USA > Connecticut > Fairfield County > New Canaan > Readings in New Canaan history > Part 10
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tions within their jurisdictions, the Lawes he hath made, and to make, and repeale Orders for smaller matters, not particularly determined in Scripture .. . and require due execution of them."
In the new Colonial government of 1643 the franchise was still limited to church members. The voters at large elected a Governor, Magistrates, and other officers. Each town elected two Deputies to the General Court. Each town had a Plantation Court for minor causes. Capital and major causes were heard by a Court of Magistrates. From 1643 on, New Haven township and New Haven Colony were two distinct organizations, with distinct governments.
From 1644 to the end, New Haven Colony consisted only of those same six towns: New Haven, Milford, Guilford, Branford, Southold and Stamford. Settlers spread out to some extent but the only addi- tional villages were maintained as dependencies - Hashomamock near Southold, and Derby above Milford. Greenwich, after it was transferred back from Dutch jurisdiction in 1650, became part of Stamford.
Eaton and the other leaders at New Haven had dreams of an empire of trade along the shore of the Sound, on Long Island, and extending as far as Delaware Bay "where New England ends." But it was not to be. They were hemmed in by Saybrook on the east, the Dutch on the west. Connecticut's Fairfield, Stratford and Norwalk cut a wide wedge between Milford and Stamford. Southampton, East Hampton and Huntington, on Long Island, which New Haven hoped to acquire, put themselves under Connecticut. Attempts to establish trading posts on the Delaware led only to trouble with the Dutch and the Swedes who were already there, and had to be abandoned.
There were other disasters. One of the worst of these was the loss of their first large ship. Even her name is lost, and she is known to history simply as the Phantom Ship. Determined to inaugurate a trade with England, Eaton and others promoted the building of a ship suitable for the purpose. In December of 1645 it was loaded with a rich cargo of beaver and other commodities. On board was the manuscript of a book Davenport planned to have printed in London. The passenger list included Francis Brewster and Thomas Gregson, the latter bound for London to seek a charter from Parliament. In January the ship was worked out through the ice-bound harbor and sailed for England. Two years later, according to one of the many
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versions, the people of New Haven saw their great ship, all sails set, in the sky above the meeting house. On deck was a lone figure with drawn sword pointing at the sea. Then in a cloud of smoke the Phantom Ship vanished.
Many of the settlers had been men of wealth, but the expenses of creating a town, losses in the Delaware venture, in the Phantom Ship, and in an iron works near East Haven - all these things caused a severe drain on their resources. Moreover, the great majority of the people lived by the soil. The merchants may have dreamed of a com- mercial empire, but in the last analysis New Haven Colony's towns were agricultural, not commercial communities. In the years to come New England was to gain fortunes by trade around the Seven Seas, but New Haven Colony did not survive long enough to share in that magnificent era.
The beginning of the end was the grant of Connecticut's charter in 1662. This charter, obtained through the diplomatic efforts of John Winthrop, Jr., as emissary of the Three River Towns, granted Connecticut a territory that clearly included all of New Haven Colony. Almost immediately Hartford approached New Haven with a demand that the Colony submit to the jurisdiction of Connecticut. The arguments that followed were always polite but at times bitter. Letters were exchanged; committees met; an appeal was taken to United Colonies; but Connecticut stood firm. New Haven argued that neither Winthrop nor the King had intended a charter that would deprive New Haven Colony of its independent status. Hart- ford answered that once the charter had passed the seals it meant what it said. Whatever Winthrop may have later told New Haven, his instructions when he went to London in 1661 were plain enough. He was told to seek a patent for the territory extending from Ply- mouth's boundaries to Delaware Bay. Neither in Winthrop's instruc- tions nor in his petition to the Crown was there any mention of New Haven Colony. One cannot escape the suspicion, if not the conclu- sion, that Connecticut from the start planned to absorb New Haven. It is possible that Winthrop sensed this as early as 1657. The year before, he had taken a house in New Haven township. In all prob- ability he would have been the next Governor of the Colony, but in 1657 he was offered the governorship of Connecticut, and he moved to Hartford.
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For two years the charter arguments went on, but New Haven was doomed. Even in the 1650s some of her satellite towns were showing a spirit of unrest under the restraints of the parent govern- ment. The rigid limitation on the right to vote, and the refusal of the New Haven leaders to consent to even the slightest liberalization of the system, alienated many citizens. More and more they began to look with envy on the broader privileges of Connecticut. Now the way was open to them to attain those privileges.
Within a matter of a few weeks a majority at Southold voted to withdraw and join Connecticut. A large part of Guilford soon fol- lowed. By the end of 1662 Stamford (with Greenwich) had gone over bodily. Milford departed in 1664. Only Branford and New Haven itself remained loyal to the end.
The deciding factors were undoubtedly the Duke of York's patent and the arrival of the royal commission instructed to capture New Netherland, and investigate the Puritan colonies of New England. Massachusetts sent word to Hartford and New Haven to settle their dispute. Unless the colonies put up a united front there was grave danger that all of New Haven and half of Connecticut would be taken over by the new Colony of New York. The last thing New Haven wanted was to be under "a Royalist, a Romanist and a Stuart." As between the Hartford Government and the Duke of York's private colony, New Haven much preferred Hartford.
At a General Court held on December 13, 1664, attended by "the freemen of New Haven, Guilford, Branford, and part of Milford, and as many of the Inhabitants as was pleased to come," it was voted that if by the act of the King's commissioners "it shall appeare to our committee that we are by his majesties authority now put under Connecticut Pattentt, wee shall submit, as from a necessity brought upon us. .. . " Meantime, on November 30th, the commissioners had decided that Connecticut's southern boundary was the sea, and that all the plantations east of a line NNW from Mamaroneck creek were to be under the jurisdiction of Connecticut. The final entry in the records of New Haven Colony is dated January 5, 1664/5. It is a copy of a return of the committee, stating that having now seen a copy of the commissioners' decision. "wee doe declare submission." New Haven Colony was no more.
Although New Haven suggested that committees meet to arrange
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terms of union, Connecticut appointed no such committee. It simply took over the New Haven towns. In August 1665 the laws of Connecticut were read at a public meeting in New Haven. In an act of indemnity, the General Court decreed that all former acts of New Haven Colony "are buryed in perpetuall oblivion."
Once union was an accomplished fact, it is probable that the great majority of the people of New Haven Colony were entirely satisfied with the change in government. In 1665 deputies from New Haven attended the General Court at Hartford. William Leete, last Governor of New Haven, was soon to be Governor of Connecticut. Of the old leaders of New Haven Colony, John Davenport and Abraham Pierson alone refused to accept the situation. Pierson led his Branford congregation to a new plantation at Newark, New Jersey, Davenport became pastor of the First Church in Boston. Davenport's last years were both bitter and tragic - bitter because of his disappointment over the end of New Haven Colony; tragic because his removal to the Boston church had been accompanied by a scandal involving a member of his family. Only a few months after taking over his duties in Boston, Davenport died.
In marble, over the east entrance to the Capitol at Hartford, John Davenport may be seen preaching that first sermon under the great oak at Quinnipiac. On the north front, Theophilus Eaton stands in stone. New Haven Colony has not been forgotten. Nor was the Davenport name lost to Connecticut. In Boston in 1669 was born another John Davenport - a grandson. For nearly forty years he would be the minister at Stamford.
A quarter of a century after the date of the charter, Connecticut ceased to exist as a separate and independent colony. In 1685 James II became king of England, and almost immediately Governor Treat was informed that "His majesty intends to bring all New England under one government; and nothing is now remaining on your part but to think of an humble submission and a dutiful resignation of your charter. . . " In December, 1686, Sir Edmund Andros arrived at Bos- ton as Governor of the Dominion of New England. Again demand was made for surrender of the charter, and again Connecticut appealed to London. But late in October, 1687, Andros, his patience exhausted, appeared at Hartford with a body of troops. As a token of surrender, the metal stamp used for making the Connecticut seal was
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handed to Andros, while the Secretary of State recorded that Con- necticut had been, by His Majesty, annexed to Massachusetts and the other New England colonies. He closed his minute book with the word "Finis".
All that remained was the formal surrender of the charter itself. For this, a second meeting was planned for the next evening. It proved to be an evening not of surrender, but of drama. At the head of the table sat His Excellency the Governor of New England. On the table, between two candle sticks, lay the charter in its box. Suddenly, in the midst of an argument, the lights went out. The candles were quickly re-lighted, but history was made in those few seconds of darkness. When the lights came up it was discovered that the box was empty - the charter was gone.
Who took it, where it went, where it remained for over a century, are questions still argued by historians, but Connecticut people will always believe that, for one night at least, the charter was hidden in an old oak. Tradition or fact, the Charter Oak is part of Connecti- cut's historical heritage. Actually there were duplicate charters. One of them - and perhaps it will never be known which one - is now in the State Library at Hartford, framed in wood from the Charter Oak.
Temporarily, however, the midnight adventures of the charter went for naught. Andros abolished the Connecticut government and controlled its affairs from Boston, the capital of his Dominion of New England. It took a revolution in England to erase that "Finis" from Connecticut's minute book. The English people had no love for James II, and in 1689 they sent for William of Orange, the king's son-in-law. William drove James into exile and became king. As soon as the news reached Boston, Andros was cast into jail, while in Hartford the citizens voted to restore the old Connecticut govern- ment. In 1690 and again in 1693 the Attorney General in London rendered his opinion that since there was no record that the charter had ever been surrendered or vacated, "the same remained good and valid at law". This was confirmed by King William in 1694, and Connecticut was again Connecticut.
STAMFORD
Puritanism being itself born of dissent, its logical result, at least potentially, was more dissension. Throughout much of the history of
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New England one can trace a pattern. A plantation would be organ- ized, its church established. Presently signs of dissatisfaction would appear. Then the dissident group, often centered around the person- ality of a minister, would break off and start a new plantation of their own. As Wethersfield had broken off from Watertown, so Stamford broke off from Wethersfield.
The trouble at Wethersfield began almost before there was a Wethersfield. Oldham's Nine Adventurers of 1634 were soon fol- lowed by a larger group from Watertown. Unlike Windsor and Hartford, the Wethersfield people did not bring a church organiza- tion from Massachusetts and there was apparently no formal church until 1636 or 1637. Three ministers, including the Rev. Richard Denton, had arrived in 1638, but because of the lack of records it is not certain whether any one of them was chosen as the regular min- ister at that time.
The cause of the trouble is also lost in obscurity, but back in Boston John Winthrop the elder, that indefatigable journalist, noted that there was disagreement on the river. In 1639 there were, according to Winthrop, only seven members of the Wethersfield church. They were divided into two factions, 4 against 3. The majority included Denton, Andrew Ward, Robert Coe and Jonas Weed. Whatever the trouble was, it must have been deemed serious. The parent church at Watertown sent a committee to try to solve the problem. So did the Hartford government. Up from Quinnipiac came John Davenport to add his counsel. All of them failed to effect a reconciliation, and it was recognized that one faction or the other must go. An agreement was finally reached under which a majority of the church members but a minority of the inhabitants were to leave Wethersfield, taking with them the church organization. The next question was where to go. The answer was provided by John Davenport.
Just as Roger Ludlow had purchased the Norwalk tract as a buffer state, so had Quinnipiac acquired land towards the Dutch holdings. This was Rippowams or Toquams west of Norwalk. In 1642 the New Haven General Court would name it Stamford. Anxious for settlers in this new area, and anxious to aid the Wethersfield people, Daven- port suggested Rippowams as the site for their plantation. In the autumn of 1640 this offer was confirmed at New Haven. The Court
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entered into an agreement with Ward and Coe by which Rippowams was sold to them for the price paid, fixed at {33, and the settlers agreed to accept the New Haven system and put themselves under the New Haven government.
Back in Wethersfield twenty men bound themselves to go to Rippowams by the middle of May. A little later ten more names were added. The purchase price was translated into 100 bushels of corn, and the thirty planters were assessed varying fractions of the total, to be paid when the corn had been raised. There have been whispers that Stamford still owes New Haven some of that corn.
Twenty nine men came to Rippowams that summer of 1641 and were immediately allotted lands. Presumably some of them brought their families. By the end of 1642 the list of inhabitants included fifty nine family names.
In October, 1641, the planters were summoned to a sort of town meeting. There they elected two Deputies to the General Court at New Haven, and five men to constitute a provisional governing body. New Haven appointed one of them as constable to represent the parent government. Apparently this somewhat make-shift arrangement was used for about two years. The General Court would sometimes sit as it had before, that is, as a town government for New Haven. If the Stamford delegates were present, the session was recorded as "for the jurisdiction." After the New Haven colonial government was adopted in 1643 Stamford was given a Magistrate and a plantation court.
Stamford never took kindly to the jurisdiction of New Haven. Richard Denton was one of those who objected seriously to the limi- tation on the franchise, and the rigid, autocratic system by which they were ruled. He departed for Hempstead, Long Island, then under Dutch jurisdiction, taking with him many of the original settlers from Wethersfield. By 1653 disloyalty to New Haven was almost open rebellion. Several of the inhabitants who found "no justice in New Haven tyranny" were tried for sedition and convicted. In 1662, therefore, when Connecticut's claim to the Stamford terri- tory under her charter offered an opportunity for change, Stamford was more than willing to break away from New Haven. The minutes of the Connecticut General Court for October 9, 1662, contain an
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entry to the effect that the Court accepts the plantations at Stamford and Greenwich. Thereafter Stamford was part of Connecticut.
In Stamford, as well as in Norwalk, the settlers spread out to the north, and in May of 173 1 some of these Stamford people joined with their neighbors across the line in Norwalk in a petition to the General Assembly for a new church society. Thus, out of Norwalk and Stamford, came Canaan Parish. When, in 1801, the Parish sought incorporation as a township, the name could not be Canaan. Up in the northwest corner of the State was another Canaan, settled later but incorporated earlier. So the new Canaan was named New Canaan.
This, then, is the story of the ancestry of New Canaan. The genealogical history of New Canaan's people would fill many vol- umes. They or their ancestors came from many places, many coun- tries. Yet there is a certain parallel between the town and its people. Many of New Canaan's families are descended from the founders of Norwalk and Stamford. Ancestors of our people can be found among the Dorchester settlers of Windsor, and Stiles' hapless work- men who were driven off the great meadow with unbeseeming words; among Hooker's flock that marched overland to Hartford through the wilderness; among the Nine Adventurers who first planted Wethersfield; among those who came to Quinnipiac on the Hector, to found New Haven Colony. And there are in the New Canaan of today descendants of Roger Ludlow and others of those pioneers who came to Massachusetts Bay in the Mary and John.
AV
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Edwin Eberman 1946
JELLIFF'S MILL - A mill operated continuously at this site on the Noroton River (just north of the Merritt Parkway) from about 1709 until destroyed by fire in 1949.
HISTORY OF CANAAN PARISH From Founding to 1801
By CHARLOTTE CHASE FAIRLEY
This thorough and detailed history was written by Charlotte Chase Fairley (Mrs. Samuel C.) in two sections. The first, covering the period to 1801, won a prize offered by the newly launched "New Canaan Gazette" and was published in seven weekly installments from December 12, 1932. The second was written in response to general interest and appeared in the same paper in thirty-one installments from September 16, 1933. Until now it has been available only in scrap-book form in the Society's library. It is here reprinted by permission of John McLane Clark, former editor of the "Gazette" (now editor of the "Eagle" of Claremont, N.H.) and of Mrs. Fairley, who now lives at Canandaigua, N.Y., and is an honorary member of The New Canaan Historical Society.
TF a Connecticut Yankee of today like Mark Twain's hero could fall asleep on our village green at the foot of the Celtic cross, and sleep while time slipped backwards, but for only two centuries instead of thirteen, he would awaken to a scene far different from that upon which he had closed his eyes. He would find himself at the foot of a thickly wooded hillside, with the sights and sounds of a virgin forest all about him. He might catch a glimpse of a herd of deer browsing along the glade, or be startled at the sight of a bear lumbering up the hill, or a wildcat creeping through the underbrush. Possibly a bronze form with bow in hand would come into view, silent as a shadow, skulking in pursuit.
For when the eighteenth century began, these wooded hills and valleys were still the home of Indians and wild beasts alone, although on paper they had belonged to the white man for some fifty years. The legal owners of these wild tracts had probably not yet settled nearer than "Norruck" or "Rippowam" (Stamford). The very first house in Connecticut, built in Windsor only twelve years after the Pilgrims landed in Plymouth, had weathered a hundred years before our Canaan Parish was born. This settlement at Windsor, together
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with Wethersfield and Hartford, had convened all their "free plant- ers" at Hartford in 1639 to form the Commonwealth of Connecticut. Four years later this new colony united with Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth and New Hampshire in a confederacy sorely needed for mutual protection in the troubled times to follow.
In the company that came from Hartford was a certain Roger Ludlow who had been a noted magistrate at home in England before he came to the new world in 1630, settled at Dorchester, and became lieutenant-governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony. He was now made deputy-governor of the new colony of Connecticut, and to him was . assigned the task of collecting and revising a body of laws for the colony. This public work and the business of sustaining life in a new country evidently did not absorb all his energies, for we hear that in February of the next year, 1640, he purchased from the "Norruck" Indians what is now the eastern part of Norwalk, the land between the Norwalk and Saugatuck ("Soakatuck") Rivers. For lack of better surveying, the extent of the purchase inland is described as being "from the sea, a day's walk into the country." It is interesting to find among the Indians who appended their mark to this deed such familiar names as Tokeneke, and "Mahackemo," (perhaps another spelling of "Wackemene," descendant of Chief Ponus.) Two months later, what is now the west side of Norwalk was conveyed by deed to a certain Captain Patrick, the "extent up in the country" being again "as far as an Indian can go in a day from sun rising to sun setting." It was several years after this before Norwalk was permanently settled. Then in 165 1 we find a third deed of land within the limits of Norwalk given by the Indians to Richard Web and thirteen other planters of that settlement. This tract, farther west than the second, reached from the Norwalk River to the Rowalton, or Five Mile River, and again a day's walk toward the north, thus covering the eastern part of Canaan Parish. The price paid for this land is given as "30 fathom of wampum, 10 kettles, 15 coates, 10 payr of stockings, 10 knives, 10 hookes, 20 pipes, 10 muckes, 10 needles."
RIPPOWAM BOUGHT IN 1640
Meanwhile, in 1640, the same year in which Roger Ludlow was coming south from Hartford to acquire shore land from the Indians,
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the New Haven Colony sent an agent to buy the land called Rippo- wam. The name was changed to Stamford in 1642. The first six deeds are signed by the curious mark of Ponus, sagamore of Toquams, and Wascussue, sagamore of Shippan. Another deed, fifteen years after the first purchase, has the signatures of Chief Ponus and his eldest son, Onox. (Another son was Owenoke, a name well known to us.) By these documents the Indians deeded "all their land from the town plot of Stamford, north about sixteen miles" in a strip about eight miles wide.
Thus Norwalk and Stamford were contiguous, for Middlesex, now Darien, was included in Stamford, and the Five Mile River formed a portion of the boundary between the two.
So we shall have to think of our Connecticut Yankee as awakening in 1700 upon ground which, in spite of its virgin forest, had, half a century before, passed into the possession of the white man. Nothing within range of his vision or his imagination would suggest the new owners, or the transformation to come. Even the meeting house which was to stand near him on the hillside would not be built for another generation.
But already the land acquired for the colonies by Richard Web and his companions was being parceled out to individual owners. At first land was given to soldiers in recognition of their services in the Indian wars. Later, there were granted annually to residents certain tracts from undivided town land according to rates or estates, and at the yearly town meetings, surveyors were appointed to lay out the land and convey the grants. An early grant to a soldier was made in May, 1681, when the plantation of Norwalk gave to Samuel Keeler "with respect to his services, as he was a souldier in the Indian warr, one parcel of land lying upon Clapboard Hill, so called, containing twelve acres, more or less." We are told that Samuel had been in the direful Swamp Fight of 1676.
WHITE OAK SHADE SETTLED
Other Norwalk settlers owned land in White Oak Shade, but never settled on it themselves, leaving their sons to do this pioneer work. Thus at the death of the Rev. Mr. Thomas Hanford, first minister of Norwalk, in the distribution of his estate, there was given to his
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