USA > Connecticut > Fairfield County > New Canaan > Readings in New Canaan history > Part 14
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EARLY PARK STREET DESCRIBED
So suppose you cut across the woods and fields about where Church Street now runs to White Oak Shade Ridge, the present Park Street. Walking north to return to the Meeting House, you will pass, on your left, the home of Colonel Ezra Benedict (the Mead House), while on your right nearly opposite is the house built long ago by Trowbridge Benedict, who there did clock and watch repairing and silver-smithing. (The original part of the Ardsley Inn). Next on your left is the substantial home of Dr. Noyes, with whom you must be- come better acquainted.
You are now in the region of the future railroad station, gas sta- tion, electro-matic automobile signal; but none of these casts its shadows upon the wagon track you are treading. Past the hip-roofed house of Joel Hoyt, the harness maker, and up the hill, with its new Academy on your right in the present Community School grounds, and on your left the little red schoolhouse just across on the corner of Brook Street (now Seminary Street).
A short walk out Brook Street past the house with the great syca- more in front (the Katzenbach-Winship house) where there lives a man named Huntington, will take you, just beyond the brook, to the home of Stephen Craft. This aged man is well named. In the little cabinetmaker's shop in front of his house he has been used to making spinning wheels "for the dames of New Canaan to spin their wool and flax on." His house is on the edge of a thick grove which runs some distance to the south.
Returning to the schoolhouse on the corner, you turn to your left and walk up the hill between the two St. John homes, the old house
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belonging to David St. John (the present Ashwell place) and across the spacious grounds the beautiful home built in 1807 by his son, Samuel, and destined to stand for nearly 70 years before its destruc- tion by fire.
And now here we are again at the Meeting House Hill, with the old whipping posts and stocks close at hand. Possibly some poor cul- prit sits there in durance vile because he fell into the sin of drunk- eness or could not produce the fine of $1.34, the alternative penalty. Before long that sinister post is to be put to more wholesome use as the town bulletin board.
We are told that New Canaan grew and changed little in the first 2 5 or 30 years of the century. Mr. Joseph Scofield reported that when he arrived here as a boy of 14 on the first of November of 1824 there were only 32 houses in the present borough, and but six streets; Main; Park, or White Oak Shade Ridge; East Avenue, once called Carter Street Road; Locust Avenue, then known as Clapboard Hills Road; Oenoke Avenue, or Haynes Ridge; Summer Street and Seminary, formerly Brook Street.
TOWN OF HUMBLE PROPORTIONS
We have a story told by Mr. Timothy Raymond, 50 years ago when he was 56 years old, which shows us the humble proportions of our town in his childhood. It was about 1811 that one Thomas Sims, of New York, having heard of New Canaan as a great place for the manufacture of shoes, with as many as 400 employed in the industry, came to view the town. After passing up through Main Street, and reaching the Silliman (Houston) place, he seated himself on a pair of bars and looked anxiously around. A man came walking up, of whom Mr. Sims inquired the way to New Canaan.
"Just under the hill there," said the pedestrian.
"Is that New Canaan?" asked the visitor in astonishment. "Well, I guess I'll go back again and see if I can find it."
The story does not relate Mr. Sims' reaction to his second visit, but it is to be doubted that he noticed any of the little shops "dotting" the town, in which a score of artisans were busy turning out their 50,000 pairs a year. He could not see the "ewe" or cobblers bench by many a farm fireside, where father, mother and children gathered in the evening to sew uppers and finish a bagful of shoes to carry into
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town. Still less could he know the life of the place, which, deeply rooted still in church and school, had grown to civic conscious- ness in the town meeting, and flowered daily in a social life which always seems to us, looking back across the years, enviable in its wholesome serenity.
We are warned, however, not to regret much the passing of the "good old days." Mr. Timothy Raymond concludes his reminiscences with these trenchant words: "When we hear men mourning for the days of Andrew Jackson, we feel sorry for them and wish that they had been born before their grandfathers, and perhaps we should not be bothered with them now."
He wrote this just 50 years ago. Would we say the same today?
TOWN MEETINGS
At least the community was now self-sufficient, having added to its own churches and schools its own town government. The town meetings were held for the first quarter of the century in the Congre- gational Meeting House, the second building, by this time 63 years old. We can imagine the gratification of the town fathers, now exempt from the long, trying journeys to Stamford and Norwalk, turning their steps to their own hilltop on that last Monday in June, 1801, meeting their neighbors there, setting out with zest to legis- late for the new-born town.
Joseph Silliman, Esq., Justice of the Peace and first Moderator, had but to cross the road to the meeting where he was to preside. The first selectman was Isaac Richards, who held that post almost con- secutively for 21 years. Even longer in office was Samuel St. John, town clerk and town treasurer from the beginning to his death in 1825. He became also the first postmaster in 1818, a position he held for the rest of his life. When we learn of the vital part he played in the educational life of New Canaan and then find him active also in state affairs - being Representative in the General Assembly for 12 years - we begin to realize that here was a great man of the town, a worthy father of a remarkable son, the eminent Professor Samuel St. John.
It is natural that the fathers turned their attention early to the repairing of highways. At this first session a tax of two cents on the
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dollar was voted for this purpose and the price of 75 cents a day set for a man and the same for a good team in spring and summer, the price falling to 67 cents in the autumn. The mention of plows in this connection suggests the primitive stage of these so-called high- ways. Ten years later the price of "a good and sufficient team" had gone up one dollar, but a man still worked for 75 cents a day.
The titles of the town officers appointed have an almost medieval tang. Besides the "tything men" there were the Sealer of Leather, important in the shoe making community, the Sealers of Weights and Measures, the Keykeeper of the Pound, Fence Viewers and Haywards.
GOOSE AND PIG LEGISLATION
On the last day of this first year of its separate existence we find a town meeting taking up the weighty matter of "Swine and Geese going at large upon the town commons." Perhaps this legislation followed close upon the tragic loss by some hungry child in the little red schoolhouse of the contents of his dinner basket! Would a marauder from the church green be deterred by "a ring in the end of his nose?" At any rate it was voted: "Ist., that all swine that are rung in the nose and all geese of which one wing is clipped shall be permitted to go at large on the commons within this town. 2nd., that all swine not rung as aforesaid and all geese of which one wing is not clipped as aforesaid-at-large shall be impounded by the Hey- ward (or Hayward) in a common pound except sucking pigs not 8 weeks old which shall not be impounded even though they have no ring in their nose."
Such forfeited possessions might, however, be reclaimed on the owner's "promising to put a ring in Each of sd. Swines nose and paying twelve cents per swine and three cents per goose." Promptness in reclaiming his swine was made worth while by the rule that a man must pay seventy cents per head for swine for every 24 hours he should "suffer such creatures to continue in pound after being notified."
That vague word "impounded" takes on a concrete meaning and suggests a lively picture when we learn that in 1807, Aaron Com- stock being then appointed "Key Keeper" of the pound, a small yard of his barn was "by his consent constituted and appointed by this
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meeting a Pound for the use of the town" until a proper pound should be "finished compleat."
With discussion over these and other grave issues, Town Meeting must have been sufficiently lively to make attendance as worth while as it is nowadays, for it had been necessary in 1805 to rule that mem- bers at "public Freeman's and Town Meeting" should afford their Moderator their "Countenance, support and assistance" that anyone wishing to speak should "rise in his place, and with his hat off, respectfully address - Mr. Moderator."
EARLY TOWN DEPARTMENTS
An early provision for defraying town expenses for the current year was the levy of a tax of one cent on the dollar and the appoint- ment of Enos Weed who was to receive the sum of $12 for collection of the same. It was voted to call upon the inhabitants to labor and repair the highways so that the highway taxes could be kept down.
The relief agencies of today might take under consideration the clean cut policy of the town fathers who voted in 1814 to direct the "Select Men not to tollerate or suffer Forreingers to reside in this Town who they believe will become chargeable to this Town if suffered to reside." Apparently a "Forreinger" was anyone who had the misfortune of not being a New Canaanite, for surely there is a distinctly New England flavor in the name of Darius Holden, an exception to this rule who was to be "tollerated for one month - then to be removed."
That the bridges of that day were as primitive as the highways is suggested by the calling of a special town meeting for April 1, 1822, to consider the claim of Ebenezer Weed of Stamford for damages in the loss of a horse drowned in attempting to cross a bridge in this town. The vote to direct the agent and selectmen "to pay or not to pay any sum therefor as to them shall appear just and right," reminds us that this is the era of independence of the present town. One won- ders whether Ebenezer took ironic notice of the date of the meeting.
All these years Town Meeting had been held in the Congregational Meeting House, but the union of civil and ecclesiastical matters had ceased with the incorporation of the Town in 1801. The church was now a separate entity, several separate entities, in fact.
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CAPT. STEPHEN BETTS
For 50 years the Episcopalians had been worshipping in their own church three quarters of a mile out on Haynes Ridge near the present Child estate, but it was not until 1791 that the parish was fully organized with 35 families enrolled.
The prime mover in the undertaking was Captain Stephen Betts, a Revolutionary hero of "Commanding presence and high-toned character," who had moved to New Canaan before 1790 and bought a farm along the Old Canaan Oenoke Ridge, the property later owned by John Selleck. He brought with him a record that justified the sobriquet of "brave Betts" - a record which, beginning at the Battle of Bunker Hill, when he was a boy of nineteen, included the victory over the British at the fateful Christmas party at Trenton, the achieving the title of Captain at Princeton and an exploit that came very near to New Canaan hearts - resistance to Governor Tryon's invasion of Norwalk. What a hero he must have looked to the boys gazing down from the gallery as he led his numerous family into the meeting house. For he was a regular attendant at the Congregational Church until St. Mark's was organized, and we read that "perhaps no hearthstone in New Canaan furnished more attendance on divine service than 'brave Betts.'" His daughter Harriet married Elisha Silliman, son of Joseph Silliman, who lived in the present Houston residence. We shall find another daughter, Miss Esther, active in establishing a Sunday School at the time of the building of St. Mark's. Her father died in 1832, just too soon to participate in the new church home. His body still lies in the old Church Hill Burial Ground out on Haynes Ridge, but a granite stone was erected in Lakeview Cemetery in 1898 by Mrs. William K. James and the D. A. R. of Norwalk, in memory of the defender of their town.
The early list of vestrymen of St. Marks, like that of founders and deacons of the Congregational Church, presents names that have loomed large in New Canaan History - Hanford, Seeley, Tallmadge, Raymond. We are told that singing in the old choir was conducted by Miss Abbie and Miss Laurie Pennoyer and that the choir had the usual personnel of three women and five men.
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METHODISTS IN SILVERMINE
A little group of Methodists was meeting in Silvermine as early as 1808 at the house of Captain Crofoot, but their history in New Canaan during the first quarter century is one of slow growth and struggle against prejudices. In 1819 Rev. John Reynolds had difficul- ty in finding any meeting place. At length he obtained permission to use the schoolhouse at White Oak Shade. After three months of service came the first "visible result" in the membership of Lucretia Seymour. Her husband, Hobby Seymour, was not far behind her, and we find him appointed leader of a class which developed from a revival. For years, meetings were held every two weeks at his house. We admire the moral courage of these two Seymours and their little group when we learn that so strong was the prejudice against the Methodists that there were but few who dared brave public opinion so far as to unite with them.
Whatever religious tolerance has grown up was due in large measure to the influence of the Rev. Justus Mitchell of the Congre- gational Church, to whose ministry we have such tributes as these: "It was a period when a good minister had not only some and even great influence but almost unlimited authority in all affairs of the community, and Mr. Mitchell was endowed and equipped for what- ever work offered itself to him. His was a stirring, sterling pastorate."
"Things took shape and grew. Old things passed away."
It was well that the changes that came inevitably with the incorpo- ration of the town found the church under the guidance of a man of broad and progressive spirit. Before his time all citizens paid their church tax as their road tax, according to their wealth, and pews were free. We have seen how it was voted during this ministry to release those not Congregationalists from paying "Society rates."
Now the society began to be composed of those who voluntarily joined, and the expenses were defrayed by contributions and by the new system of renting pews. No longer did the church fathers have to "dignify the meeting-house," allotting to each Benedict, Carter and "Hait" the fitting degree of proximity to the pulpit. Now each head of a family must decide for himself how much a place of dignity and convenience was worth to him in dollars and cents and how much of his wealth by right belonged to the Lord.
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CHURCH AND TOWN SEPARATED
In 1801 there was a complete separation of civil and ecclesiastical matters. Technically the authority of the Society and the minister was now limited to church affairs. But in the remaining five years of Mr. Mitchell's life it is not likely that the influence of one "so endowed and equipped" was much abated. In fact, at the time of incorporation, we are told, Mr. Mitchell was the "brains of the New Canaan Settlement," and the church on the hill, as the regular place of town meetings, must still have seemed, much as of old, the center of community affairs.
The Rev. Justus Mitchell had kept the records of the deaths in Canaan Parish. One of special interest to us is the note under the date of October 15, 1785 concerning the Rev. Mr. Eells, who died "with old age 82 years. The first pastor of the church of Christ in this place."
Now on February 24, 1806, the hand of Deacon Bouton had to take up the work to write of Rev. Justus Mitchell: "he preached a sermon with unusual engagedness at the house of Mr. Theophilus Fitch (on Carter Street). From the text "is any among you afflicted, let him pray," and returned home, retired to bed; and died suddenly in a fit, having been the pastor of the church of New Canaan for 2 3 years. Age 5 1 years."
The rest of the quarter century and the years until 1831 were covered by the pastorate of the Rev. William Bonney, who lived in the parsonage on Haynes Ridge which had been the home of his predecessor. He it was who started the first Sunday School, of which we shall hear more in connection with its first home.
PRICELESS RECORDS BURN
We should know more about early Congregational history were it not for the destruction of the chief source of information. Since the beginning of the parish, the records of Church and Society had been kept by the successive ministers. These were the only regular sources of information in the early years, except land records. The book con- taining this precious material was used in 1876 by Professor Samuel St. John in preparation of his historical address, and by the Rev. Joseph Greenleaf for his historical sermon, both delivered on that
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Centennial Fourth of July, and the book was in the possession of Professor St. John in the house on Park Street where he lived with his brother, William. Both speakers being limited by time, made only partial use of the available material so that when the priceless records were destroyed in the burning of the St. John home the following October much history of the past was forever lost. Professor St. John was spared this disaster, as he had died only a month before.
DISTRICT SCHOOLS
When we seek for a picture of educational New Canaan in those first twenty-five years of the nineteenth century we are more amply rewarded. People love to recall their school days and the schools of early New Canaan, both public and private, seem well worth recall- ing . Beginning as a typical New England community in its attention to the training of the youth, our town seems to have reached in those early years an uncommon level in educational achievement, even to a so-called "Golden Age."
The public school districts were at first self-supporting. It was not until 1858 that the present system was established with the state giving assistance and the town observing certain rules. It is not to be won- dered at that "economy was the watchword all along the line."
We have already tried to picture the "old long school-house" at the corner of the present Park and Seminary Streets. One of the oldest of the outlying districts is the second where, in Lockwood District, stood until recently the Rock School House. Some account of the early history of this school which has just come to light within the year is no doubt typical of the procedure and salaries of the time.
We learn that the school house was erected in November, 1800, but was unfinished. It was voted to build a chimney if they could find a mason, and for this purpose and to plaster the ceiling a committee of two was appointed, Joseph Fitch and Enoch Abbott. The first teacher, Elijah Benedict, could not have kept the position long, for in 1802 it was voted that the committee, "request Johnathan Bell to come up with his son to see if he will pass an inspection to keep school with us." Evidently Master Bell passed his "inspection" for we have a copy of his receipt for his munificent salary: "Received of Benjamin St. John the 1 1th of November, 1802, the sum of $2 5 which
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is all my demands for teaching school in the 2nd. district of New Canaan for 6 months past, Ebenezer Bell." Moreover he must have given satisfaction for he was hired for six months more, with a raise of salary to six and a half dollars a month. Five years later we find Mrs. Esther Benedict employed at one dollar more a month, but this early reversal of the custom still prevalent in Connecticut of paying women less than men for the same work is comprehensible when we read that she must board herself and collect her own money. This last provision might have been troublesome, as only about $29 was supplied by public funds, the rest being donated by subscription. Few teachers would care for such a diversion for their leisure hours. Nor would a pupil of today care to return to the "good old times" when the year was divided into a "winter school" from October to April and a "summer school" from April to September.
The Carter Street school house used to stand early in the century at the foot of Canoe Hill, where one Andrew Pennoyer ruled the flock. From this school graduated the "14 homespun dressed children of Timothy and Sarah Hoyt."
TOWN'S PRIVATE SCHOOLS
But the claim of early New Canaan to distinction in educational fields rests rather upon her private schools - particularly the first Academy.
Several individual teaching projects, however, came before the establishment of this school. The Rev. Justus Mitchell had been con- ducting a school at the parsonage on Haynes Ridge during the greater part of his ministry, which had begun just after the Revolution. Here he fitted for college eight New Canaan boys and many from elsewhere.
Mr. Mitchell had come from Litchfield County at the age of 28, to take up his new charge with a "settlement" of $625 and a salary of $187.50 a year. It is good to know that there was some additional means of income with which to rear four children. But the young couple evidently did not have to depend on the minister's salary thus augmented. Justus Mitchell had been able to purchase from Stephen Hanford in 1783, 22 acres on Haynes Ridge, a tract embracing the present Holmewood Inn and McLane properties, for the sum of 165 English pounds, an $800 well invested, one would say. And Martha
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Seaman Mitchell, the wife and mother, though "industrious and quick, able to knit a whole stocking in a day," lives in record as any- thing but the typical hardworking wife of a poverty stricken minister. Indeed some of her parish complained that she was "too dressy." This grave charge is explained away by her habit of sitting near a window while she sewed or knitted with flying fingers, a window from which she could look down straight across her own meadows to the Silliman dwelling, half a mile away, opposite the meeting house, and so catch sight of any caller in plenty of time to run away and slip on a good dress. No one ever caught her in her working clothes. These boys who studied at the parsonage must have kept a pleasant memory of this lady who with her "intellectuality" added to her husband's "mentality" made their home a resort of the man of thought.
One of these boys, her nephew Roger Minot Sherman, Jr., son of her brother the jurist, later became governor of Connecticut. Another, her youngest son, Chauncey was a gifted orator and fittingly the ancestor of Chauncey Mitchell Depew.
Besides this "select School" conducted by the pastor we find in these early years another under the leadership of the first pastor's youngest son, James Trowbridge Eells. He built a schoolhouse in the corner of his yard on Clapboard Hills Road (East Avenue). This, we are told, was a popular private school where young men received a very good education, some of them being boarding scholars from New York. In the later years girls also were admitted and Mr. Eells was assisted by his oldest daughter, Amanda. Mr. Eells finally went to New Rochelle and taught there, and his schoolhouse was torn down.
Still another school was conducted about one mile east of the vil- lage, just north of the present residence of Mr. Cabell (on Canoe Hill Road) by Eliphalet St. John. Still further back run reminiscences of Abijah Fitch, one of the first schoolmasters found on record. This teacher, called "Master Bije," returned from the war and set up a school at his home on Clapboard Hill on the place which later belonged to Minot Ayers, brother of Amos.
THE ACADEMY
All these small ventures paved the way for the Academy, which ushered in the "Golden Age" of New Canaan. This phase of our
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town's educational history seems to be as little known as it is rich in interest.
The work of the Rev. Mr. Mitchell in preparing boys for college must have been sadly missed after his death in 1806, but it was not until nine years later that an Academy was established under four proprietors, Trowbridge and Ezra Benedict, Richard Fayerweather and chief of all, Samuel St. John. This citizen whom we have found so active in all town affairs had been reared in the old house on Park Street (the Ashwell place) which his father, David, had bought before the Revolution. The son had in 1807 built a beautiful home across the way (on the present Kauffman property). Nearby was his store, for Samuel St. John was a merchant in everyday life, and in this building the Academy began, humbly enough, with a few small students taught by the Rev. Herman Daggett, of Cornwall.
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