Norwalk

Robert Stuart, the second occupant of home-lot xxi, made the purchase on March 8, 1660. The lot was in the rear of the East Avenue Chichester property of 1896. Mr. Stuart may have made this purchase as anticipatory of his marriage, June 12. 1661, to Bethia, daughter of Thomas and Rose (Sherwood) Rumble of Stratford. Mrs. Stuart's father, Thomas Rumble, was born in 1613, and came in Sept. 1635, to Boston. The year after Thomas Rumble landed, a small craft of 25 tons brought the brave Lyon Gardiner, and his wife Mary, to these shores. These two worthies were the founders of the well- known "Gardiner's Island," in the eastern part of Long Island Sound. Lyon Gardiner reached Saybrook Nov. 28, 1635, and the next season built the Saybrook fort At this time Thomas Rumble put himself under Mr. Gardiner's command, and fought against the Pequots. The first white child born (Apr. 29, 1636) in Connecticut, David, son of Lyon and Mary Gardiner, was the offspring of Rumble's leader, the birth of which lad the soldier. Rumble, for thirteen years survived. Four years after his death, his widow, Rose, married Thomas Barlow of Fairfield. Mrs. Barlow survived her second husband, and married, third, Edward Xash, the founder of the Nash family of Norwalk. Her daughter Bethia had wedded Robert Stuart, and the two good people lived on the home-lot under descrip- tion (xxi). To the south of their domain stretched a tract east of the highway (rear of the present Oscar W. Raymond and other properties) which (see note page 7) may originally ■The point on the Norwalk coast from which Na- than Male embarked for Long: Island is not, so far, positively known. The Raymonds, in 1764 8-1, ran a "ferry" to the Island, but there is proof that Hale's conveyance was not a public one. There was private transportation to the Island from "Pampaskashanke ", and horses for the British were " scowed " across the Sound from Middlesex (Darien). The Sunday (July 22, 17S1) route from the shore which the captors of Rev. Moses Mather took, lay, one record states, from just west of the head of Pampaskashanke inlet (Wil- son's Cove, 1896) near 'Witch Lane", and thence over the present "old Five-Mile River Road" to the Middlesex Church, along which same way they possi- bly marched the prisoner-minister and his assembled people, in pairs, on the return to their boats at Pam- paskashanke beach. "Witch Lane" (see page 302) is to this dav a wierd spot. The present Norwalk Tramway crosses it at a point not greatly distant from the temporary quarters of old Phcebe Comstock's old slave, " O'ne" (see note page 260). The C stock's who lived in Lower Silver Mine, seem to have with- ered their salt hay from the neighborhood of the 1896 Helden Point, and "O'ne," during the hay-cut- ting season, probably there inhabited. Al the sum- mit of Witch Lane, and but a few rods northwest of the Tramway crossing, is a small burial enclosure, which formed a portion of the Esaias Bouton estate, and within which are interred the mortal remains of this Pampaskashanke resident and those of his wife. J22 NORWALK. have possibly been intended for Mr. Ludlow's sons, but which fell to Richard Bushnell's ownership. Mr. Bushnell was a non-resident of Norwalk, probably, but as he had married Maria, daughter of Matthew Marvin, Sr., he was Norwalk-connected. On May 30, 1663. Robert Stuart bought from Thos. Adgate of Norwich (who had married the widow of Richard Bushnell and was administrator of the Bushnell estate) a portion of this fine piece, and on Oct. 22, 1674, he purchased still more of it. Mr. Stuart also owned a large slice of property in the » Ely Neck ", later ■' Bolder, Neck" vicinity. " Stuart's Meadow " was his belonging as well as " Stuart's Landing ". The latter was quite a shipping pier or place, near what was afterwards known as- the "Village-, (between the South Norwalk and Wilson Point of 1896). Robert Stuart made his thus endorsed will, "They that are in the Lord are happy indeed ", on March 12, 1679, and died in 1688, leaving issue as follows : James,""- born March 19, 1662-3. Abigail, born middle Aug. 1666. (Mrs. Richard Corsair.)' John,'"- born March 18, 1668-9. Deborah, born May, 1669. Elizabeth, born Sept., 1671. Phoebe, born Feb. 1673. Sarah, born 1675. Samuel, ,st- born May, 1677. Rachel, born 1685. (Married David, son of John Raymond'8'). The children of James'5'- and Experience Stuart were James2"*5-, Robert, Hannah, (married John Taylor), Deborah (married Apr. 14, 1726, James Pickett),2 Mary (married John Morehouse of Fairfield), and Emma (who married, March 4, 1723-4), John Paret of Fairfield. The family seat was where now resides, on East Avenue, the widow of the late YVm. G. Thomas. This piece of property (some two or so acres) was on Feb. 20, 1667, granted by the town " Proprietors " to James Beebe of Stratford (see note page 113). Soon after James Stuart'"- became of age, he bought (16S5) Mr. Beebe out, and the latter removed to Danbury. Mr Stuart held the acres intact until Dec. 1, 1726, when he deeded one-half acre to the town as a site for the third Meeting House, he receiving for the new •The children of Richard and Abigail (Stuart) Corsair were: John, born 1693; Abigail (married a Watson); llezekiah, born July 3, 1708; Josiah, born March I, 1710 (removed to Milford); and Thomas, born 171 1. ^Deborah, daughter of Ensign James1**- and Ex- perience Stuart, married April 14, 1726, James3d-, son of James15t* and Rebecca ( keeler) Pickett, and grand- sun of John and Margaret Pickett the settlers. The son. John, born Sept. 6, 1737, of James and Deborah I Stuart) Pickett, married Mercy Piatt, and had a son John, who married Mary Bates, which John and Mary (Bates) Pickett were the parents of Clarissa Pickett, born March 28, 1799, who married the late Joseph . Piatt Wood of East Avenue, Norwalk, who was the father of the energetic Noah Wood, now of said Ave- nue, and who, in 1896, owns and occupies the house of the late Edwin Hall, D.D., in the second story south east front room of which was compiled " Hall's Norwalk", and written "Hall's Infant Baptism", and later in the author's Norwalk life, " Hall's Puri- I tans and their Principles ". N'ORWALK. 3?3 ecclesiastical locality three and one-half •• Ely Neck " acres. The choice of this lot for the third church was made by a disinterested committee (James Wadsworth, John Hall and Samuel Clark) appointed by the Connecticut General Assembly. The old church (second edifice) stood on the Earle's Hill of 1S96, but the settlement was stretching north- ward, and convenience compelled the sanctuary's removal. The structure here reared (Thomas place of 1896) was the same that was burned by the British in 1779. After the town's conflagration, the fourth Meeting House was built at the south end of " The Green," opposite, or nearly so, of the present First Congregational Church. Subsequently to Mr. Stuart's disposal of his land to the Church Society he left Nonvalk and made a home in Kent, Litchfield County, Connecticut. John Stuart"*-, brother of James'"-, had John Silas, Reuben, Benjamin, Ezra, Abigail (married Jan. 20, 1746, Samuel Fountain), Jemima and Sarah. He was a town surveyor. On Christmas day 1723, he sold ten acres of East Avenue (1896) property to Robert Smith, founder of the Smith branches (Fountain, Hutton and John L. ) of the Smith family, and afterward removed to Wilton, of which place he was one of the settlers. Samuel Stuart'"1-, brother of James'"1- and John'" , married Hannah, daughter of Thomas Bennett of Fairfield. His children were: Samuel, John, Simeon'-'-,1 Nathan, Ruth (married Jonathan Atherton) and Dorothy, who on Aug. [8, 1742-3, married Daniel Burchard of Cortland Manor. The three sons of Robert'8'- and Bethia Stuart, viz. : James181-, John '"• and Samuel'5'- have many name-descendants to-day, and the sons and daughters of the old Stuart pro- prietor of home-lot xxi have widely diffused his blood/ OF ROBERT STUART'-t- DESCENT. The good fore-parents, Robert""- and Bethia Stuart, had recently bought their home-site (near the 1896 Edmund Smith house, just east of Earle's Hill) when their first ■Samuel and Hannah Stuart had a son Simeon'-1- who married Now 15, 1739, Abigail Smith, who had Simeon2"1-, who seemed to marry Mary or Maria, daughter u( David Whelpley, and to have had Olive, born May 28, 1760, who married Sanmel-V**, son of Samuel**- and Elizabeth (Piatt) Fitch, who were the parents of Sherman Piatt Fitch of Wilton, (seep. 216.) 2The Stuart family has widely scattered repre- sentatives to-day. Nathaniel, son of Nathan Stuart, was baptized Oct. 15, 1755, and married Mary, daugh- ter of Isaac, son of Joseph and grandson of Ephraim I.ockwood the settler. Nathaniel and Mary Stuart removed to Vermont. Nathaniel's younger brother, Nathan, born 1747, and almost, if not the only Stuart- named occupant of St. Matthew's Cemetery, Wilton, has a somewhat pathetic history. The little fellow- was home-gathered just as the sun was setting on the evening of July 20, 1761, when a bolt descended from ft thunder cloud, and, as was the case with Hlackleach Jessup of the same parish, he was instantly killed. On June 21, 1778, William Scott of the Flat Rock (Ridgefield) district family, married Susanna Stuart. The Scott's seem to have arrived at the Wilton- Ridgefield borders from the more southern portion of the country. They are represented to-day in Ridgefield and Norwalk. It was near their "Flat Rock" possessions that Trvon's men slept on the April 1777 night after the burning of Danbury, and at the time of the Ridgefield skirmish. The branch of the old C^uintard family which is to-day represented by the investigating C. A. Quin- tard of Main Street, derived its Stuart-l'ickett blood from Deborah, daughter of Ensign James Stuart'"- who married James2'1- son of James Pickett1"- Ezra Pickett, born July 12, 1740, son of James2*1- and Deb- orah Pickett, and who, on March 30, 1761, married Elizabeth Benedict was the father of Elizabeth Pickett who married Isaac, father of the late Evert Quintard, one of Norwalk's venerable and much regarded re- cent citizens. NORWALK,