Norwalk, history from 1896, Part 42

Author: Selleck, Charles Melbourne.
Publication date: 1896
Publisher: The author,
Number of Pages: 553

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Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).

Charlotte Bradley, born Aug. 21, 1828.

George Buckingham, born Sept. 14, 1832.

The first Mrs. George St. John died September 23, 1832, and her husband married, second, March 6, 1834, Mary Lockwood DeForest,+ daughter of William DeForest, of Fairfield, now Bridgeport, (see page 279) and had :

Sarah Cannon, born Oct. 22, 1836. Mary Amelia, born June 25, 1840.

'Charles Edward, M.D., son of William S. and cently been graded by the Wm. B. E. Lockwood fam- ily, was known as long ago as Feb. 26, 1725, by the Catherine (Hawley) Lockwood, married February 12, 1867, E. Leila, daughter of Commodore Edward and | name of " Lockwood's Hill." The handsome green- Esther M. Shubrick, and had Minnie Shubrick, born Nov. 16, 1867. This daughter, Minnie or Mary Shu- brick Lockwood, married Eversley, son of Wm. Henry Harrison and Maria (Eversley ) Childs, and had :

Dorothy Shubrick, born Aug. 4, 1891.

Eversley, born Feb. 3, 1893.

William Henry Harrison, born Dec. 24, 1894.

4Mr. and Mrs. Geo. B. St. John reside in the re- markably preserved home of Mrs. St. John's father (the late William S. Lockwood), corner of Knight Street and North Avenue. This house, the picture, inside and out, of peace, was built in 1809. It is one of the three Lockwood brothers' ( Eliphalet, William and Buckingham St. John ) home sites of the early part of the closing century. The deep grounds, now for a larger part, an emerald lawn, were hastily passed on Sunday morning, July 11, 1779, by a detach- ment of either Tryon's or Garth's men who, when they reached the spot, chanced to see a serving man at the well of the afterward Eliphalet Lockwood,3d. and now the Wm. B. E. Lockwood home. At once a soldier (perhaps more than one) aimed and fired, but the colored employee dodged quickly and escaped harm. Mr. and Mrs. St. John, the present occupants of the ancestral William and William S. Lockwood heri- tage, enjoy the old memories of the place, and take, amid its many endearing associations, true comfort. Their premises and neighborhood are old Lockwood ground. The long, ancient and modern Lockwood- tenure of Norwalk property is somewhat remarkable. A portion of the East Avenue elevation which has re-

sward which fronts the 1896 substantial stone dwell- ing of Col. Frederick St. John Lockwood was the purchase (£60) Oct. 7, 1718, from John Bouton by the uncle (Samuel Cluckstone) of Mrs. John Cannon, Ist. from which uncle the property fell to Mrs. Cannon, upon which her husband (of Lockwood family asso- ciation) erected Norwalk's first Cannon home, and on which stands also to-day a section of the heavy tim- bered barn which the son (Samuel) of Mrs. John Can- non (Esther Perry, see page 13) originally built at the summit of " Mill Hill," and which Col. Bucking- ham St. John Lockwood removed to East Avenue, where, a half century ago, it was known as " the old red barn," the generous "bays" of which packed with sweetly-scented fresh cut hay, sport-tempted, summers quite agone, the Troy, Cannon and Warren young blood. Joseph St. John, the ancestor of all of Eliphalet Lockwood'sed. line, serenely lived where now bloom the Earle flower beds on Earle's Hill, and although none of his lineage have any claim to-day to the spot (so valuable that the lot adjoining it sold, a half-century before the Revolution, for $300), still it is a curious coincidence that the family coat of arms was, only a few years since, accidently found buried beneath the ancient Joseph St. John home-hearth soil, thus, as it were, silently attesting to its early propri- etorship.

3Henry Buckingham, son of Wm. S. and Cather- ine (Ilawley) Lockwood, married November 10, 1880, Helen Louise Martin. No children.

#She was first cousin of Mrs. Roger Sherman Skin-

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NORWALK.

Charles, born June 29, 1838. Leonard, born June 28, 1842.

Marcus DeForest, born May 21, 1845.

The children all died young. Their father died Jan. 4, 1852, and their mother died Sept. 23, 1832.

The Norwalk Lockwood-King descent is from Gen. Joshua King, born in Braintree, Mass., Nov., 24, 1758, who entered the army as a youth when the war of the Revolution broke out, and served through the war in Col. Elisha Sheldon's Dragoons. Col. Sheldon's headquarters were at one time in Lower Salem. With the Oblong country and its Con- necticut vicinity Sheldon and King were familiar, and at the time of Major Andre's Salem- durance Lieut. King was in command of the distinguished prisoner. He married Anne, born April 5, 1765, daughter of Rev. Jonathan and Dorcas (Moss) Ingersoll, of Ridge- field. The mother of Mrs. Gen. King was a sister of Abigail Moss (Mrs. Rev. Elisha Kent) and aunt of Moss Kent, who was the father of Chancellor James Kent. The child- ren of Gen. King were Catherine (Mrs. William Hawley, whose daughter, Catherine, mar- ried William S. Lockwood, of Norwalk); Frances; Sophia; John Francis; Rufus How- ard (the father of J. Howard King of 1896); Ann Maria; Charles Clark; Joshua Inger- soll; Mary Ann; Grace. Gen. Joshua King died Aug. 13, 1839, and his wife nine years previous, Dec. 30, 1830. The Kings and Hawleys have been generous abettors of the fortune and fame of the New England cradle of their ancestors, sightly Ridgefield. The homes, in that goodly town, of the present generation of both families are imposing and inviting abodes and calculated to long preserve the King and Hawley names.

ner, (see note page 280) who was the mother of the wife of Timothy Dwight, D. D., LL. D., the present able head of Yale University. Mrs. Roger M. Sher- man, whose husband's uncle's (Hon. Roger Sherman) name Mr. Skinner bore, was one of the accomplished women of her day and was character-charming as well as culture-conspicuous. Her Norwalk stay was brief but her Fairfield sojourn was example-profitable as long (forty-one years) as she there remained. Her virtues and those of her New Canaan brother-in-law (Rev. Justus Mitchell) are to-day re-called (see page 200). She was of uncommon literary taste and when compelled, through infirmity, to herself forego the pleasure of reading she delighted to listen to anoth- er's voice kindly and gladly employed in her favor. On one occasion-it was Saturday afternoon-her in- terest in the subject, to the recital of which she had been an eager auditor, was so intense that she dwelt upon her friend's tones as long as the sun's rays were visible. When the orb of day sunk to sleep, how- ever, her Sunday began, and so directing her neigh- bor to close and lay away the volume, come again, she asked, when the Sabbath shall have past. Her friend was on hand on Monday morning, but Mrs.

Sherman had, by several hours, anticipated her valued ministrations.

"O the men and O the manners," pulpit-ejacu- lated an aged Norwalk pastor, when putting the fact of the simplicity-truthfulness of gone generations against tendencies of the opposite sort in latter times. Modern modes to such an extent obtain that it is per- haps impossible at the present day to deservedly ap- preciate the commendable side of the fathers' strict ob- servance of the first day of the week. To older New England piety Sunday was not wearisome nor its holy duties irksome. Ushered in by Saturday evening's prelude-calm the sacred tide was so restfully and re- freshingly potential that when the Lord's day light faded on Sunday night the old hymn, running sub- stantially :

Increase, O Lord, our faith; increase our hope, And fit us to ascend

Where congregations ne'er break up, And Sabbaths ne'er shall end,

summed up not alone the fathers' and mothers' prec- ious Sunday services but was the language of their emotions also at the going out of the privileged twenty-four hours.

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NORWALK.

The Norwalk Lockwood-Hawley descent is from Rev. Thomas and Abigail (Gold) Hawley, of Ridgefield. Rev. Thomas Hawley, born Sept. 29, 1689, son of Capt. Joseph and Lydia (Marshall) Hawley, of Roxbury, Mass., married, 1711, Abigail, daughter. of Deputy Gov. Nathan and Hannah (Talcott) Gold, of Fairfield, and had Ezekiel; Jos- eph ; Abigail (Mrs. Peter Lockwood, of Norwalk); Elijah; Dorothy ; Thomas; Nathan ; Lydia (Mrs. Nathan Beers, of Norwalk); Hannah ( Mrs. Nathaniel Benedict, of Norwalk), and Ebenezer. It is interesting to note that three of Rev. Thomas Hawley's four daugh- ters married in Norwalk. William Hawley, born March 20, 1735, who married Catherine King (father and mother of Mrs. William S. Lockwood, of Norwalk), was the son of Thomas and Kejiah (Scribner) Hawley, which Thomas, born Feb. 28, 1756, was the son of Capt. Thomas and Elizabeth (Gold) Hawley, which Capt. Thomas, born Feb. 20, 1721-2, was the sixth child and fourth son of Rev. Thomas and Abigail Hawley. Capt. Thomas and Elizabeth Hawley were married Jan. 13, 1747-8. Mrs. Capt. Hawley was the daugh- ter of John and Joanna (Hawley) Gold. John Gold, father of Mrs. Capt. Hawley, was a son of Deputy Gov. Nathan and Hannah ( Talcott) Gold, of Fairfield. His wife, Joanna Hawley, was a daughter of (probably) Thomas Hawley, of Stratford. Mrs. Capt. Haw- ley's sister, Sarah, married David, son of Gideon and Ann (Burr) Allen, of Fairfield. Ann Burr was a daughter of Nathaniel, who was son of the first of the Fairfield Burr family, viz .. Jehu. The children of William and Catherine (King) Hawley were Catherine (Mrs. WVm. S. Lockwood, of Norwalk); Jane; William King; Elizabeth; Mary Ann; Grace Ingersoll; Elijah Scribner ; Margaret; Charles Henry ; Henry Augustus and Frances N.

Stephen Buckingham St. John, born Oct. 3. 1779, was the second son of William' and Mary Esther (Belden) St. John and the brother of Polly (or Mary) Esther St. John, who married Buckingham St. John Lockwood. His first wife, whom he married Feb. 14, 1801, was Sarah, born Oct. 22, 1780, daughter of John and Sarah (St. John) Cannon.

William St. John, born 1744, died Feb. 1, 1800, was the fourth child and third son of Capt. Joseph2d. and Susanna St. John. His sister Susanna was the mother of Col. Buckingham St. John Lockwood and his brothers were Stephen (Col.), Hooker, who died at the age of forty, and Buckingham, a Yale tutor, who was drowned May 5, 1771, while sailing from New Haven to Norwalk. Mrs. William St. John was | a child by Mr. Bartlett's second marriage she was not Mary Esther, daughter of John and Rebecca (Bart- lett) Belden. The two lived in the meadow home- formerly Ralph I-aacs'-the site of which is now bi- sected by Morgan Avenue. This home was burned by Tryon on July 11, 1779, and Mr. Lockwood rebuilt on the N. E. corner ( 1896) of East and Morgan Avenues. Mr. Lockwood was a Congregationalist and his wife a Church of England woman. She overlived, by many years, her husband, and at the close of life was an invalid. " My father." writes Mrs. Elizabeth Adams, of Wisconsin, wer Elizabeth, daughter of Rev.

(subsequently bishop ) Kemper, of the Northwest, "loved, after his Norwalk Church services on Sunday were over, to visit and converse with old Mrs. Wm. St. John," whom the providence of God debarred from attendance upon public worship. She was an excel- lent woman, and is well remembered to-day. Her grandfather was John Bartlett, but as her mother was of William Haynes descent ( the first Mrs. John Bart- lett was a daughter of Mr. Haynes). Her Belden brothers were Isaac, Amos, John and Henry, and her sister Sarah married Samuel, father of LeGrand Can- non. This was vigorous blood. John Belden's voice as he called to his men or others from his grounds (opposite St. Mary's Church on West Avenue of 1896) was distinctly heard on the east side of the river. Mr -. St. John lived to nearly one hundred years of age, and she was the grandmother of well known Norwalk sons and daughters.

297

NORWALK.

John Cannon (Dr.), born July 7, 1752, was son of John'st (Commodore) and Esther (Perry) Cannon (see note page 13). Sarah, his wife, was a daughter of Col. Stephen and Ann (Fitch) St. John. The first Mrs. Stephen Buckingham St. John died April 14, 1808, leav- ing an only child George (Deacon George), and her husband married, second, May 21, 1811, Charlotte, born May 26, 1784, daughter of David and Sarah (Isaacs) Bush, of Green- wich, and had :

Elizabeth, born June 30, 1814, (Mrs. James A. Hoyt).

In the house which William and Mary Esther St. John occupied before was built their permanent house (on the lot, now vacant, first south of the Jas. H. Bai- ley residence, south end of Norwalk Green) was born June 4, 1741, Ralph, 2d. youngest son of Ralphist. and Mary (Rumsey) Isaacs. Ralphed. left Norwalk and established himself on "Cherry Hill," in the town of Branford. He was a Yale man, class of 1761, who, soon after quitting college married Mary, daughter of Peter and Abigail Perit, of Milford, and had seven children. One of his daughters, Grace, named for his Norwalk sister, Mrs. Luke Babcock, married Jon- athan Ingersoll, LL.D., of New Haven, the third child of Rev. Jonathan and Dorcas Ingersoll, of Ridgefield, and the brother of Mrs. General Joshua King, of the same town, who was the grandmother of Mrs. William S. Lockwood, of Norwalk. Dr. Jon- athan and Grace (Isaacs) Ingersoll had a daughter, Grace, concerning which Norwalk - descended lady, S. G. Goodrich (Peter Parley), thus writes :

"Grace Ingersoll: how beautiful the name, how suggestive of what she was in mind, in person, in character! On a certain occasion, Grace, who was a companion of my older sister's, came to our house. I imagine she did not see or notice me. Certainly she did not discover in the shy boy in the corner her future biographer. She was tall and slender, yet fully rounded, with rich, dark hair, and large Spanish eyes-now seemingly blue and now black, and chang- ing with the objects on which she looked, or the play of emotions within her breast. In complexion she was a brunette, yet with a melting glow in her cheek, as if she had stolen from the sun the generous hues which are reserved for the finest fruits and flowers. Her beauty was in fact so striking-at once so superb and so conciliating-that I was both awed and fascin- ated by her. Wherever she went I followed, though keeping at a distance, and never losing sight of her. She spent the afternoon at our house, and then de- parted and I saw her no more.

"It was not long after this that a Frenchman by the name of Grellet, who had come to America on some important commercial affairs, chanced to be at New York, and there saw Grace Ingersoll. Such beauty as that of the New Haven belle is rare in any country; it is never indigenous in France. Even if such could be born there, the imperious force of con-

ventional manners would have stamped itself upon her and made her a fashionable lady at the expense of that Eve-like beauty and simplicity which characterized her. It is not astonishing, then, that the stranger- accustomed as he was to all the beauty of French fashionable life-should still have been smitten with this new and startling type of female loveliness. From the first view of that fair lady M. Grellet was a doomed man. Familiar with the brilliant court of the Parisian capital, he might have passed by un- harmed, even by one as fair as our heroine, had it not been for that simplicity, that Puritanism of look and manner, which belonged to the social clim- ate in which she was brought up-so strongly in con- trast to the prescribed pattern graces of a French lady. He came, he saw, he was conquered. Being made captive, he had no other way than to capitulate. He was a man of good family, a fine scholar, and a fin- ished gentleman. He made due and honorable pro- posals, and was accepted-though on the part of the parents with many misgivings. Marriage ensued, and the happy pair departed for France. This took place in 1806. M. Grellet held a high social position, and on his arrival at Paris, it was a matter of pro- priety that his bride should be presented at court. Napoleon was then in the full flush of his imperial glory. As she was presented to him, in the midst of a dazzling throng, blazing with orders and diamonds, she was a little agitated, and her foot was entangled for a moment in her long train - then an indispens- able part of the court costume. Napoleon said in her hearing, voila de la gaucherie Americaine, American awkwardness. Madam Grellet, however, survived the shock of this discourtesy. She soon became a celeb- rity in the court circles, and always maintained pre- eminence, alike for beauty of person, grace of man- ners, and delicacy and dignity of character. More than once she had her revenge upon the Emperor, when in the center of an admiring circle, he, with others, paid homage to her fascinations. M. Grellet became one of Bonaparte's receivers-general, and took up his residence in the Department of the Dor- dogne-though spending the winters in Paris. Upon the fall of Napoleon, he lost his office, but was re-ap- pointed during the "hundred days," only to lose it again upon the final restoration of Louis XVIII. The shadows now gathered thick and dark around

298

NORWALK.

Frances Bush, born Nov. 16, 1819 (Mrs. Geo. A. Lally).'

Stephen Buckingham St. John died Aug. 12, 1831, and his widow, the prompt and energetic "widow Buckingham St. John " of later times, survived him until May 16, 1865. The last years of the second Mrs. Buckingham St. John were passed in New Haven, but the old Norwalk homestead was improved and well sustained by her capable daughter, Mrs. James A. Hoyt, whose husband was the son of James I. and grandson of Isaac and Mary (Raymond) Hoyt (see note page 135) and first cousin of Hon. John and Major Gen. W. T. Sherman. James A. Hoyt died April 24, 1876, and his wife May 21, 1891. Their children were :

Charles, born Dec. 14, 1835. (Died Dec. 8, 1862.) Charlotte Frances, b. Mar. 25, 1838. (Died Nov. 23, 1859.)

Buckingham, born June 8, 1448.

Goold, born July 30, 1851.

him. His wife having taking a violent cold was at- tacked with pleurisy, which resulted in a gradual de- cline. Gently but surely her life faded away. Death loves a shining mark, and at the early age of five-and- twenty she descended to the tomb. With two lovely daughters-the remembrances of his love and affec- tion-M. Grellet returned to the south of France, and in the course of years, he too was numbered with the dead.

" Almost half a century passed away, and the memory of Grace Ingersoll had long been obliterated from my mind, when it was accidently recalled. One evening being at the Tuileries-among the celebrities of the world's most brilliant court-I saw her bro- ther, R. I. Ingersoll. (Hon. Ralph Isaacs Ingersoll, grandson of Ralph Isaacs, Jr., and great-grandson of Ralph Isaacs, Sr., of Norwalk.) He was now the American Ambassador to Russia, and on his way thither. We met as if we were old friends. At length I recollected his sister Grace, and asked if her children were living. He replied in the affirmative, and that he was on the point of paying them a visit. I saw him a month afterward and he told me that he had just returned from the south of France, where he had enjoyed a most interesting stay of a fortnight with his nieces."

Of these nieces one, the older sister was a phy- sician's wife and the other was a religious recluse. The latter, however, obtained permission of her Su- perior to visit with her sister during her uncle, Hon. Ralph Isaacs Ingersoll's two weeks' stay with them. In reference to this visit and to his younger niece Mr. Ingersoll wrote thus to Mr. Goodrich :

" One day, after we had been talking as usual of America and her American relations, she excused herself to me for a short time, that she might go to her room and write a letter to the convent. She was

gone from me much longer than I had expected, and on her return I said to her :

. You must have been writing a long letter, if I may judge from the time you have been about it.'

' Yes,' was her reply, 'but I have not been writ- ing all the while; I have been praying.'

'Indeed! Do you pray often?'

'Yes-and even more often here than when I am at the convent.'

. Why so?'

'I fear dear uncle, that my affection for you will attract me too much to earth.' "'

It was a sorry 1779 Saturday evening hour when William and Mary Esther St. John were compelled to vacate the Norwalk house in which Grace Ingersoll's grandparent was born and from which her namesake "handsome and accomplished" great aunt (Grace Isaacs) went out to be devotedly admired by ( see page 218) Colonel (Gist) to which gallant suitor she gave final dismissal in her historic Westchester Co. home not perhaps an hour before General Kniphau sens' command surrounded her house and startled its occupant with the firing of musketry. It is said that Mrs. St. John took, in her declining days, great com- fort in sitting at the south room window of her new home (the old St. John house which stood on the north corner of the intersection, to-day, of Morgan and East Avenues) and looking over the adjoining an- cient premises. These premises were afterward oc- cupied by Mrs. St. John's own blood, the Sherry's and Skiddy's of a later date.

IGeo. A. Lally married, second, Harriet, daugh- ter of Capt. Richard and Mary ( Bontecou ) Han- ford, of Lansingburgh, N. Y., and sister of Levi C. Hanford, of Norwalk, and had George, Fanny (died young) and Frederick. Mr. Geo. A. Lally had, by his first marriage, a son James, who died in 1778.

299

NORWALK.

Louisa Cecilia, born June 19, 1840. Frederick W., born Nov. 23, 1854.

(Mrs. George B. Day.)

Fanny B., born March 6, 1860.

Louisa C., daughter of James A. and Elizabeth Hoyt, married October 19, 1865. George B. Day, and had Frederick H., born Aug. 24, 1866.

Buckingham, son of James A. and Elizabeth Hoyt. married Eva Beauchamp, of Syracuse, N. Y

Frederick W., son of James A. and Elizabeth Hoyt, married Nov. 1, 1893, Sarah L., daughter of Judge Asa B. and Sarah (Hanford) Woodward (see page 149).

BUCKINGHAM ST. JOHN LOCKWOOD.

Buckingham St. John, second son of Peter and Abigail Lockwood, married Feb. 17, 1805, Polly Esther, born March 10, 1783, daughter of William and Esther (Belden) St. John, and niece of Col. Stephen St. John,' and had :

Julia Abigail,' born Jan. 18, 1809, (unmarried).

'The daughters of Col. Stephen St. John had for a father the, so deemed, " handsomest man in Nor- walk." These daughters, Sarah (Mrs. Dr. John Can- non), Susanna (Mrs. Isaac Scudder Isaacs) and Nancy ( Mrs. Matthew Marvin, of Wilton ), were widely known ladies. Their Fitch grandfather, Samuel, was a brother of Gov. Thomas Fitch, and their Aunt Elizabeth (their mother's sister) was Mrs. Nehemiah Rogers, so that they were own cousins to Moses Fitch, Nehemiah and Henry Rogers, and their sec- ond cousins (see home-lots xi and xii, pages 161-220) were metropolitans of high social, professional and business positions. The descendants of Sarah Can- non, Susanna Isaacs and Nancy Marvin are many and their history would fill many pages. Dr. John and Sarah Cannon's family were :

John, born May 16, 1778. Sarah, born Oct. 22, 1780.

George, born May 7, 1784 (see page 189).

Harriet, born Oct. 31, 1786.

Antionette, born April 20, 1789 (see page 189). Charles Ogilvie, born Oct. 13, 1791.

Esther Mary, born Dec. 1793.

James LeGrand, born Oct. 12, 1796.

2Julia Abigail, oldest child of Buckingham St. | and Elizabeth, yet did she for several years survive

John and Polly Esther (St. John) Lockwood, was one of Norwalk's life-long loyal daughters. An unmis- takable "style" and an unmistakable solid sense were, as was the case with her sterling cousin, Sarah Louisa St. John (Mrs. Francis Skiddy), her characteristics. Mrs. Skiddy, albeit a resident of the metropolis, never interest-forgot her native town, and Miss Lock- ; wood, down to the close of a protracted life-day was possessed of the same true feeling. With pains-tak-

ing care she prepared at least five full copies of the family lineage and was ever ready and happy to fur- nish such information as to the town's people as lay in her power. Her reminiscences were valuable, and her regard for old associations was exceptional. Here (in her sitting room) she would remark, Samuel Can- non (father of LeGrand of Troy) died in his chair in that corner, and there "Mother Cannon" (Esther Perry) passed away. Out in the street in front-and she could point to the spot-Esaias Bouton, seated upon the saddle, would lift his hat and cavalierically salute the family as he galloped by the house. Yon- der, in the distance, she told where the steamer stopped which brought, in 1834, Nathan Warren of Troy to take a last look at his birthplace, and how the steamer waited at " Old Well" to allow time for LeGrand Cannon and Capt. Richard Hall Fitch (the first Mr. Warren's brother-in-law, and the second his sailing-master) to drive to the Lockwood house. Her Norwalk spirit and sympathies were praiseful and her unapocryphal provincial and personal recitations re- markable. She was the delight of her blood and was highly respected by the world outside of her kin. Although the senior of her two sisters, Mary Esther them, and took great comfort in their admirable memories.

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Norwalk, history from 1896, Part 42

Author: Selleck, Charles Melbourne. Publication date: 1896 Publisher: The author, Number of Pages: 553

Author: Selleck, Charles Melbourne.
Publication date: 1896
Publisher: The author,
Number of Pages: 553