USA > Connecticut > Fairfield County > New Canaan > Readings in New Canaan history > Part 22
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
The scores of boys and girls now graduating each year from High School may like to contemplate that first class of 1896, for whose solitary member, Miss Margery Henry, commencement exercises were held in the Nicholas Opera House, now the Village Hall.
ELECTRICITY COMES
Two years before the close of the century electricity came to New Canaan. Far behind lay the time when the stygian darkness of a cloudy night was dotted only with swinging lanterns. But even Mr. Monroe's gasoline lamp was now a relic of antiquity. There were those inevitable conservatives who prophesied that electricity would give no better light and no better satisfaction than the old kerosene lamps, but they were about to be "shown." On the last day of March 1898, the innovation was tried out. The current was turned on from the power house of the Norwalk Electric Light Company for a one- hour test by daylight. Then about six p. m. it was started again and burned until two in the morning. Even the most conservative were obliged to admit that this was superior to kerosene. After street light- ing had become an accomplished fact, the first buildings to install the new system were the New Canaan Drug Store, the Post Office and the Congregational Church.
In this same year the New Canaan-Stamford branch of the New York, New Haven, and Hartford Railroad was electrified. The third rail was discussed but the overhead trolley was chosen instead. It is a matter of historic interest that this was the first use of this system for any railroad in this part of the country. After being tried out here for passenger and freight service, it was adopted on all electric roads of the New Haven system.
New and lighter cars were now installed and some new stations built along the line. By the middle of June the thirty-year-old New Canaan Railroad was transformed.
252
Readings In New Canaan History
RAILROAD CRITICS
This renewal, however, did not prevent a complaint which was published the following December by a critic who maintained: "The present cars are neither safe nor comfortable to ride in." One fault was insufficient heat, when the thermometer was "coquetting with zero." Another was insufficient room. One car was not enough, for "ladies object very much to ride in a car where people are or recently have been smoking and chewing tobacco." It is suggested that an extra car be put on where "gentlemen" may enjoy the privileges to themselves. More startling even than the advent of electricity would have been at that period the apparition of a woman entering a smok- ing car to enjoy a smoke of her own.
In these closing years of the nineties transpired two interesting events within the same quarter-mile of Ponus Ridge.
The first was the project of the Historical Society to commemorate Chief Ponus by erecting a monument on "Ponasses Path" where is now junction of Davenport Ridge Road and Ponus Street.
In October of 1897 Rev. Charles M. Selleck drove with Mrs. A. S. Comstock to the spot and selected from a nearby field on the farm of Mr. Charles Comstock a "beautiful and suitable native boulder" eight feet high. Mr. Comstock presented the stone to the Society and had it set up in its present location. On the east face is inscribed simply the name and date:
PONUS SAGAMORE 1640
On the opposite face is the date of erection. The south side carries the inscription: "Erected by the Historical Society and the Ponus Tribe of Red Men of New Canaan. Marks the home and the tradition- al tomb of Ponus, Sachem of Rippowams." The fourth side shows the date of dedication "on the Seventh Day of the Tenth Moon of A. D. 1897."
UNVEIL MONUMENT
Nearly two hundred gathered to see young Pierre Davenport unveil the shaft and to hear Rev. Mr. Selleck pay tribute to the chief who gave his name to the ten-mile path "through modern White
253
A History of New Canaan 1801-1901
Oak Shade, across the Keeler and Seymour real estates, terminating finally at the ancient Ely's Neck." As to that "soily, salubrious and sightly" elevation where Ponus dwelt, Mr. Selleck thought the Indian chief regarded that as his own rightful belonging until death, for although Nathaniel Turner made the Stamford purchase from Ponus and Wascussue in 1640, this particular region was not clearly defined as part of that possession until 1667 and it is likely that Ponus had died by that time, as his last registered public deed is dated two years earlier.
A poem by Mr. Charles Crandall, who lived but a stone's throw away, struck a fitting note especially in this stanza:
Long may on Ponus Path this sentry standing, The sun, the stars, the hunter's moon salute; A silent figure, rugged and com- manding, Bearing its message when our tongues are mute.
The ceremonies ended with an impressive gesture: William L. Whitney of Norwalk, a direct descendant of the Mohawk tribe, dressed in Indian costume, stepped to the little burying-ground opposite the monument, and shot an arrow, tipped with a long feather, over the grave where Chief Ponus has rested these 250 years.
"GRACE HOUSE"
In the spring of 1899 Ponus Ridge was again the setting for a color- ful assemblage, this time concerned not with a red-skinned chief of the past but with little citizens of the future. On the afternoon of May twenty-third occurred the dedication of "Grace House in the Field" known to us now as St. Luke's School for Boys (the present New Canaan Country School) a group of buildings erected by Grace Church of New York as a summer home for "neglected chil- dren and tired and worn-out mothers." Much of the credit for this project, including the choice of the rare location, is attributed to the late Mr. L. P. Child, of West Road, a former member of Grace Church.
254
Readings In New Canaan History
The morning of that Tuesday in May was disheartening, with a steady rain that boded ill for a gala occasion, but the clouds parted and the bright sunshine came pouring down just in time to welcome 100 visitors from Grace Church Parish who arrived from New York on the 3: 30 train and drove to the Ridge in "carryalls and other local conveyances." Among the visitors were a number of members of the boy choir of Grace Church, "dressed," according to The Messenger, "in neat but not gaudy uniforms," to be changed for the vestments for the service.
The guests gathered in the chapel for the exercises of the day at the summons of the bell rung for the first time by C. H. Crandall, in charge of the premises (the local poet celebrated Chief Ponus).
This beautiful little "Chapel of Peace" burned down seven years ago and the larger St. Luke's School gymnasium was later built on the same site. The chapel was the gift of Mr. and Mrs. William Lan- man Bull, of New York, not as a memorial in the ordinary sense, but, according to the inscription near the chancel, as "a Father's and Mother's Thank Offering for a Son's safe return" from the Spanish War. Young Bull, present with his parents at the dedication, had been one of Teddy Roosevelt's Rough Riders.
The text on the tablet. "Great shall be the peace of thy children" furnished the keynote for the address of Rev. William R. Hunting- ton, in which he spoke of an international conference just then assembled that there might be "no more war, only peace, blessed peace." It is saddening to think what 15 short years were to bring forth.
Just a month after its dedication we find the house filled with its first quota: fifty little boys and girls in the main building from the Day Nursery on Fourth Avenue, and twenty "tired women and weary mothers," ten of them with babies, in the Annex. Here for two weeks they could soak in sunshine and fresh air, while little legs scampered in spacious field and tired eyes rested on distant hills and valleys with the spires of village churches, and away in the south the blue waters of the Sound.
RAYMOND BLOCK BURNS
In that same year, 1899, occurred the burning of the old Raymond Block, on the thirteenth of February. This was perhaps after all
255
A History of New Canaan 1801-1901
a lucky thirteenth, as it meant the clearing away of a low squatty- looking wooden building, with the "old red store" adjoining it on the north where Samuel Raymond did business for many years, and the one-story narrow frame building of D. C. Ruscoe on the south, to be replaced by a substantial brick structure of two and a half stories which the enthusiastic local press pronounced "unsurpassed in architectural beauty by any building of its size in the state." This block was erected as a memorial to William E. Raymond, the per- fumery manufacturer, whose name also lives in the Raymond Fund of the Congregational Church. It has already been recorded how Albert Comstock, trustee of the estate, cooperated with Stephen B. Hoyt, the postmaster at that time, in planning quarters for the Post Office in the new block, and this continued to be its home for the next twenty years.
TOWN'S CENTENNIAL
With the turn of the century came the rounding out of one hundred years of life as an incorporated town and in 1901 New Canaan celebrated this birthday with fitting ceremonials. These in- cluded meetings, public speaking, a birthday feast, and an impressive parade in which those who marched or rode horseback were cos- tumed to recall early stages of New Canaan history. Records of that gala occasion with many illustrations in the shape of kodak pictures may be found in the Historical Society room in the Library.
It has of course been impossible to tell of New Canaan without speaking of the men and women who were New Canaan, with some account of their homes, their daily lives, their contributions to the life of the village. Many a name deserving more than a passing notice must needs be omitted here, from lack of space and lack of knowledge. Of some few, however, of these makers of local history, there is still matter worthy of record to be told before this chronicle closes.
THE WEED FAMILY
One ever-recurring name is that of the Weed family, for whose beginnings in this locality we have to go away back before the birth of Canaan Parish.
An ancestor, Jonas Weed, who lived near Stamford, Northampton County, England, joined Governor Winship's fleet and landed in
256
Readings In New Canaan History
Boston, May 29, 1630 on the "Arabella," and in 1635 with others founded the settlement of Watertown, later called Wethersfield. To Abraham Weed, born in 1680, belongs the distinction, according to one tradition, of having been the first white settler of New Canaan. His father, John Weed, who lived in Stamford, gave him about 1727 a large farm on the road which subsequently became Weed Street, and helped him build a house on the same lot where the Weed resi- dence now stands. The original house was held by some to have been the first built in New Canaan. Abraham is buried in the Weed cemetery on Frogtown Road.
The son of this pioneer, Abraham Weed, 2d, died in 1757, leaving his twelve-year old son Peter a house which is believed to have stood on the north side of Frogtown Road.
STEPHEN WEED'S FORT
On the south side of the road lived Stephen Weed, who fought in the Revolutionary War, in a house overlooking the fort he built. Stephen Weed, attending church in Middlesex (Darien) with his parents July 22, 1781, was one of the five men who escaped when the Tories surrounded the church and took prisoner the pastor, Mr. Mather, and the male members of the congregation. Immediately enlisting in the continental army he lost no opportunity in proving his bravery and patriotism but the severity of his duties aggravated by his confinement in Provost Prison in New York were more than he could sustain and he gradually broke down sinking into a state of mental derangement. Living in constant fear of an invasion by a foreign army which he insisted would march up the Noroton valley west of his house, he exhausted all his means in the defense of his home and country by building a stone fort on Frogtown Road, enclosing a subterranean retreat which might have been a magazine and surrounded the whole with a ditch. Day after day for nine weary years he stood sentinel or paced his appointed beat scanning the vale to the south for a glimpse of the coming foe.
FAITHFUL SNAKE SENTRY
He was very proud to receive the notice of strangers who visited his fort to witness his military drill and he never tired of telling over his campaign. Only one addition to his own arrangements was
257
A History of New Canaan 1801-1901
permitted. One day he found a huge black snake coiled on his prom- enade in front of his works and the idea seized him that here was his relief sentinel and he allowed no one to disturb the snake. Day after day the faithful and apparently sympathetic sentinel did relief work for the old man until one day he located himself in a part of the ground to which he had not been assigned. Immediately in exer- cise of his military authority, the uncompromising old disciplinarian summarily dispatched the snake for being found off guard. At last the old soldier was called to lay down his arms, dying as he had lived, in the shadow of that great war cloud.
GOLD MINED ON WEED STREET?
Lt. Seth Weed, a nephew of Peter, served in the Revolution under Lt. Colonel Thomas Seymour of the Connecticut Light Horse and in 1779 under Major General Oliver Wolcott. Marrying in 1771, he built the house on Weed Street which was sold by his great-great- grandchildren in 1922. Samuel Andos Weed, the son of Seth Weed, 2d, was born November 12, 1799. As a young man he went to New York and was for many years a wholesale grocer in the firm of Weed and Kethchem. Retiring from business, he built the house on Weed Street now occupied by his grandchildren on his father's property. He organized the first bank in New Canaan, the New Canaan Savings Bank, June 10, 1859, being its first president.
When we are told that for many years there had not been a single Carter on Carter Street, or a Smith of the original family on Smith Ridge, or a Talmadge at Talmadge Hill, it is good to know that on Weed Street there are still Weeds and that their ancestors included not only the Stamford pioneer of that name, but a very early Hanford from Norwalk.
It is said that the ancestral acres once yielded something more thrilling than wheat and potatoes, for gold was at one time mined on the Weed property. The mine was discovered by Seth Chauncey Weed, the father of the present family.
W. B. WEED, YALE, 1830
To another branch of the family belongs William B. Weed, who graduated from Yale in the class of 1830. He is described as "a modest boy from this town with a marvelous memory," who learned the whole of "Watts' Divine Songs" between Saturday and Monday
258
Readings In New Canaan History
and recited them to his pastor's wife. A boy who chose to devote his week-end to this pursuit would seem ordained for the church, and so it proved: after five years spent in teaching and one in the study of law he entered the ministry and was settled in Stratford in 1 840, fifteen years later serving in the first church of Norwalk until his death in 1860.
In a volume of sermons published after his death, copies of which were once to be found in many households of New Canaan and Norwalk, are preserved specimens of the preaching of which he is said to have made a "divine and thrilling act."
One other event of importance in the last year of the nineteenth century was the formation of the New Canaan Golf Club, incorpo- rated by an act of legislature in the January session of the General Assembly and a charter granted accordingly. "This marked the accomplishment of a plan long cherished by Dr. Edward W. Lam- bert, who, desirious of providing opportunity for the enjoyment of golf, and of promoting social intercourse among the summer resi- dents of New Canaan, had with wisdom and foresight, selected a tract of land lying to the north of the Borough as best suited for this purpose. Enlisting the cooperation and support of a few neigh- bors and friends Dr. Lambert had purchased for the Club the prop- erty comprising upwards of two hundred acres. To the liberality of these gentlemen, who became the incorporators of the New Canaan Golf Club, the present club and the community are indebted for the reservation of a large section of land, beautiful to look upon, of diversified character and admirably adapted to the use to which it was assigned."
Upon the organization of the Club, Dr. Lambert was unanimously elected president and so continued until his death in 1904. The other officers in 1899 were Payson Merrill, vice-president, William E. Bond, secretary and Dr. Williard Parker, Jr., treasurer. The original course was but four holes long, Mr. Lawrence P. Frothingham play- ing four times round to win the first medal play tournament.
In 1904 the name, New Canaan Golf Club, was changed to the Country Club of New Canaan by an order of the Superior Court of Fairfield County, and on Decoration Day of the same year, the club house, previously planned, was formally opened to members and their guests.
259
A History of New Canaan 1801-1901
ST. JOHN FAMILY
St. John is a name never long absent from this chronicle, and there remain still some items of interest concerning members of this family. Most often recur the names of William St. John and his scholarly brother, Samuel, sons of the older Samuel St. John, who, in the early years of the town figured as merchant, postmaster, church and town officer, and state congressman.
There is an interesting story about his acquisition of the plot of ground on Park Street from which the present St. John Place takes its name. This property, eight acres in extent, called the "Meet- ing House Ground" had previously belonged to Moses Hanford. As the result of a quarrel with Luke Raymond over "a stick of basket timber worth not more than fifty cents," Hanford became so involved in a foolish lawsuit that he had to raise five hundred dollars at once to pay the lawyers. He went to Samuel St. John and begged him to buy this lot; but when the deed was signed he "cried like a baby" and exclaimed, "The Meeting House Lot is gone!" He did not even have the satisfaction of winning the suit, as he could never prove that the stick of wood had been stolen.
William St. John, who tells the story as he heard it from his mother, adds the trenchant comment: "So much for spunk and lawyers' fees."
BEAUTIFUL HOUSE
The ill wind that blew for Moses Hanford brought good, how- ever, to more than lawyers, for now on the "Meeting House Lot" Mr. Samuel St. John built a beautiful home. The white colonial house stood in a setting of tall maples and great spruces and pines just north of the site now occupied by No. 46 St. John Place, but facing Park Street and with a white picket fence in front. At the back was a great barn (later moved to East Avenue) and nearby were several smaller buildings. This property seems to have included all the present St. John Place, reaching away back to the brook near Prospect Place.
In this ideal home the young St. Johns grew up. Their mother Hannah Benedict Richards, daughter of Squire Isaac Richards, had come from another spacious home, for her father owned the ground now devoted to the Country Club and had a fine house there with panelled walls. The sister of Samuel and William St. John, named Hannah after her mother, married the new minister, Theophilus
260
Readings In New Canaan History
Smith, in 1831, as elsewhere recorded and, nothing daunted by the clanking chains of the traditional ghost, went to housekeeping in the old house across the street (the Ashwell place) which her grand- father David had bought 67 years earlier.
The newer home was now called "The William St. John Place" from that brother, the youngest of five children, whose home it con- tinued to be until its tragic destruction by fire in 1876.
FRIENDLY MR. ST. JOHN
We have seen what an important part William St. John took in the life of the church, and what vital assistance he gave to his brother- in-law the pastor in erecting the new church building. He was a business man, maintaining a tin shop where Harry G. Wolfel is now (the present, 1949, Kathleen Shop). But his principal calling seems to have been the admirable one of friendliness. This profession is time- consuming, but has rich rewards. So William St. John must have ยท found it. Mrs. John Rogers in some reminiscences written in 1915, says that he was the friend of the whole town. Everyone went to him for advice and help, "from selecting a horse and cow up - We felt the town could not go on without him." He married for his first wife, Eliza Parkinson Curtis and had one son who died at the age of fourteen.
Two of the old families were again united when Mr. St. John married for his second wife, Hannah Carter, whose father was Eben- ezer Carter of the old Benedict house on Carter Street as it is now called and whose mother was Rhoda Weed Carter, already spoken of as the donor of the great piece of timber for the spire of the new church. The second Mrs. St. John had no children of her own but was devoted to her little invalid stepson and "very kind to all chil- dren." She it was who nearly a century ago received a delightful gift which Mr. Roswell Benedict had made for her in his shop on Rich- mond Hill, that pair of dainty black and red kid slippers which may be seen today in the Historical Society room.
SAMUEL ST. JOHN, SCHOLAR
Samuel St. John, "the most distinguished scholar this town has produced" was an elder brother of William and lived with him during all his later years. He had previously been professor in Western
261
A History of New Canaan 1801-1901
Reserve University and principal of Cleveland Seminary for Young Ladies and of Cleveland Medical College. In 1856 he became pro- fessor of chemistry and medical jurisprudence in the College of Physi- cians and Surgeons and held this position for the remaining 20 years of his life. He was a man of broad horizons as well as deep scholar- ship: he made several trips to Europe before foreign travel had become the commonplace that it is today; Agassiz and Audubon were numbered among his personal friends.
On the St. John estate the professor had erected an observatory on a rocky knoll north of the house (the site now occupied by Mr. J .H. Bailey's Normandy cottage). The west room was used for the study and scientific library and in the east room was installed a telescope valued at eleven thousand dollars. Here Professor St. John conducted observations and classes in astronomy, characteristically putting the advantages of his fine equipment and of his own extensive knowledge at the service of the townspeople. With reason was it said of him that he "helped to make the great truths of science serviceable to men in their daily avocation." The telescope is now in the historical society at Hartford, having been presented by Professor St. John's son, Dr. Samuel B. St. John, the celebrated oculist of that city.
The professor's death in 1876, only a few weeks after his historical sketch of New Canaan in the Centennial celebration, was a tragic blow to his devoted brother William. When a month later, his beau- tiful home was burned, he left New Canaan and went to live in Fredericksburg, Virginia.
It was not until 13 years later that the property was purchased by F. E. Weed and Company and a street cut through which was known as Prospect Street until about 1905 when the name was right- fully changed to St. John Place. The first house to be erected on the new street was the Kellogg home; the second the house of Mr. Wil- liam F. Weed.
COMSTOCK HAY TO MARKET
Not far from the Richards farm at the head of Smith Ridge lived another branch of the Comstock family. Samuel Comstock's spacious farmhouse was set in two hundred acres of land, for he was a wealthy hay farmer, who "pressed off" and sent to New York more hay than any other in New Canaan. In those days when "farming was still not altogether unprofitable," late summer and fall found the
262
Readings In New Canaan History
big figure of Samuel Comstock, with his fat rosy cheeks, perched high on his load of hay, slowly making his way to the landing at Five Mile River.
CHOIR BOY'S VIEW
Dr. Rockwell gives us a vivid little moving picture of some of his old time New Canaan friends as he saw them from the gallery of the Congregational Church which the Church Hill Institute boys some- times attended as a change from the Episcopal services.
"There was Mr. Bradley, still comparatively young, portly, with eyes half closed when he smiled, and whose daughter married my brother. Mrs. Silliman comes in with her two boys, Joseph and Justus."
The latter boy, Justus Mitchell Silliman, two years younger than the writer, after being wounded in the army and twice captured, became in 1870 the head of the Department of Mining and Engineer- ing in Lafayette College, a position which he held until his death 26 years later.
The picture continues: "Mary Crissey sweeps up the aisle to her place in one of the cross seats. She was very lively and pretty, and a great favorite. She married Mr. Wheeler of the firm of Wheeler and Wilson of sewing-machine fame, and for many years lived in a beautiful house at Bridgeport, quite different from her humble New Canaan home. Near Mr. Bradley sits Edgar Raymond, one of the pillars of the church, and jolly Sam Comstock with his wife and three daughters make their way to a pew on the other side aisle."
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.