USA > Connecticut > Fairfield County > New Canaan > Readings in New Canaan history > Part 13
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Carter, and the daughter-in-law of Captain Ebenezer Carter, first leader of the Train Band. It is recorded that she constantly enter- tained soldiers. When we find it also recorded that she had reared nine children, we can but feel that this mother of the Revolution well deserved to be honored by the Daughters of today. It is gratify- ing to know that she was honored in her lifetime also, as each of her nine children named a daughter "Hannah Benedict" after her. Mistress Carter, being well-known for her patriotic hospitality, was visited one night in the year 1780 by a company of soldiers desiring shelter and provisions. She entertained them over-night, prepared their breakfast next morning, and stood in the doorway watching them depart. She died that day and lies in the Carter Street burying ground.
THE BURNING OF NORWALK
Not far from the Carter homestead, which was on Clapboard Hill, lived Miss Phoebe Comstock, who was 17 years old at the time of the burning of Norwalk in 1779. There are preserved from the year 1846 some reminiscences of those thrilling times as they fell from the lips of this lady, then 83 years old and still living on Canoe Hill. She tells how they used to attend the meeting-house in Canaan Parish, armed with guns. "We would no more have thought of going to meeting then without our guns, than we do now without our Psalm books." In case of alarm, which was given by firing three gunshots in succession, the men left all and hastened to the Parade Ground. Such alarms often came. Her father would run in and say, "Now girls, unyoke the oxen and turn them out." And in less than five minutes would be off to the Parade Ground, "and they did not go slow either."
The alarm at the burning of Norwalk came about daybreak. Phoebe hastened over to her uncle's, and climbed an apple tree from which she could clearly see the town. She watched the burning houses, and saw the steeple of the meeting-house fall in. She heard the guns, which kept on firing a long time. She could even descry the Redcoats taking up several of their dead and wounded, and carry- ing them to their boats. Knowing that her father and brothers were engaged in the defence, no wonder she pronounced it "the dreadfull- est day she ever saw."
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There is a Revolutionary relic on Frogtown Road, one of the oldest of the cross-paths by which the families of Ponus Ridge came to meeting. On the south side of Frogtown, north of the cliff, may be seen the remains of an old stone fort built by Stephen Weed, who had become insane from cruel treatment as a prisoner of war.
THE EARLY SCHOOLS
We have seen how the military organization in an ecclesiastical community grew out of the Church Society. The same is true of the educational system. Among the earliest duties of any church society was the appointment of school committees. A statute of the colony provides for every town that the selectmen should see to it that their children and also their apprentices were able to read. Neglect of this duty was punishable by a fine of twenty shillings. Also every town of fifty householders must appoint a teacher to be paid by the parents or masters, or by the inhabitants in general.
We may be sure that the conscientious pioneers of Canaan Parish had no wish to transgress this statute. We do not know when or where the first school was established. It was not until 1795 that the School Society was incorporated. As the highway or school districts were formed, schools were opened, and each district took care of its own pupils for half a century. One of the first was built at the foot of Canoe Hill, in the angle of the road, and for many years all the Clapboard Hill and Silvermine children obtained their education here.
The district school of which we have the most satisfactory picture is the little red school-house which stood in District Number I on the corner of Park and Seminary streets and which now forms part of Mr. Robert Lamonte's bungalow on Seminary Street. This school was about twenty feet square, with writing desks all around the room, and benches, consisting of planks on nail-kegs, in the central space. In the southeast corner were a chimney and fireplace. A writer in 1891, telling about the New Canaan of his youth, related how he, at the age of four, was given a little slab bench by the fire. He remembered the "long, lean, lank" teacher, with a long hickory whip not unlike an ox-goad, sitting in the middle ready to reach any refractory child with the lash. The writer ingenuously adds, "there has been great improvement in school accommodations since that
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time." A letter from Samuel Bouton, written about seventy years ago, recalls that there was a shed built out north of the building where the children left their outer clothing - when they had any, also their lunches. Some hogs that were commonly to be seen rooting among the graves of the nearby cemetery "got in and eat my dinner, and that did not satisfy their voracious appetites and they eat my basket."
Besides the district schools, there was one private, select school before the end of the century, in which the Rev. Justus Michell fitted many young men for college and business.
INCORPORATION OF PARISH
And now, six years after the School Society of New Canaan was incorporated, Canaan Parish itself, having completed seventy years of existence as an ecclesiastical society, withdrew its civic dependence upon Stamford and Norwalk, and became incorporated as a town, five miles wide and five and one-fourth miles long, and containing about 2 50 families and 1,500 inhabitants. One old resident of the last century remembered that Thursday in May, 1801, when the "gun" was fired off and other jubilations celebrated the "great day" when Canaan Parish became the Town of New Canaan.
In the petition for incorporation, the residents of Canaan Parish represented that their homes were "so far distant from the places where freemen's meetings are holden and the public business of the town transacted, as to subject the inhabitants - to much inconve- nience." The distance for some by the most direct public way was as great as eleven miles, by roads "very uneven, stony, on many accounts bad, by high hills and deep impassable valleys" so that many were "induced to neglect freemen's and town meetings."
We cannot wonder at this neglect when we realize that methods of travel had not improved since the pioneers had first found their way into the woods of Canaan. It was not until the nineteenth century that carriages came into use. All travel up to that time was on foot or horseback. Anyone who wished to go to New York might walk or ride to the landing at the mouth of Five Mile River or to that at Ring's End road, and go by sloops that sailed from these points.
The industries of the settlement likewise had not yet changed in method, as the age of machinery had yet to come to Canaan. All the substantial residents in early times were farmers, very patient, hard-
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working men, as they had need to be, to clear their farms of trees and bushes, then of the omnipresent stones which we can see now in long lines of stone walls. With the clumsy old wooden plows they broke this stony ground to plant wheat, corn, oats, and potatoes. With the scanty supply of hay, eked out with cornstalks, husks, and oat straw, they struggled to keep their cattle alive through the winter.
FEW SKILLED WORKMEN
There were only enough artisans to supply the actual wants of the community. Tailors, mantua makers, and shoemakers circulated through the village twice a year to furnish the families with what was necessary for their wardrobes. Later, however, the business of shoemaking grew to surprising proportions, until New Canaan shoes became well-known, and by 1818, 50,000 pairs were sent out every year.
The town was dotted over with little shops where the masters and their apprentices cut out the shoes and gave out great numbers of them to farmers, who came from as far away as twenty miles to get the work to take home. The "fitting," which meant closing, or sewing the uppers, was principally done by women and boys at home, the women doing most of the sewing. Almost every farmhouse con- tained a shoemaker's bench, or "ewe," as the slang of the craft had it. By this means the worker could earn several dollars a week, a great deal for that time, as one dollar was the highest weekly wage paid for housework. These journeymen received their wages, however, in the form of orders on local merchants, so that the only wages they received were in store goods. These orders were commonly called "white dogs."
The business that later grew into the well-known Benedict firm of shoemakers was begun before 1762 by James B. Benedict in a little shop attached to his home on the present Fischer estate on Brushy Ridge. There, with a number of apprentices, he made excellent shoes for the New York market. An article in The New York Times of June 22, 1924, says that for one hundred and sixty-two years - until that very spring - this shoe business had never been out of the Benedict family. It is believed to have been the oldest in America. As late as 1812, when there were eight bosses and fifty workmen in
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the shops, people little dreamed that the time would ever come when a pair of boots or shoes would be made by machinery.
There were few other industries here before 1800. Canaan Parish did have several saw-and grist-mills, among them one owned by Deodate Waterbury, where Jelliff's Mill now stands. Here Mr. Waterbury also built hand-carved furniture.
We have been absorbed in tracing the progress of the white men who settled this region. We must not forget the redskins who were the original inhabitants, nor those black men whose numbers ran into the thousands in Connecticut Colony alone.
Even as early as the beginning of Canaan Parish there were very few Indians left hereabouts. Chief Ponus, whose traditional grave is marked by a shaft on Ponus Ridge, had laid claim with his family to a vast tract of land, but he had disappeared from the scene in 1665, and we know very little of local Indians since that time.
In the burying ground near the old Meeting House were two graves marked by plain headstones, which tradition assigned to Indians. Many arrowheads have been found, and various stone ovens and mortars. About two miles north of the village are the Indian Rocks, a name given to the ledge of granite near the Five Mile River, in which are five basins of varying size, the largest capacious enough to contain fifteen gallons. In these holes the Indians pounded their corn, probably for hundreds of years.
Early in the 19th Century a group of about twenty-five Indians had an encampment there and we have an interesting account from Mrs. Hetty Bouton of New Canaan of how as a little girl she used to be allowed as a treat to make frequent visits to these friendly Indians, and watch them pounding their corn in the deep holes in the rocks.
CANOE HILL'S NAME
This is the only permanent landmark that we have, but there is another remembrance of the red men in the name of Canoe Hill, which is said to have been so called because in a cave in the vicinity was discovered a canoe supposed to have been hidden there by the Indians.
With our modern attitude toward slavery, it is hard to realize that our God-fearing ancestors found nothing in the practice to affront their consciences. A census of 1790 gives the number of slaves in
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Connecticut as 2,764, with 2,880 free colored persons. In Middletown several of the prominent citizens were sea captains engaged in the slave trade and it was the custom to place cargoes of slaves in the old jail there and afterwards sell them at auction. Naturally some of these slaves were brought to Canaan Parish, and we find evidences of the trade here in various still existing bills of sales. One curious document dated 1773, the last will and testament of "Cezar," a negro man belonging to Abijah Comstock, shows him to have been possessed of a remarkable number of articles of value, such as silver spoons and knee buckles, and pious books, such as “The Dissenting Gentle- man's Answer" and "A Cordial to the Fainting Saint." In addition to various bequests to his master's family we find mention of a book with the optimistic title "You're Almost Christian" bestowed upon Mistress Abigail Eells, who had married the minister's son six years before. With this bequest went instructions to bequeath it in turn to her husband, Moses Comstock Eells. The old slave probably regarded this branch of the Comstock family as relatives of his own.
SLAVERY ABOLISHED IN 1768
Connecticut was the first state to pass a law against slavery. This was in 1768. Fifteen years later the Legislature passed an act declaring that all persons born of slaves after March I should be free at twenty- five years of age. Most of those born earlier were emancipated, so that slavery almost died out before 1806. We cannot feel too com- placent, however, about the leadership of Connecticut in this reform, for slave-holding was discontinued because it had become unprofit- able, not from any convictions as to its unrighteousness.
The last man to live and die in slavery in Connecticut was Ones- imus, called "Old Ony," of Norwalk, "a willing slave but the Lord's freeman." His no less pious owners were the remarkable Comstock sisters. Miss Phebe the elder was never absent from church a single service in fifty-one years. Onesimus had a similar record for church service, attending on one Sabbath so stormy that no one else was present except the minister and the sexton. He also served in the Revolution. At the death of the elder Miss Phebe, "Old Ony" was inherited by her niece, that other Miss Phebe Comstock of Canoe Hill who watched with such trepidation the burning of Norwalk.
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In her more mature years, she followed her aunt's example in "adopt- ing orphan youth and entertaining ministers." Her faithful slave out- lived her for a few years, and died at the age of about 96, only six years before all slaves were emancipated.
CANAAN PARISH IN 1800
We might end as we began, by calling before our imagination what we might see if we could stand again at the foot of the Meeting House Hill, after life in Old Canaan Parish has run along for seventy years, and just before New Canaan Township is born with the new century.
On the brow of the "steep and rugged hill" stands the second Meeting House, shingled and painted white, with the double doors dark green, the roof and the upper part of the belfry a dull red. The Meeting House has been repaired within the last few years, the Society members being assessed two pence on the pound for this purpose. Any member who refused to pay this tax had to have his "goods or chattels" "defrained" or in the absence of such, to have his body or person committed to the keeper of the gaol in Fairfield - "until he pay and satisfy the said sum." This notice, signed by Samuel C. Silliman, Justice of the Peace, reminds us that there is no jail in Canaan Parish, and makes us wonder again just how keeping a man's body or person in prison helps him to pay his debts.
Since the meeting house was repaired, the bell has been installed, in 1797, and is now an important feature in daily life, ringing every evening at nine for the close of the day, except Saturday, when Sab- bath begins at sunset, and the evening must be spent in preparation for the holy day.
Opposite the Meeting House, "the rude forefathers of the hamlet lie." Here are the graves of many of the early settlers, though others are lying in the Old Church Hill and Parade Ground Cemeteries farther up on Haines Ridge, or in the family burying grounds on Carter Street or elsewhere.
All about the Meeting House, on the north, the south, and the west, are great numbers of hitching posts for horses, and several stepping-blocks for mounting. It will not be necessary to provide carriage sheds for another twenty years. Just at hand, at the side of the road bordering the burying ground on the south, stands the
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whipping post, and nearby, the stocks, where an offender against the peace may be confined for a time, in the absence of a jail. Across from the David St. John residence, the present Ashwell house, is the little red school house, and nearby are the grocery store and home of Seth Kellogg. Here also on the green and near this first store stands the village blacksmith shop. Not for a number of years later will there be a Railroad Avenue or any other road connecting Main Street with White Oak Shade Ridge, as the future Park Street is called.
INCORPORATION
And now in the spring of the first year of the new century came the day when Old Canaan Parish became New Canaan Township. This new century was to see the whole world made new by the coming of the machine age. The little shoe shops which "dotted" the village, giving handwork to farmers' families in the country round about, gave way to the smoke and whir of factories. These in their turn disappeared from New Canaan as shoemaking and other industries crowded into cities.
We too have moved forward into this new world which would have seemed so strange to our forefathers. But our little New Canaan, off the main track, is a village still. In this age of power and speed, we find here something remaining of the sincerity, the good fellowship, the ideals for church and school, the spacious and gracious living that belonged to those seventy years of the Canaan Parish of old.
A HISTORY OF NEW CANAAN 1801-1901 By CHARLOTTE CHASE FAIRLEY
THE CANNON BOOMS IN 1801
F OR nearly three score and ten years the little village of Canaan Parish had lived its peaceful life as the daughter of Stamford and Norwalk. On a May day in 1801, with the booming voice of a village cannon, began a century of separate existence for the community, now promoted to the rank of a town and rechristened New Canaan. When in 1901 the town was celebrating its hundredth anniversary, the Rev. Charles Selleck, of Norwalk, named as its salient character- istics through the century "principle, independent industry, and good common sense." Surely these three qualities may well be found in the descendants of the sturdy forefathers whose history we have traced.
We have tried to look through the eyes of a newly awakened sleeper at the center of town as it appeared in 1801 from the foot of Meeting House hill. Let us suppose that you yourself are this adaptable Rip Van Winkle and that sometime in the first quarter century you bestir yourself and stroll for a wider view. A short tour of exploration will suffice, for four or five roads, still little more than bridle path, serve to link the few houses and to lead out to Clapboard Hill, Talmadge Hill, and to Stamford and Norwalk, the parent towns of Old Canaan Parish, where New Canaanites still have many relatives and friends.
Houses are few and far between. Walking north on Haynes Ridge (Oenoke Avenue), past the Joseph Silliman dwelling (the present Houston residence) you will see only open meadows as far as the house of Justus Mitchell, (the nucleus of the later Holmewood Inn Annex). Not until 1825 will the Town House, the present home of Mr. Morgan More, be built on the corner of the Silliman lot, just west of where St. Mark's Church is to stand, still later.
Walking south on Main Street and leaving the old meeting house and burying ground on your right you come at the foot of the hill
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to the home of Richard Fayerweather, of whom we shall hear more hereafter, (the present Bridgman house). Then crossing Clapboard Hill Road (Locust Street) you will arrive at that part which is grow- ing into the real business center of the little village - all of it, for some reason, on the east side of the street until long after. You pass the house of Jacob Reed, a house which was already thirty years old at the opening of the century, with vats dug in the rear where he carried on tanning, an industry continued later, for many years, by Frederick Ayres in the same spot. It is too early in the century to find Captain Stephen Hoyt in his grocery and dry goods store on the corner of Main Street and Carter Street Road, (East Avenue). You might make a side excursion down toward the pond if you don't mind picking your way among stones and mud puddles and possibly tearing your clothes on briars. At your left is the Ayers tannery. At your right, a few rods from Main Street, is the house built about 1750 by Theophilus Hanford, eldest son of the Norwalk pioneer of the same name. You will do well not to stray from the path into the Old Calamus Pond until it has been drained by Captain Stephen Hoyt. Passing Hezekiah Jennings, the town butcher, and Wright, the town tailor, you come to a house or two near the Mill Pond. Here, looking across the river, you will see a long, low building where farmers bring their cider to be distilled into whiskey. We are advised at this point by one writer of reminiscences to go no nearer this sinister spot "lest we fall into a temptation and a snare."
Returning then to Main Street, you walk on past the general store of Samuel Raymond and past the house of Woolsey Burtis, the village blacksmith, about where Raymond Hall is, whose smithy stands right in the street in front of his dwelling. Just below, on the other side of the road, is Bradley Keeler's wagon shop, also encroaching on the highway. You pass the first Captain Stephen Hoyt's spacious dwel- ling opposite the library, occupied today by his great, great grand- daughter, and not another house on that side until you come to the Old Red House with its great chimney of field stone, opposite where the Methodist Church now stands. This has already passed its three score years and ten, having been built in 1752 for one Levi Hanford and his bride, Elizabeth Carter, daughter of Captain Ebenezer Carter of Clapboard Hill, and is to remain a landmark until nearly the end of the century. Levi and Elizabeth had five children born here. A later
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Levi Hanford went to Walton, New York, in 1808, and was still living there in 188 1 when he was in his ninetieth year.
To Walton also had come the aged John Benedict 4th, the first male child born in Canaan Parish. He had lived there but three years and died two years before the sixteen-year-old Levi Hanford arrived to make his permanent home there.
HOMES FEW AND FAR BETWEEN
The old Red House is the only dwelling for about a mile south of the Hoyt homestead, but beyond that on both sides of the road you will find homes of the Hanfords, all descended from Elizabeth Haynes Hanford, daughter of that William Haynes, who gave his name to Haynes Ridge. There on the west side, opposite "the road to the mille," the present Lakeview Avenue, is the dwelling soon (in 1830) to be demolished, built by Theophilus Hanford, the pioneer from Norwalk, where his grandchildren, Joseph and Bartlett, were born. A few rods north is Bartlett Hanford's house, for many years in later times to be known as the Jackson Raymond place (at present belonging to Mr. A. B. Walker).
Perhaps you will meet old Eben Hanford coming out of his home at the foot of the hill to take the sun. Once a soldier in the Revolution, now he shuffles along on two canes, raising one now and then to kill only a golden butterfly.
You would have to plod half a mile farther to find the house erected by Captain Samuel Hanford, an early comer from Norwalk, "The Little House at Four Corners" of Mrs. Willard Parker's book. Opposite is the home of Samuel Hanford, Jr .. , which is to descend to his staunch Methodist son, Captain Holly Hanford.
If you would keep to the highway you will have to return as you came, for there is no cross road as yet. But there is not much more to be seen on the village Main Street; only Samuel Raymond's house (where Dr. White now lives) and then not a single building on the west side from Keeler's wagon shop all the way back to Meeting House Hill, except the home and little silversmith shop of Edward Nash just north of where the First National Bank and Trust Com- pany now stands.
If you were by any chance taking your walk on a certain Sunday afternoon in 1816, there would indeed be something to see; smoke
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and flames pouring out of the Nash home, and poor Mr. and Mrs. Nash coming home from the Episcopal Church, a mile away up the ridge, to find their home in ruins.
But it is not likely that you would be so irreligious as to be strolling about for pleasure on the Sabbath. There is not much more of interest on Main Street. Moreover, keeping to the road would not insure good walking - merely a clear track for a highway. Not only are there no sidewalks as yet but the little lads you meet in the course of your walk will have to live to a ripe old age if they are ever to enjoy such a luxury.
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