Norwalk breast.
"For the part he took in the rise and development of our settlement-a life-work unparalleled by that of any other Long Island or New England Indian-he deserves to be enrolled upon the page of honor. A scarred and battered fragment from Nature's world-a glacial boulder, typical of the past-should be his monument-on one side a sculptured entablature inscribed :
To the Memory of a Captive in the Pequot War, the first Indian teacher of John Eliot ; a firm friend of the English Colonists ; Cockenoe-de-Long-Island."
The foregoing glowing testimony to a Norwalk associated red child from the pen of the discriminating William Wallace Tooker prompts this aboriginal article's last reflection. The influence for good of the Rev. John Eliot over the untutored Cockenoe cannot for a moment be doubted, neither can the Rev. Thomas Hanford's interest in the unenlightened Winnipauke be for an instant questioned. The "moons" in this latter chieftain's life-history were about " full," and the days of the clergyman were almost numbered, when the aged Sagamore certified that the aged saint was his "beloved friend." It is a beautiful early Norwalk exhibition of Christianity-benignancy, and the subject is worthy of panel-per- petuation.
On the opposite page is a fac-similie of the original Winnipauke-Hanford deed. This document has been fortunately preserved. It seems to have fallen through Rev. Thos. Hanford's son Thomas to said Thomas' grandson John,' who lived where now resides Louis C. Green, cashier of the Fairfield County Bank.
'At the period of John Hanford's occupation of the present I .. C. Green site on the Winnipauk road, the property embraced the Fair Ground of 1896, and extended to the river. On Oct. 28, 1762, Mr. Hanford married Mehitabel, sister of Major Samuel Comstock of Wilton. born in 1740, and who served for seven years under the direction of Gens. Washington and Lafayette. Twelve children were born to John Han- ford, (see Hanford lineage) one of whom, Charles, married Ruth, daughter of James Seymour, 2d., His (Chas.' )widow, Ruth, married for her second husband, Asa, father of the late Geo. W. and Wm. H. Bene- dict of South Norwalk. Huldah, born March 7, 1776, daughter of John Hanford and a sister of Charles, married Ebenezer Dimon Hoyt, and resided in the new structure, with fine old colonial porch, still pre- served, and standing in the Main Street grounds, forming the Charles E. St. John residence of 1896. In their day the Hoyt's, from their windows, could
unobstructedly look almost down to the head of the harbor pier at which the New York boats of their line landed.
John Hanford died on the first day of Autumn, 1825, his wife having preceded him to the tomb by about seven months. Lafayette had recently visited Norwalk, and the Hanford's because, among other reasons, of Major Samuel Comstock's professional connection with the great General, were interested in the event. About the same time there came through Norwalk some of Napoleon's old soldiers, one of whom, in particular, interested Mr. Hanford by his high praise of his emperor. " Why," said the French- man, as he was calling at the Hanford's, " You will find Napoleon's name in the Bible." Handing the sacred volume to the foreigner, Mr. Hanford request- ed him to turn to the place where such record oc- curred. The soldier seemingly complied, but sud- denly exclaimed, "Oh! this is an old edition."
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