USA > Connecticut > Fairfield County > Norwalk > Norwalk, history from 1896 > Part 28
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well's army) whose son, Samuel C. 3d., is to-day a resident of Stamford ; Elisha, who married first, Harriet, daughter of Capt. Stephen Betts of the Continental army, and second, Amelia Cooke of New Haven ; Annie who died young and John who married Catharine Lockwood.
Joseph F. Silliman of 1896, is a son of Joseph 2d. and Martha (Mitchell) Silliman. He married Carrie, daughter of Capt. Stephen Hoyt, the founder of Hoyt's New Canaan Nursery, and lives on the fine old Silliman place in that town, and while the willow that waved over his great-grandfather's (Rev. Justus Mitchell) grave is missed, still it is a gratify-
by a daughter, Julia, Mrs. Dr. Gould of Lockport, N. Y. Clara, daughter of Uriah and Hannah Reed, married Samuel Cooke Silliman, grandson of Rev. Robert Silliman of New Canaan, who had two child- ren, one of whom, Samuel Cooke 3d. survives to-day, and is a druggist in Stamford.
In the township of Stamford was born "about break of ye day," Feb. 4, 1734, to David and Mercy Selleck, an infant to whom was given the name of Samuel, and between whose brothers, sisters and self a handsome patrimony for that period, was, before the lad quit his teens, apportioned. The infant had grown up and married when the Revolutionary War broke out. Ilis patriotic soul was stirred and he joined the army only to be captured in the vicinity of the present Prospect Park, Brooklyn, and taken on one of the last days of the summer of 1776, to the prison ship, in New York waters, where he died, leav- ing a boy who, baptized the day after his birth, had been named David; which son, being only fifteen at the date of his father's decease, yet resolved to avenge that parent's fate, and consequently joined the Conti- nentals who, the next spring, April 27, 1777, repulsed Tryon at Ridgefield upon his retreat from Danbury to Compo. The brave lad there fell, and his comrades, cutting the buttons from his coat, bore them to his widowed parent, than whom " never was the memory of a mother kept more sacred." This mother's next child to her heroic David was a daughter, Hannah, who married Uriah Reed (son of Timothy, who was son of Samuel, who was son of John 2d., son of John ist.) and who was a quiet, independent farmer of New Canaan. He was a man who kept things snugly and his day's work was done when the sun was yet an hour high. He was a cousin of Matthew Reed of Norwalk (the father of Mrs. Isaac Belden.) Mrs. Reed was remarkable through life for sweetness of disposition and beauty of person. Her nephew and niece (Ebenezer, Jr. and Miss Rebecca Selleck ) the children of her only brother Ebenezer Selleck of Westchester County, were among the closest personal
friends of the late General James A. Garfield, U. S. A. Before the future President Garfield entered col- lege and while he taught for a season at Poetenskill, a centre at that time in the fast growing territory east of Troy, N. Y., he made the intimate acquaintance of New England and Oblong contributors to the set- tlement of Renssalaer County.
Samuel Selleck, the patriot, was an older brother of Jacob Selleck, born 1744, who became the well known land owner on Clapboard Hill, and he was a younger brother of the Gershom, "born ye 10th of July 1730 at 9 of ye clock," whose daughter Charlotte, baptized by Dr. Ebenezer Dibble, ( tentatively of St. Paul's Church, Norwalk, ) on May 2, 1763, and married on June 3, 1784, to Stephen, born April 12, 1767,* son of Bushnell Fitch, was the mother of IIon. Benjamin Fitch, founder of the Fitch Soldiers' home, Noroton.
'Said treelet indicating, topographically, " the homeward end of Haynes Ridge " also dropped grace- fully over the moundt beneath which lay one of the principal dwellers upon that salubrious height. Rev. Justus Mitchell of Woodbury, had married at about the age of twenty-five, Martha, daughter of Rev. Josiah Sherman, also of Woodbury. Mrs. Mitchell's brother, Hon. Roger Minot Sherman, resided with his wife and two children in Norwalk, living at one time in France Street, (Edward Merrill place) and at an- other upou the East Avenue (Stevens place) of 1896. Like her Norwalk brother, Mrs. Mitchell was an in- dividual of rare attainments, and ranked, among ladies, with Mrs. Stephen Buckingham of Norwalk. (See Chapman's Buckingham family, page 144.) Her husband, a man of calibre and character, had been called to New Canaan and attached to Haynes Ridge, bought, on Aug. 8, 1783, of Stephen Hanford, son of Samuel and Isabel Hanford, and grandson of William Haynes. a solid slice of twenty acres out of the fairest portion of the elegant patrimony, paying for the same the generous sum in that day, of 165 English pounds. This was the year in which Mr. Mitchell was ordained and commenced his active twenty-three
*Documentary, but a numerical mistake, probably. In the multiplicity of ancient record-dates this could occur.
"The grave of Rev. Justus Mitchell. On Jan. 26, 1773. William Bolt and Jonathan Husted sold to the proprietors of Canaan parish one half acre in front of the meeting house " for public benefit of whole community." This plot became in time neg-
lected and the citizens in later years resolved to reduce the uneven hillside to a grade-slope. The dust of the dead was undisturbed, but the grave stones were removed to the parade ground burial acre. The sites, in the Church Hill burial ground, of Rev. Mr. Mitchell's tomb and that of the patriotic Hannah Benedict (Carter) of Carter Street, are to-day marked.
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ing antiquarian fact that two ancient Haynes Ridge homes have been so long and well pre- served. Modern taste has not so essentially changed the "Mitchell house" (now Bond) as that the foundation and framing plot-and-plan by the grandson-in-law of the Ridge's founder' have been entirely obliterated, while the layout of the surrounding grounds yet makes it possible to mind-follow through the "lane" and "orchard," down to the river's "path," her girlhood rambles, whom several foreign lords to-day remember as grand- mother2; and a clause in a last century testamentary injunction of the Silliman elder brother, whereby "Phillis" is remembered, suggests the scrupulous neatness, outdoors and indoors, of the Silliman "out kitchen," burnished by its rows of dairy-tin and all kept swept and shining by the family's old fashioned clever "colored help."3
The Norwalk-Canaan Cooke-Leete blood ceases with the Silliman and Mitchell de- scent. Rev. Samuel Cooke's first wife dying Aug. 11, 1721, he married, second, Esther, daughter of Nathaniel Burr of Fairfield. The Burr homestead which Esther Burr at her marriage to Mr. Cooke left, was one of the choice home-spots of New England. It em- braced the level tract at the west end of Bridgeport to-day, near to the intersection by the Consolidated road of the Fairfield Street. She was separated from it, however, but a few months as she died, without issue, in less than a year after marriage. The good minister came to Norwalk for his third wife, and found her in Elizabeth, daughter of Joseph Platt,
years ministry, a ministry spent entirely in New Canaan. The home was an intellectual home. The parents had been about four years married, and Eliza- beth and Sherman Mitchell were respectively three and one years old, when William Haynes' meadow property was Mitchell-possessed. These children's uncle, Roger M. Sherman, was only seven years older than his niece Elizabeth, and had not at that time, by six years, entered college. After graduation and marriage, and settling himself in Norwalk, he visited his llaynes Ridge sister and found, doubtless, in her family, now augmented by her two remaining sons, Minot and Chauncey, something of an antidote for the bereavement underwent in Norwalk when he lost his two only children, laid, first, in Town Hill Cemetery, and now sleeping beside their parents in Fairfield.
'The 1896 Bond house on Haynes' Ridge, is be- lieved to have been framed by Ebenezer Smith, who married Elizabeth, daughter of John Bartlett, and grand-daughter of William Haynes. Ebenezer Smith, son of Killiab and grandson of Lieut. Samuel Smith, of Hadley, Mass., was brother of Ephraim Smith who married another daughter (Isabel) of John Bartlett. These were the ancestors of Susanna Smith, who married Isaac Bell. See note, page 94.
2Lucy, daughter of Rev. William Bonney, in- cumbent of the New Canaan Congregational parish from 1808 to 1831. Mr. Bonney kept a boarding school on Haynes' Ridge, at which were educated a
number of young men of future reputation. Mrs. Bonney was filled with the spirit of missions, and was wont to make house to house appeals in aid of the cause. Upon such occasions she carried with her a little heathen God, which object-lesson proved to be not without account. Lucy Bonney married a young man, Wm. B. Sherwood, who was a near relative of Rev. Wm. Bonney. These had a daughter, who mar- ried Lord Esslemont of Aberdeen, Scotland. Rev. Mr. Bonney had one only son, Samuel, (afterwards a missionary) whose village school companions were delightfully entertained by Mrs. Bonney upon their Saturday afternoon visits to her son, in later life, an intimate friend of Dr. Bayard Taylor.
The boys were dismissed from the Haynes Ridge (now Bond) home in time to allow for the beginning, when the sun went down, of Sunday. This "Satur- day night keeping" marked life in ancient Canaan, the peaceful after-supper hush of its primitive house- holds (amid which quiet the family bible on the stand was opened and reverently read from and the simple evening prayer offered) being a blessed prelude to the duties of the succeeding day, and involving a prac- tice-principle which was, individual, community and nation-wise, beyond value-estimate. The keeping of Saturday night was general throughout New England.
3Indian women in some cases were of service. After the victory over the Pequots at Fairfield, there seems to have been an influx, in South-western Con- necticut, of such help-element.
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and grand-daughter of John Platt, the Norwalk Platt progenitor. Three sons were the gifts of this marriage, viz: Josiah, Eliasaph (who were twins, and who died within a few hours of each other on the day of their birth, March. 1731) and Joseph, the subsequent Gen. Joseph Platt Cooke of Revolutionary mark, who was the parent of Samuel B. Cooke, who was father of Rev. Dr. Samuel Cooke' of St. Bartholomew's Church, New York. The third Mrs. Rev. Samuel Cooke died May 16, 1732, and her husband married for his fourth and last wife, Abigail, widow of Rev. Joseph Moss, who was mother of Mrs. Rev. Jonathan Ingersoll of Ridgefield, and great-grandmother of Chancellor James Kent.
'Rev. Samuel Cooke, an excellent, highly rated and now venerable presbyter of the Protestant Epis- copal church, has direct Norwalk descent. (See Platt lineage. ) He commenced his ministerial life in Lyons, N. Y., and there continued until called to the rector- ship of St. Paul's Church, New Haven, from whence he was selected to fill the same position at St. Bar- tholomew's, New York, Norwalk data appertaining to which opulent metropolitan parish is not entirely bar- ren of interest. The imposing Madison Avenue Church of 1896, and its belonging rectory, stand near if not exactly upon the meadow lots, owned long ago in the family of the founder of the cure, Effingham Howard Warner, son of George James Warner and brother of Mrs. Susan Warner Nichols of Greenfield Hill, a New England eminence of extensive and ex- ceptional vision. Effingham H. Warner of the drug- gist house of Warner, Pratt & Co., was a grandson of the old-time prosperous merchant and intense patriot, George Warner, of benevolent and singularly pious remembrance, and concerning whom President Wil- bur Fiske wrote that should it, at the last, be his privilege to reach Heaven, he would surely see George Warner there unless the latter should be so close to the throne as to make it impossible for him so to do. The wife of the projector of St. Bartholomew's was Ann, sister of the famed John Summerfield of Lan- cashire, England, and the rival, if possible, of the eloquent George Whitfield. The parish was auspi- ciously inaugurated and the orator-divine, S. V. Kel- ley, who had then been in the county some little time, was invited to assume its maiden charge. Indeed the church, planned by Mr. Warner, and of striking har- mony-beauty, was built (in La Fayette Place) for Mr. Kelley, whose cleverness, intellectual and physical, was remarkable, and whose fervent sentences were similar to those that later fell from the lips of Dr. Francis L. Hawks. The congregation, of cultured parts which ran parallel with substance - ability, formed, consequently, a strong constituency. The Warner family was a St. Bartholomew pillar. Effing- ham H. was himself a host. He was a business man of large interests, as well as a public official who had lain out one or two parks, which signal commercial capability was brought into helpful St. Bartholomew
service. His grandfather, George, the founder of the Warner house, came to the western world in 1765 and set up a sail establishment in John Street, which grew to important dimensions, and his grandmother was a Waldegrave descendant. George Warner and his wife occupied an elegant house and grounds on the corner of Fourth Street and the Bowery, and their yard, garden and orchard covered a large plot. It was deemed a rich treat to go over the Warner property and take a look at its rare flower beds. This beautiful enclosure fell to the use of Mr. Warner's daughter Sarah, Mrs. Judge Azariah Williams. This lady of refinement, and the very atmosphere of whose home was grace, had her pew in St. Bartholomew's and was devoted to parish interests. Within her grandly old fashioned "vestibulum " reigned a warm response to ecclesiastical and social demands. George James Warner, her brother, dwelt, in olden state, on the corner of the Bowery and Bleecker Street. His wife was a daughter of Elias Nexsen, a name which calls up repaying memories of people of noble natures, generous aspirations and about whom there was noth- ing disappointing. Susan, born Jan. 4, 1799, daugh- ter of George James and Susan (Nexsen) Warner, married Samuel Nichols, D. D., rector for many years of St. Matthew's Church, Bedford, N. Y., and who afterward, having purchased the Richard Varick Dey country establishment on Greenfield Hill, occupied the choice old home-hearth which his children take pride in excellently preserving, and where his only daughter, sister of Rev. Dr. George Warner Nichols of Norwalk, presides and aided by her brothers, cor- dially welcomes the visitor to the historic hill and happy hearthstone.
The afore mentioned were some of the original St. Bartholomew's flock who have been succeeded, shepherd and sheep, by those who have taken their places and continue to carry on a most benevolent work. Lewis P. W Balch. D.D., followed Kelley and Cambrelling came after Warner and after Cambrelling a Vanderbilt. Succeeding Dr. Balch the headship fell to the gifted and highly prized Dr. Samuel Cooke, whose Platt blood it is an honor to Norwalk to have bequeathed. Dr. David H. Greer, of signal parts, purpose and power is the present leader under whom
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The Norwalk (as well as the Norwalk-Canaan) Cooke-Leete blood is a matter of deserved registration, and its interesting and hitherto intricate story runs, evidently, thus : John, born March 30, 1715, son of Rev. Samuel and Anna (Trowbridge) Cooke, married, first, Elizabeth (Toucey) (as it would appear.) John' and Elizabeth had a daughter, Anna, born Dec. 13, 1740. The infant's mother died only a few days after her only child's birth. Hannah Toucey2 of Newtown, Conn., who, May 12, 1752, married Josiah Hooker, was an aunt of Anna Cooke. After the decease of Anna's mother the child was brought to Norwalk and became a member of the family of Rev. Stephen Buckingham, whose wife was a grand-aunt of Josiah Hooker. She was so highly esteemed by the clergyman (who had no children of his own) that he bequeathed to her his valuable library of one thousand volumes which, it is said, was purchased in England. This library stood in his house which occupied the east side of East Avenue, and the present site of the intersection of N. Y., N. H. & H. R. R. with said avenue. The library, it is supposed, was destroyed by Tryon nearly thirty-five years after the decease of its original owner. Anna Cooke lived to marry Haynes, son of James and (Mrs.) Mary (Buckingham) Fitch. James Fitch, youngest brother of Governor Thomas Fitch, married the young widow of Rev. Jedediah Bucking- ham, a nephew of Rev. Stephen Buckingham. Mrs. James Fitch had one child by her first (Buckingham) husband, and nine children by her second marriage. Haynes and Anna (Cooke) Fitch were married Sept. 23, 1770, and had :
Hannah Toucey ; born, July 4, 1771.
William Haynes; born, Aug. 21, 1772.
Josiah H .; born, Sept. 23, 1773.
Jedediah ; born, July 17, 1775.
Cooke; born, Feb. 5, 1777.
Daniel ; born, June 12, 1779.
David ; born, March 29, 1781.
Grant3; born, Dec. 2, 1782.
Zalmon ; born, April 1, 1784.
the parish, so favorably founded and so faithfully fos- tered, is extraordinarily strong, and engaged in grand performances.
The already alluded to Mrs. Azariah Williams, daughter of George Warren, occupied a Vermont country home which took for its pattern the Jay man- sion at Bedford, N. Y., the drive to which from Nor- walk, via Haynes' Ridge, Pound Ridge, Stony Moun- tain Valley and 'Catonah Woods" is one of the most inviting New England-Oblong trips. To select for such an excursion a June afternoon, on the date of the June full moon, and to stand at the trip's ending, with the Jay forest-fringed homestead on the north and the Sachem Catonah's granite-guarded grave just south of you, and while the west is still golden and the shut of day has not yet concealed the Hudson Highlands' soft blue, is a sort of inspiration. At that hour and in that spot, one may not, Persian like, adore, but one must, Catonah like, admire.
The second rector of St. Bartholomew's, Dr., sub- sequently Canon Balch, married Anne, daughter of Judge William and Augusta McVicker Jay, and sister
of the late Hon. John Jay. Of the sisters of Mrs. Balch, one married John F. Butterworth and another Henry Edward Pellew. Their two aunts, Ann and Mrs. Banyer, lived at 20 Bond Street, New York, and were attached to St. Bartholomew's Church. Peter A., a brother of these aunts, had his home in Rye, N. Y., and was the father of Miss Elizabeth Clarkson Jay whose visits to Norwalk and interest in its family history is a matter of grateful recall.
1John Cooke married, second, Martha Booth, from which union the 1896 Wordins of Bridgeport sprang. Mr. Cooke lived to be about a century old.
2She left her property, by will, to Mrs. Haynes Fitch (Anna Cooke).
3Grant Fitch, son of Haynes and Anna (Cooke) Fitch, married Millicent Halsey and had Daniel Grant, born 1812, who married Sarah, daughter of Judge Miller, and had William Grant, born 1834, who married Martha E. Curtis, and had Grant, born 1852, Yale graduate, who married Ida, daughter of Robert Eliot and is now an officer of the First National Bank, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
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Of Haynes Fitch, son of James""" and Mary, who, born in Norwalk, Conn., Jan. 22, 1735, died at Ellsworth, Trumbull County, Ohio, Aug. 11, 1815, Hon. Elisha Whittle- sey, M. C., wrote : " By the death of this good man his children are deprived of a kind and affectionate father, the church of Christ of a pious, exemplary member, and society of a bright ornament. He supported a character through life irreproachable, and died as he lived, without a personal enemy." His wife, Norwalk and Stratfield's (Bridgeport) little motherless Anna Cooke, lived to be seventy-three years of age, and died at Canfield, Ohio, July 15, 1814.
In speaking of the descendants, in one line, of JamesIst. and Mary (Buckingham) Fitch of Norwalk, a western banker writes thus : "The record presents unbroken chains of piety and devotedness to the cause of religion, before which all worldly honors and distinctions fade and scarcely deserve to be remembered."
FITCH-HAYNES DESCENT.
Mrs. James Fitch 'st. who, prior to her Fitch marriage, was the widow of Jedediah Buckingham, was Mary Haynes, the only issue to "Mr. William Haynes" by his second marriage to Mercy, daughter of Matthew Marvin 2d .. Her half sisters were Mrs. Samuel Hanford ist. and Mrs. John Bartlett "> ... She had no known half brother. Her Haynes ref- erence here introduces, naturally, the history of :
WILLIAM HAYNES, FOUNDER OF HAYNES' RIDGE. Born, 1651, Died, April 2, 1712.
Thus far it has been impossible to ascertain the full facts with reference to this Nor- walk father. A certain interest seems so to have invested "my home on Haynes' Ridge" that one longs to understand more of its story. No town record as yet discovered, however, certifies wherefore or wherefrom its owner came to the spot. As upon the English roll, hereafter alluded to, of Barbadoes immigrants occurs the name that heads this article, one, would dates permit, might be tempted to believe that here is the explanation of the matter, but dates do not justify this surmise. Something, however, "Mr. Haynes'" taste, or the sections altitude or arrability or attractiveness, led, it is reasonable to imagine, the new- comer, (whoever, or whatever, or wherefrom he may have been, or come, ) to one of the most charming spine-levels in the south-western portion of the colony ; the level which is to-day adorned with the summer villas of several metropolitan families.
Mr. Haynes was somewhat advanced when his eye first rested upon the fields that were in time to become the cradle of talent and title, and the cot of future Norwalk child- ren of mark and merit. When he became owner of the region the whole ridge from what was afterward the Samuel St. John lands on the south to what has since been known as "Elm Corner"-the Enoch St. John estate-on the north, was an expansive meadow tract
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broken in the upper portion by a morass and bounded on its lower limits by one of the most romantic grove patches in New England.' Its proprietor during his life time was inter- viewed with reference to a highway across the plain and expressed himself as "freely wil- ling provided suitable recompense should be made," but nothing was accomplished in this direction until years after his decease. At that date the white oak was a native of the lo- cality, but subsequently to the layout of the avenue, on Nov. 10, 1729-30 by Matthew Sey- mour, John Raymond and John Betts, a row of Lombardy poplars was planted, the only survivors of which are found to-day on the Ridge's northern edge, at the old St. Mark's burying ground. The history of Haynes' Ridge, from first to last, would fill a small vol- ume and be replete with interest. One is told of who, generations ago, loved to watch the heavens from that elevation, not as did his later townsman (Dr. Samuel St. John) from the same spot for the purpose of studying and mapping them out, but to observe the cloud changes and especially the electric clouds tribulous movements over its distant southwest- ering heights, upon the summits of which the red man was wont to erect his hill-altars to the Upholder of the Skies. Learning has chosen Haynes' Ridge as its seat,2 and so has religion, and so also has refinement ; while natural beauty and the hunter's ambition were the mag- nets that attracted, doubtless, the neighboring lordly Catonah within the precincts.3
Terrible persecutions followed the unsuccessful claim, in 1685, of the Duke of Mon- mouth to Britain's throne, and many who had been implicated in the rebellion as well as many who were innocent, suffered execution, imprisonment and banishment. Among those who had been transported to the Barbadoes colony occurs the old Norwalk name of Wm. Haynes, but as said Haynes bought land in Norwalk prior to that date, it follows, unless the Norwalk scribe was in fault, that Mr. Haynes was not of that colony. The author has found the Haynes name in the northeastern part of the county, but of a later date. He has seen it hinted that William Haynes of Norwalk was of the blood of Gov. John Haynes,
'Rear of the grounds of the widow of the late Dr. Willard Parker, Sr. In the days when Silas Dav- enport held this property for academic purposes the idea was conceived of laying out into "city lots" the lower end of Ilaynes' Ridge. But the site's success- ful occupation for educational use militated against the project.
2Several successful schools have been conducted on Ilaynes' Ridge, as Rev. Justus Mitchell's, Rev. William Bonny's, Silas Davenport's, D). R. Rockwell's and John Osborn's. The Pope brothers, mentioned in note on page 199, were pupils of Silas Davenport. They belonged to the Bibb family of Georgia. Both are dead, but Henry, whose pen when past seventy was vigorous, began a charming letter, dated Mobile, May 1895, thus: "On one of the days of the first part of June, anno domini 1835, I left Mobile on the good, square-rigged ship "Superb," bound for New York, chaperoned by Mr. Samuel N. St. John, to be
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