USA > Connecticut > Fairfield County > Norwalk > Norwalk, history from 1896 > Part 8
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).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76
'This daughter of Esaias Bouton, brought up at the seaside, became the efficient wife of the inland resident, Jonathan Camp,3d. and she invested the Camp house at "East Rocks" ( still standing ) with history-industrious and inviting interest. The Camp farm, an inheritance to their children from the heads of the house, Jonathanist. and Ann Camp, comprised a no mean landed estate. At the immediate East Rocks portion of it, Mrs. Jonathan Camp3d. was a quiet power and her house built, it would appear, some years subsequently to her marriage and which, as is the case with the original Norwalk Jonathan Camp hearthstone, is in existence to-day, was an old- time family seat. She here lived in peaceful, sensi- ble simplicity. Among the relatives who visited her was her nephew, the Hon. Esaias Warren, mayor of Troy, N. Y., who, on one occasion, was accompanied by his daughters, Phoebe and Eliza. These sisters being at that time in somewhat delicate health, it was deemed advisable to consult, while in Norwalk, Dr. Richmond, a Saugatuck physician of repute, whose prescription much relieved the parent's anxiety. The Dr. counseled neither medicine nor medical attention, but simply healthful in and out-door exercise and recreation. Phoebe married a Washington, D. C., Tayloe, and Eliza (Mrs. John Paine of Troy) was the
grandmother of the late Dowager Duchess of Marl- borough, now Lady Beresford, whose step-son, the present Duke of Marlborough, recently took to him- self an American ( Vanderbilt ) bride. It may be looked upon as something of a coincidence that the New England ancestors of both Lady Beresford and the Countess of Castellaine lived within nine miles of each other-one at Ludlow's Fairfield home, and the other at Ludlow's Norwalk purchase.
Mrs. Hannah (Bouton) Camp died at the Camp home, in the arms of her daughter-in-law, the pres- ent Mrs. Jonathan Camp, of Cannon Street. Her sister-in-law, Rebecca, married Daniel Nash, of West- port, father of the 1896 brothers Edward H. and An- drew C. of that town. This Daniel was a man of pur- pose as well as of plenty. In the month of Feb., 1844, (he was then 74 years of age) having banking matters in the metropolis to attend to, he left Norwalk on Monday morning by steamboat from Old Well. As business hours were over before he reached the city, he spent the night with the Wood's in Brooklyn. On Tuesday he transacted what he had to do, and re- turned again to Brooklyn. On Wednesday morning the mercury had fallen, and it was very cold. He started from Brooklyn, bound for home, but the East river was filled with ice, and neither the Norwalk nor
57
NORWALK.
at the age of twenty-seven, wedded Jonathan Camp, 3d. the father of the late Jonathan, whose widow (Mary Cannon Camp) is now spending the evening of a long life in her peaceful Cannon Street home. Josiah, the last child of Esaias and Phoebe Bouton, who was born in the winter of 1768, died unmarried.
Within the seaside, side-hill, Bouton home-enclosure, and for many years surviving the old house, stood the bearings-appropriated, ruinous chimney, which seemed to struggle still to keep up the family memory. At its hearthstone-to-day entirely gone-when the flames at the nativity vigil "went roaring up," the farm hands were dismissed for their Yule-tide holiday. Old Christmas, which began on Christmas eve at the four miles distant parish Church, " all dressed in living green," and taper-blazing sometimes to the very spire, was a festal season at the Bouton homestead, been delightfully told by son, Dr. Nathan Bouton Troy. After the found- to rest, and the Christ- upon his grave, not dis- his daughter Hannah's Camp (Mrs.Dan'l.Nash) sent them from Sauga- the father's church' (St. luminating purposes. the story of which has the family's great-grand Warren, of Mount Ida, er of the house had gone mas stars looked down tant from the old home, sister -in - law, Rebecca made the candles and tuck. every Dec. 24, to Paul's, Norwalk) for il-
THE ESAIAS BOUTON CHIMNEY-REMAINS.
Bridgeport boats would attempt the trip. He return- ed to Brooklyn, and waited until Thursday morning, when, the weather continuing intensely cold, the only satisfaction to be obtained was that the Bridgeport steamer would sail on Friday morning. He staid with the Wood's until that date, and left them early Friday morning for home. The river was still full of ice, and the ferry boat was consequently delayed, so that when he reached the New York pier, the Bridgeport boat had just swung clear of it, and he was left behind. He must get to Connecticut that day, and he started at once for the Harlem depot, trains from which station ran as far as White Plains. Here, also, he was too late, and he now set out on foot for Westport. Fortunately he was soon overtaken by a rider, who helped him over five miles of the route. He then again took to walking, but was soon invited by a friendly sea captain to a place in his sleigh. The two rode together several miles, and the seaman, well pleased with his companion, carried him quite be-
yond the former's home. "Captain, what's to pay," inquired Mr. Nash after ten miles riding. "O noth- ing," replied the Captain, "I have had your com- pany." "And I have had yours," was the grateful good-bye of the New Englander, who, as the day was bright and the snow clean, plodded on. He arrived at Stamford soon after sundown, pressed on, pass- ing through Norwalk about nine o'clock, and entered his own house (now the home of his grandson Lloyd Nash) in Westport, as the clock was striking ten. This remarkable man was the grandfather of Hon. Daniel Nash Morgan, the present Treasurer of the United States.
1It was not altogether without reason that Phoebe Bouton ( Mrs. Eliakim Warren ) expressed from a Hudson River vessel's deck to a Norwalk kinswoman- the desire that the new St. Paul's, Troy, N. Y., (cor. Third and Congress Streets,) might be patterned after the mother Norwalk church, as indeed in size, shape and style, it quite resembled it.
58
NORWALK.
From the head of Pampaskashanke the Partrick-purchase Coast-Division followed the water line to the pioneers Roaton Poynt, (southeast rocky extremity, at this time, of Bell Island,) and winding to the west, embraced the present Bell Island shore, Pine Ledge and Roton Point, ending (after crossing the mouth of the Indian " Noewanton" of early Norwalk time) at Butler's (Contentment) Island, which is now laved, on the east, by the sparkling Rowalton.
NORWALK FRESH WATER SYSTEM.
That it was a "land of brooks of water that spring out of valleys and hills," was a commendation to the fathers of the territory known to them under the Indian name of Norwake. The whole region was well watered, and portions of it quite exceptionally so; a fact that determined certain settlement-sites.' That Wilton should originate at Pimpe- waugh is thus easily comprehended, and that Silver Mine should have been such an early suburb is now a matter of no more difficult solution. It is mentioned that the springs west and northwest of Smith's Ridge2 gave rise to habitations along the "Government line," and its handsome water sheets early attracted attention to The Oblong.3
The Saugatuck, Norwalk and Five Mile rivers all lay within the bounds of the ancient plantation, the thither side of the first and last of which streams having been owned and occupied by the Norwalk " proprietors." The Norwalk and Saugatuck rivers seem to part from their parent source near the Ridgefield southeasterly and Redding west- erning boundaries. The Saugatuck skirted, if not entered, the 1650-1700 Norwalk limits to the east of Poplar Plains. From thence it flowed southeasterly to the sea, being con- trolled, on both sides, as it reached its mouth, by the Norwalk fathers. The Norwalk river had two, so-called, branches, known in the early times as the east and west branches, which met, where they meet to-day, at Broad River. The east branch is, properly, Nor- walk river itself. The west branch, flowing through Silver Mine, headed in reality where heads the east branch, not far from the southern base of Ridgefield Street. Its recorded
'The fathers exhibited a propensity to found hab- itations along water-courses.
"The very depths of Luke's woods were, for this reason, Keeler-appropriated, and its pure water sup- ply suggested the Solomon Warren house-site in said woods' vicinity in northwestern New Canaan. Be- tween Smith and Canaan ridges, and somewhat south of the present New York State line, is a perpetual spring, once deemed medicinal, which is now the head of the New Canaan water-works reservoir. Its waters, from the days of the Indian occupancy of Mount Misery,* to the present time, have been re- markable for their clarity. There seemed to be a belt of such springs in this local latitude. Heckett,
or his son, pitched beside one of them, about one- half mile south of Trinity Lake, and another of rare purity bubbled up in the New Canaan Aaron Miller meadow of the present day.
It has been wondered why the proprietors built in some cases near swamps. Wells were not always dug, but the water was taken from springs, hence spring-accessibility was a desideratum.
3Trinity Lake, Lake Kitchawan, (Cross-pond ) and the three Waccabucs, are fine sheets of water. Near the first-named of these waters, some of the best grain in the whole Norwalk region was once grown, and near the second is the grand-view sum- mer home-site of the Crafts family of Boston.
*Rise east of the upper end of Canaan Ridge.
59
NORWALK.
head was at Michael Lockwood, Jr's. mill,' on the road leading, in 1896, from Bald Hill to Vista, which branch to-day is crossed by "Hop-Meadow Bridge," on the Ridgefield road above North Wilton. Another feeder to Norwalk river was the present Westchester stream which runs into the upper reservoir of the Norwalk water-works. This reservoir is sup- plied largely by springs lying, perhaps entirely, within the State of New York, but it has two distinct running supplies. In a swamp close to the State line, two miles southwest of Ridgefield, rises a brooklet which, flowing southward, passes to the east of the late Martin A. Hanford Lewisboro' farm, and enters, within a few furlongs, the northmost Norwalk reservoir. "Pike Pond," west, in 1896, of the Lewisboro' post-office, of spring origin, crosses the New Canaan and Salem highway about a half-mile above "Hayes' corner," creates the present C. A. Raymond mill-pond, and bridged by the New Canaan and Ridge- field highway at the foot of Harvey Hoyt's hill, empties, a short distance to the east, into the reservoir alluded to. In this stream, and at a little distance from said reservoir, were formerly immersed members of the Baptist persuasion in that part of the "Oblong." Five Mile river begins in the wet lands2 immediately over the Connecticut and New York State line, at Vista. It courses through a portion of the Samuel Comstock farm, and through the "Pequot Mills " woods, when, supplying the old Bouton Hoyt mill-pond, southeast of Haynes' Ridge in New Canaan, and lower down the Justus Hoyt pond, and winding east of the New Canaan street down through White Oak Shade and West Norwalk (where it is mill-utilized), finds its way finally to Rowayton and then to the Sound.
Lake Siscowitz, (Warren Lake) in the northwestern part of the New Canaan of 1896, and the recent purchase for a Stamford surplus water supply, was one of ancient Norwalk's natural water-basins. It is fed by springs and streams found largely in The Oblong. Its southern precincts are to-day picturesque, but were of yore even more wild because of their remarkable tree-growth. In proximity to this water stood the wigwam of one of the trio of semi-chieftains, of which the red Heckett was, presumably, a member. Said brethren, as was the case with their fathers before them, appear to have been friendly with the English, and their portion of earlier Norwalk, on account of the hunting and fish- ing thereat, was a sort of sportsman's haunt. Trinity Lake lay to the northwest, and its
1 Michael Lockwood was the grandfather of the late Carmi, and the great-grandfather of the present Edward K. Lockwood. He, in the later years of the 18th century, planted a mill industry at the highest point on the west branch of the Norwalk river, and the identical spot is put to the same use to-day. Said point is about one mile northwest of Bald Mountain, Wilton, and adjoins the New York State line. Mi- chael Lockwood Ist. had a son Michael 2d., who, after his marriage, established himself on the same stream, somewhat below his father's old mill. The mother of Michael 2d., now a widow, helped her son on in his enterprise at "The Forge," so-called, and took up her residence with him. In addition to his iron
works at this point, Michael 2d. carried on brick-kiln operations. Still further south, at the head of the present Grupe reservoir, Michael Lockwood 2d. built and ran a saw-mill. This last mill fell, finally, to Carmi, son of Michael 2d., who was there associated in cloth milling with Curtis Finch. Mr. Finch after- ward converted the woolen into a saw-mill.
2A rock close by these lands is the point at which the lines of three towns (New Canaan, Lewisboro' and Pound Ridge) and of two counties (Fairfield and Westchester) and two States (Connecticut and New York) and two national divisions (New England and the Middle States) meet.
60
NORWALK.
banks were subdued, several quarter centuries since, by the Five Mile River Raymond family. Acres of land around this lake were Raymond-planted, and wheat there grew so luxuriantly that the owners employed as many as five men, whose duty it was to watch the grain at that stage in its growth when the tender plant was a temptation to the deer which fairly infested the Oblong confines of Norwalk at that time. One of these watchers was a Slauson, (believed to be Nathan) who built his home a short distance south of the lake, on the present road to New Canaan. A son of one of the red men last referred to, taught Mr. Slauson the art of tanning the deers' hide, and as the latter was an apt pupil, he soon acquired the knowledge necessary to enable him to make a suit of deer-skin, in which he was proudly married in the ancient Congregational Church in New Canaan. Deer so abounded in that day in northern Norwalk as that bear-hunting became a pastime. The bear was the enemy of the deer, and the settlers, consequently, were that animal's foe.
There were two principal "mill brooks," distinguished as such by the earliest comers. The older of the two flowed from Strawberry Hill, and was increased by a brook that took its rise in Thomas Hanford's upland, now the rear of the F. St. John Lockwood resid- ence. This was the stream, at certain seasons considerably swollen but at other times hardly more than a meadow-brook, that failed to meet Norwalk's first milling demand.
Mill Brook No. 2 (Brook b', including Beaver Brook) was only a few miles long, but its source, and a goodly portion of its length, lay in early days in such a wooded and therefore drought-deterring district, that it occasionally emerged in torrent volumes into Norwalk river east of the Stephen St. John drug store, (its site the western end of the Phoenix Block of to-day.) Mill Brook No. 2, forming a basin below the Hazel Plain, (rear of the Newtown Avenue residences of Albert Betts and St. John Merrill,) fed from early times a mill-wheel at the foot of Cider Mill Lane, (leading in 1896 from North Center School-house to Allen Betts' saw-mill,) and has long been mill-used. Tributary to it was a small brooklet from the direction of the Northeast School District that crossed the "cart path to Cranberry Plains," a little north of the residence of the late Judge Stephen Smith.2
The "Lockwood well," contiguous to, if not a contingency of Mill Brook, No. 2, and which stood in the lot (now Quintard Block) opposite said St. John's store, was reput- able for its water supply and sweetness. So full of short staddles, one-hundred-and-twen- ty years ago, was that portion of this brook's valley lying immediately north of St. Paul's Church, that a "Pudding Lane" youth therein and thereabouts, for three days eluded pursuit ; and yet so susceptible of cultivation has that same staddle-vale proven, that in 1825. the finest of Norwalk fruit was there grown.
North Brook under-runs the Westport road, at the foot of the Ebenezer Church home-land. Close to it stood, prior to the Revolution, the hat-shop of Ebenezer Church Ist.
ISee bottom note, page 36.
-Near-by was the well known old-time Beaver dam which stood. evidently, not far from the Stephen
Smith hat shop, on the cross road between the pres- ent Newtown and Blue Mountain Avenues. It is re- membered to this day.
61
NORWALK.
Here, tradition claims, the wife of Gov. Fitch, who was aunt by marriage to Susannah,' the first wife of Ebenezer Church, Ist. found shelter, immediately after the burning of Nor- walk, in 1779.
Stony Brook may properly be said to rise in the Olmstead Cranberry Plains swamp, north or northwest of the present residence of Silas Olmstead. It is difficult, however, to exactly place the source of this brook, as it is augmented by a stream, sometimes of large volume, which, starting at Chestnut Hill above the Hiram Nash corner of 1896, and thence flowing near the lower down Burwell Gregory home, crosses the Chestnut Hill and Cran- berry Plains roads somewhat below the foot of said hill, making its southeasterly way to Stony Creek proper, when the united streams flow together to the Saugatuck river, into which they empty at a point, west side, some distance below the main bridge at Westport. This stream furnishes the present Nash mill with water power.
The spring water on Benedict's (now Armory) hill, is appropriated to-day by Mrs. Charles D. Matthews of West Avenue. Her residence (built by Le Grand Lockwood) is water- supplied from this excellent fountain.
Hungry Spring, to-day covered by Seymour Place and immediately north of the residence of Henry Seymour, was a notable spring in old times.
Shovel Hill brook formerly poured quite a large quantity of water from the height known by that name (Cedar Street of 1896) into the small creek that found its outlet at Pine Island. The hat manufactory of the brothers Geo. W. and Wm. H. Benedict stood along that stream. Before that time, in the days of James Seymour,? it was Indian traversed. There would seem to have been Indian quarters near the hill's summit.
Campfield Pond was somewhere near the site of the Seymour nursery of a few years ago. It seems to have lain northwesterly of the Consolidated road's (1896) newly built South Norwalk passenger stations. It probably took its name from Campfield Hill, in its neighborhood, and was called for Samuel, son of Matthew Campfield, the settler.
The "Old Well," near the present South Norwalk steamboat dock, is alluded to on page 54.
As sweet and silvery water even as that of Kitchawan's Springs, probably, was found on the crest of Flax Hill. Particular mention of the splendid orchards of said hill
IShe was one of the several daughter of Samuel Fitch, son of Thomas, and brother of Gov. Thomas Fitch.
2Mr. Seymour built and occupied, on the east side of West Avenue, and toward the southern end of the present Matthews property. His house, known fifty or sixty years ago as the Hotchkiss house, was one for " the entertainment of strangers," and sometimes the meadows near it (now a section of the Matthews lawn) would be filled with cattle which, under the care of " drovers," were there transiently quartered. The Indians, a remaining fraction-clan, resident in the 1896 Bull Run proximity, evidently knew their way
to the Seymour kitchen. One of these red sons, as Mr. Seymour was accustomed to relate to his child- ren, entered on one occasion his kitchen, and whilst attendants chanced for the moment to be elsewhere, took a meal pudding from a vessel of boiling water, and concealing it under his blanket, promptly started for home. The proprietor had witnessed the man- œuvre, and gave pursuit. He overtook the purloiner on Shovel Hill, and feigning affection, closely em- braced him. This, however, because of the meal's caloric, became so oppressive that " the last of the Mohicans " was compelled to decline that particular species of friendship-warmth.
62
NORWALK.
was made by the late Edward St. John, of Cornwall-on-Hudson, and another departed lover of old Norwalk referred fondly to that same heights' crystal water in the days when for Norwalk youth and beauty to go a-violeting, a-butter-cuping, a May-appling, and later a-hazel-nutting and a-black-berrying, was not the faded picture that it is to-day.
There were two "Captain's Springs" in old time, one near "deacon Hayt's house," and another, named for Captain Keeler, and located west of his mill-pond (Union Manu- facturing Co. site) on or near Spring Hill, which hill, because of its "circling ripples," was properly designated.
Silver Mine Spring, medicinally celebrated, lay in Silver Mine, and Cheese Spring somewhat further north. There may have been two "George's" springs, one at Rocky Neck (Saugatuck river) and the other at, possibly, "George's Hill on the west side of the river." "Rock and Rockie " springs were, possibly, one and the same.
There were two "Cold Springs." No. I stood on the present West Avenue Mat- thews premises, while from an incidental reference in vol. v, Norwalk Town Records, of the Cold Spring of 1728, it is inferred that this was the same fount that Moore & Durham (contractors in 1848 under Bishop & Miller for the construction of a Norwalk section of the New York and New Haven R. R.) found in the "Kellogg Swamp cut" between Nor- walk and Westport. This spring, if not obliterated, seems now to lose its " cooling draughts" along the same road's enlarged bed of 1896.
Fruitful Spring, "behind Pine Hill,"' was one of the pioneers' best known water- wells. Like " y" old well," and the Rogers Shippan Point spring, it lay close to the salt water, but singularly unlike the other two, its specific gravity was such that, at times, it floated salt water. As far back as the days of Thomas, son of Richard Seymour, the set- tler, it was evidently a coveted treasure. Its later seaside neighbors would fill their small boats with firkins wherein to carry away the beverage. It took its name, so it is claimed, from the fact that its surface, in past time, would often be covered by the fruit of a beach
IPine Hill, seat to-day, at its northern and south- ern extremities, of the Keyser, Staples and Marvin Brothers residences was, in all probability, the pro- prietors' SUN DIAL. It unquestionably derived its primal name from its native pine or cedar features, but as the expressive cognomen "noon," was also applied to it, and that of "behind noon" to its rear vicinity. the only reconcilable theory in relation to this second appellation is, that in the Founders' days, when time-pieces were scarce, the shadows of the pines, cast straight down, indicated meridian. There were no mails to close or banks to shut or trains to catch, and on these accounts, consequently, there was no flurry, neither fever nor fret ; still, Stephen Beckwith, Mark St. John, Walter Hoyt, and others, several and many, who there planted and pastured, and hoed, harrowed and harvested, needed to be ap- prised of the hour at which to call in the "herd," or
break off for dinner. As, therefore, the ray of verti- cal sunlight striking the notch cut in the door-sill or stoop-floor at home, intimated that noon had come, so the vertical shade of Pine Hill told the " down in the neck" watcher and worker that 12 o'clock had arrived. This lends an archaic interest to a spot, the modern site and salubrity advantages of which are, with difficulty, exaggerated.
By reason of its soil's grain-adaptation, the Sau- gatuck ancestors of the present Marvin Bros., pur- chased and worked the southern slope of Pine Hill. This arable stretch (between the residences of the two brethren named) has always kept its grain productive reputation, yielding handsome returns to-day. Salub- rious, sightly, Pine Hill is interest-historic. It was a spot held in admiration by the author of Hall's Nor- walk, and has never parted with its sea, sky and land- scape beauties.
63
NORWALK.
grove, a portion of which overhung it. The interesting settlement-memento remains to be visited to-day.
The middle section Strawberry Hill springs, unquestionably, were the heads of Mill-Brook No. I.
The Jabez Gregory spring has deserved reference in another connection in this work.
The spring in "Rattle Snake-pasture lot," (Sticky Plain road, head of Harriet Street,) was probably the source of the stream that formerly coursed near the present Union Ceme- tery, forming, partially, the "Captain Lamb pond," and discharged itself in Norwalk river.
Darrow's pond has no visible inlet or outlet. It is in the rear of the Treadwell and McLean North Avenue residences of 1896.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.