USA > Connecticut > Fairfield County > New Canaan > Readings in New Canaan history > Part 7
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THIRTY-ODD FAMILIES
When they had finished their first meeting house and settled their first minister, the church record (for the church was the local government then) reveals some thirty-odd families. Not until the first census or "Family Visitation" of Rev. William Drummond in 1772 do we learn just how many people lived here. The older church records were lost in the fire which destroyed the St. John house before mentioned, shortly after Professor St. John had written his history. He had had access to documents which we can never see and upon whose nature we can only speculate. Certain church records were preserved, however, and are now in the State Library at Hart- ford, where are also so many others which were in danger of complete destruction from frequent examination, which their condition would not stand. Photostatic copies sturdily bound were furnished us by the State.
That there were more families than the small group of parish founders we know from the land records. Why must we hunt them out? Every one was required to be affiliated with the church; all paid "tithes." Why among these descendants of the disciples of Thomas Hooker do we find the names of only the elect? Here appears the hand of Rev. John Davenport, for Stamford was a child of the New Haven Colony, where a most autocratic church government existed and where a mere handful of those who met the severe test of their religious standards could vote, while the rest were silent.
THE DIFFERENCES
Did space permit, it would be timely to review the difference between the Connecticut colony consisting of Hartford, Wethers- field, Windsor, Saybrook and Fairfield and Norwalk with the New Haven Colony consisting of New Haven, Guilford and Stamford. In broad terms, Hooker might be called a democrat, with that same belief in the ultimate ability of the people to rule which was crystal-
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Canaan Parish in the Period 1733-1801
lized by Thomas Jefferson a century and a half later. The towns of the Connecticut colony naturally reflected this doctrine. Daven- port, on the other hand, believed that only the elect of God should rule and he set up a church hierarchy and a government patterned upon the Old Testament.
This religious and civil anomaly bred years of discord in Con- necticut but was marked by notable restraint and patience on both sides, even to the point of maintaining two capitals or seats of govern- ment where the legislative bodies met alternately. The ultimate union came about largely through expediency rather than by a resolution of their differences, for "the enemy was at the city gates" in the form of a threat from England that the charter would be lost to a certain ambitious group headed by the Duke of York, who wanted to com- bine all New England and New York into a single royal province. So the two legislative bodies removed one of the arguments used against them by uniting to face a common danger, and New Haven no longer exercised control over Stamford.
TO INFLUENCE DECISION
Nonetheless, the shades of difference in the philosophy of the Hookerites of Norwalk and the Davenportites of Stamford met here in Canaan Parish where the two elements composed a single church group and obviously the stage was set for much argument, theologi- cal, doctrinal and civil. Although the people on the Norwalk side of the Parish outnumbered those on the Stamford side three to one, when it came to settling or dismissing a minister, the Stamford group, led by Abraham Weed, seems to have conducted most of the catechis- ing and exposed traces of the Davenport philosophy with sufficient force to influence the decision. Two centuries later that same Abra- ham Weed had a great-great grandson in the late Hanford S. Weed, who played a similar part in New Canaan town meetings consistently for many years and with great credit. So, with but meager pickings to glean from our undramatic past, we have the distinction of being the only parish where these two remarkable philosophies of govern- ment met, that have interested historians for years.
At this point it may be fitting to recite that while Stamford and Norwalk brought forth their great men, from Governor Thomas
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Canaan Parish in the Period 1733-1801
Fitch and Captain Jonathan Hoyt to the Honorables John H. Light and Homer Cummings, neither of them attracted the fates to select a proper birthplace for Anthony Comstock, who was born and lived most of his life in New Canaan. His very name awakens a smile of scorn or amusement from the ignorant or misinformed but he con- ducted a great crusade against vice with a fearlessness that has scarcely been matched since. He may have been narrow and even impractical but he gave the world an example of courage supporting conviction. The press of his day makes rather a bad showing and most of the invective hurled at him came from pretty doubtful sources.
TO THE PROPRIETORS
Let us return to the subject of our thesis, which is the land. All of our 36 square miles belonged to the Proprietors of Norwalk and Stamford. The west side or about one-third was part of the Nathaniel Turner purchase, acting for the New Haven Colony in 1640. The center and most of the east was in the Captain Patrick purchase and a small portion of the extreme east in the Roger Ludlow purchase in 1640. Both Patrick and Ludlow acted independently as land specu- lators and both sold out to the Norwalk settlers ten years later.
The division line between the two sides was the perambulation line agreed upon after much debate and some violence, to be run from where "ye country road crosses ye Five Mile River; 372 degrees west of north to ye Colony line."
The proprietors were what we would call today a close corpora- tion. After acquiring the land, they adopted a policy and devised a system for controlling and dividing it. First they made a "List of Estates," which would correspond to our grand list or assessors' books. Just how they determined a man's estate and of what it con- sisted has never been made entirely clear but we find their names all set down with the amount of their estate against them. The figures run from 50 to 400 pounds. This is what governed the amount of land a man was entitled to when a division of common land was made. For instance, when after having drawn lots for the location of their "house lot" and some six acres of the "common" or fenced land near by (this all near the center for protection and control,
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for this was the edge of the wilderness, the farthest removed colony in Connecticut, with the Dutch of doubtful friendliness just over the line in New Amsterdam) they laid a "sequest" line slightly farther removed, beyond which lay the vast lands to be considered for systematic division from time to time. They appointed a committee which included a surveyor and clerk and, having decided to make a division of a certain region, the committee laid it out somewhat roughly and reported that the land was ready to "pitch upon." Each proprietor then drew a number which was his turn in the "pitch" or choice of his portion.
VOTE APPORTIONMENT
They voted in what relation to their estates the land would be apportioned. Thus "three acres to the hundred," if it were a relatively small division of desirable land, or ten acres of woodland, six acres of swampland, and three acres of "ploughland," according to the nature of the case. That meant that a man with an estate of one hundred pounds could, when his turn to "pitch" came, select three acres in the first case or ten, six and three in the latter instance. Some- times a proprietor would sell his chance to another and in this way one man might acquire the right to an hundred or more acres but this was not common.
There were a few individuals who seem to have been in a position to indulge bountifully in the acquisition of common land. On the Stamford side their minister, Rev. John Davenport, in addition to the most generous allotment of land granted him upon his "settlement" with them as their minister, was voted rather special indulgences from time to time, it seems. For although no such amount of land is recorded to him on their land records, when his heirs settled his estate about 1732 it included in Canaan Parish alone nearly the entire Stamford side - about 3,000 acres. This is an exceptional case and out of all proportion to his estate but they followed a very liberal policy of "seisin," did the Stamford committee, quite outdoing their Norwalk brethren, although these also left the land estate to their minister, Rev. Thomas Hanford, the largest in the parish next to Mr. Daven- port's, after the last division had been completed.
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Canaan Parish in the Period 1733-1801
TO NEWCOMERS
Rights in commonage were voted to newcomers from time to time for certain reasons. A much needed artisan, smith, miller, carpenter, cooper, or some such would have an arbitrary right in commonage voted him and could participate in the division of common land in the proportion of that right to the whole list of estates. Male children of the proprietors were granted a fifty-pound right upon reaching the age of twenty-one. Rights were inherited and apportioned in wills. They were sometimes bought and sold but because only "desirable people" were made welcome in the colony this trading was never promiscuous.
There was in the beginning some confusion and uncertainty both as to policy and method, and men pitched upon land they could not definitely bound nor properly describe; but there was so much land, their claims were usually satisfied out of court. Piles of stones, "staddles" and initialed trees usually marked bounds, although some actual survey with angles and distances appear. The English custom of land marks persisted and took precedence often over the descrip- tion and land record system.
It may be observed that the proprietors of Stamford and Norwalk were not entirely inexperienced in the matter of acquiring and dis- posing of common land for every one of them had been a "house- lot" owner in some other colony of Connecticut or Massachusetts or both, before they came here. So it is reasonable to suppose and expect that they were prepared to do a pretty good job and they did. For the institution of proprietary colonies withstood the severe strain put upon it by new settlers, who soon came to outnumber the proprietors and who attempted to eliminate the system and to induce the General Assembly to bring this about. A long controversy, passing through several sessions of the Assembly, finally decided in favor of the Proprietors and so this strange situation of a few people owning all the common land persisted until it eventually came entirely into private ownership.
SAME HUMAN TRAITS
We are accustomed to high power adjectives today, such as frenzied and terrific, and we speak of the tempo of life. We recall such move-
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ments as the "gold rush" of '49 and the Klondike in 1898, our two classic examples of man's madness for wealth. Though such adjectives will not bear stretching back into the lives of these people of our colony in the years 1640 to 1750, still in their zeal for land they represent about the same human traits; not all of them, to be sure, for the line between the speculators and the homesteaders appears quite distinctly in the settlement of Canaan Parish, and is the real object of this paper to set forth.
A list of the large and active land owners from 1725 to 1760 would reveal many strange sounding names among the familiar ones. These were land speculators and their activities appear in other colonies as well. They bought and sold land. There were proprietors among them, to be sure, but there were also money lenders and men with money to invest; and before the industrial and even the shipping era began, land was about the only thing in which money could be invested. During this period the same land changed hands many times. Often acquired in large acreages, it was sold in smaller parcels.
During this process, we discover that the homesteader adopted a policy of consolidating his lands. He sold distant acres and bought adjoining land until he had a substantial farm.
The accompanying map is an attempt to show what remained after the speculative storm had passed and how an undercurrent of substantial purpose came into its own. These people who repre- sented the real beginnings of what we were to become and whose lives formed the youthful strength and character of the community are not the only ones; there were many others but the map was designed to show a certain continuity in the evolution of the land movement from commonage and only those are shown who had their land from common or from their parents who were original proprietors.
LIVED RURAL LIVES
These people lived rural, somewhat sheltered lives. They raised large families, farmed, made shoes, lumbered, raised large herds, grew flax and made their own woolens and linens. They were of good English stock and of about the same plane of financial, intellectual and moral character. They participated in the affairs of their parent
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Canaan Parish in the Period 1733-1801
towns creditably, for most of them had close family ties in both places. They sent their fair quota of men to the colonial wars and furnished two captains and companies during the revolution.
In 1801 they had grown to some twelve or more hundred souls and were granted corporate papers by the State and became a separate town. The little town of Canaan in the extreme northwestern part of the State, more recently settled, had taken their name and with a quite understandable confidence of youth, they took the name of New Canaan. Some of us wish they had retained the old name Canaan Parish.
Perhaps no one thing reveals these people of the past more clearly than a ramble over any old farm still intact. Here beyond the friendly substantial house, close to the road, one finds the generous barns and farm buildings, the kitchen garden and then the orchard. The lane leading from the barnyard across the entire farm, with bars opening into the successive meadows on either side and finally ending in the woodland beyond. Fields cleared and stones gathered for years built into walls that stand today, a study in strength and the beauty of age. They built for their children and their children did likewise. More land was cleared by each succeeding generation and a 12-cow farm grew into one supporting 20 cows, for they grew their own food then for both man and beast. Milk was not gathered by the whole- saler but was converted into butter and cheese and the residue into pork, and both were marketable. For the first few years they had no wheeled vehicles but made their own sledges and stone boats, for there were plenty of oxen to haul a handicapped load; never since those early days have there been so many beasts on our hillsides.
INDUSTRIES GREW
Industries grew - not the smoky kind - but those of master crafts- men who kept several apprentices and made shoes, barrels, flannel and linen. Connecticut was in the colonial wars for years and armies needed provender and especially shoes - shoes, shoes and more shoes. When peace came this little community was largely composed of men who were both farmers and shoemakers. The industry made the parish an important shoe town to the whole country, for it must be remembered that many of the small towns of today here in New England were of relatively great importance then. The city of
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Bridgeport, which casts a smothering shadow of size and importance today, was not to be mentioned with us then.
These small industries grew and prospered until the pace of the machinery age stepped up to a point where an industrial town must be favored with perfect transportation facilities and the floating surplus population of nearby cities available. Although they made a brave and confident effort to adjust themselves and although as late as 1890-1900 factory whistles blew and the ring of hammers on anvils fashioning carriage irons and tires made a merry sound, as each smith hurried to announce that he had started the day, the future of the town as an industrial spot was doomed.
As we observed upon another occasion, "old man geography and his son, transportation, had decreed long since that the future of our hills was no longer for the farms nor our center for the factories, but rather homes for many city dwellers who would soon be seeking restful quiet and rural charm." Still, they could not believe it, these town fathers of the nineties; they formed a Board of Trade and offered inducements for industries to locate here. A few did and stayed while their tax-free period lasted and long enough to justify their conscience for accepting a handsome bonus.
WENT GLORY OF FARMS
Coincident with the decline of the industries went the glory of the farms. The older generation had witnessed their children attracted away by the larger life of the cities and the farms passed into new, strange hands. The enterprising ones in the center had formed a borough government and there came street lights to replace the plodding lantern - oil at first, and finally electricity.
Most all traces of the farm and industry period of the town have disappeared completely. What exists today is in many respects infinitely finer - more people with more varied interests, views and occupations; more richness in the life of the town - far more; much greater capacity to give and put more into life; beautiful churches, marvelous schools, parks and cultural facilities for a cultured people. The twelve hundred of 1801 are now five and a half times as many. Just how much more of happiness and contentment is here than in those days none can say. Still, we can consistently repeat today the
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Canaan Parish in the Period 1733-1801
closing words of Professor St. John's address of 1876: "Let us cherish our history. It is a great and distinctive advantage that we have behind us the beginning and growth of an orderly history."
Deeply conscious of the responsibility one assumes in putting into public print that which at some future time may be accepted as gospel by seekers for truth, we wish to add that such statements herein given as facts may be relied upon as reasonably accurate, such as are but opinions may be taken for what they are worth.
We have passed through three definite periods of our history, each complete - a closed book. First, the land speculation period; then the period of homesteading and consolidation of the farms; and last, the lives of the five generations born and brought up on our soil, ending with the early years of the Nineteenth Century.
FOURTH PERIOD
A fourth period is now under way. It is in entirely new hands. If those who have come into possession of these lands today find some merit in the associations that belong with their real estate, may the traces of a past pattern of life still discernable in the hoary old stone walls, the abandoned wells, the vacant foundations now perhaps converted into rock gardens, and more especially, the winding up- hill-down-dale roads reflecting the proprietary land divisions or the inimitable course of patient beasts of burden plodding at will where the way was easiest, may these and the recollection of a people identi- fied with the subjugation of a rough countryside and with the creation of our sturdy Americanism be a torch, as it were, to keep alive the altar fires they lit so long ago.
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Daniel Sector Mary his Wife. Hannah, Ifany, 1 Davidy Muami Children Regular y religious
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FIRST PAGE OF DRUMMOND'S "VISITATION JOURNAL"
The Rev. William Drummond, a young graduate of the University of Edinburgh, became the Canaan Parish minister in 1772. He set out shortly to make a "Family Visitation" or census of the Parish - a Scotch custom of which this is the only known example in Connecticut. The originals of this unique record and of Drummond's interesting personal journal are treasured possessions of the Historical Society.
THE STORY OF NEW CANAAN'S ANCESTRY
By H. MONROE HUMASON
This is an original paper prepared especially for publication here. H. Monroe Humason, a graduate of Yale University in the class of 1909 and of George Washington University Law School, is a descendent of a number of New Canaan's early families and is a governor of the New Canaan Historical Society. He has long been a serious student of local and New England history. An article by Mr. Humason on the derivation of land titles in this area was published in the June 1949 Annual of The New Canaan Historical Society.
N EW Canaan, as a Town, came into existence in 1801; Canaan Parish in 1731; but the life story of New Canaan goes much further back.
When the General Assembly approved the name "Canaan Parish" for a newly incorporated church society, New England was over a century old. Most of that period belongs to the history of New Canaan because it involves New Canaan's ancestors. For towns sometimes have ancestors, even as do individuals. The parents of Canaan Parish were Norwalk and Stamford. Back of them are Fairfield, New Haven Colony, the Three River Towns, and Massachusetts Bay.
It was the English who settled New England, but it was the Dutch who first explored the Connecticut shore and the river. In 1614 Adriaen Block, sailing up the Sound from Manhattan, was probably the first white man to view the Connecticut country. Perhaps, through the haze, he could see the hills that became New Canaan. Continuing eastward, Block found the mouth of a river, the river the Indians called Quonehtacutt. He pushed his little craft, the Onrust, upstream as far as the first rapids, and took back such enthusiastic reports that the Dutch later laid claim to the whole river valley. The Dutch, however, were more interested in trading posts than in col-
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onization, and it was left to the English to settle in the regions Block had explored. Adriaen Block is all but forgotten now, save that an island off the coast bears his name.
England's territorial claim was more comprehensive and much older. It was based on John Cabot's voyage of discovery in 1496-7, and it took in everything from Newfoundland to Florida.
With the earliest attempts at obtaining a foothold in New Eng- land-attempts directed largely along the Maine coast-New Canaan is not directly concerned. The first permanent settlement in New England came with the landing of the Mayflower at Plymouth Rock late in 1620, but Plymouth Colony crosses New Canaan's path only once or twice, and briefly.
Along one branch of its ancestral tree, New Canaan is descended from an obscure fishing village. Fish was an important element of trade. As the Spaniards to the south sought gold, the English in the north sought fish and furs. The waters off the northern Atlantic coast had long been famous as a fishing ground, even as they are today. It is probable that fishermen from Europe were there long before the coming of Columbus.
Much has been written on the question of why the early settlers came to America. In that discussion the question of how they got here is sometimes neglected. One underlying cause of early colonization was the desire for riches. It was not the colonists themselves who were to get rich, it was promoters back home in England. These men viewed the New World as a potential source of vast profits. They had at their command sufficient funds to finance voyages to America, and sufficient influence with the Crown to obtain colonization and trading rights. The King claimed ownership of all the lands and waters of North America, but to support that claim against encroach- ment by the French and the Dutch it was necessary to show actual possession. So the King was willing to grant charters and patents. The patentees thus obtained certain rights in the lands and waters, but if they were to derive any profit from those rights it was necessary to have people in America who would send back the fish and fur and lumber that were articles of trade. So the patentees organized them- selves into stock companies prepared to finance voyages. If these stock companies could find groups who were anxious to go to America for reasons of their own, so much the better; if not, they could always
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