Norwalk

little one in infancy, adopted a child, William, who iirst, Sylvester Scofield of Darien, and had Levi, married, June -'4, 1806, Minerya Alherti, daughter of Henry, Sarah, Henry and Hezekiah. She married, William A. and Celste Tucker of Bald Hill, Wilton, i second, Chattnccy Raymond of The Oblong, and third, Cyrus K. Rusco, sou of Hezekiah, married, first, Sherman Buttery of Silver Mine. Olive, daughter of Jeremiah Knapp of Pound Ridge, Chas. H., sou of Cyrus F. Rusco, married Emma and had : Charles! H.; Marjorie V. ; George V., died Rich of New York. He is an engineer on the Con- umnarried: Mary K. ; Frank; Jeremiah, died un- solidated Road, and has no children. His sister, married. Mary Emily, married Thomas Eyans of Winnipauk, C u tis F. Rusco married, second, the widow : who has Bertha ; Floyd ; Arthur and Olive V . Helen Sparks of New York Citv. There are no Frank Rusco and his sister Marjorir V., children Rusco children by this union. Harry Sparks, son, . of Cyrus, are unmarried. Their home is in Lewis- by Iter Hrst husband, of Mrs. L'vrus Rusco3*1', married born, N . Y . The two brothers, Charles H. and Frank, a daughter of the late Ward Raymond of Lew isboro. reside at no great distance from each other. I 20 NOR W A L K Stephen Rusco married, Sept. 29, 1763, Ruth, daughter of Eleazer and Elizabeth Bouton. Mrs. Elizabeth Bouton was a Seymour. Thos. Rusco, supposed to be son of Thomas married Anna Dibble, Feb. 26, 1756. Possibly this is the same Thomas who married, a little later, Elizabeth, daughter of Eemuel and Sarah Raymond. The late Michael Rusco of Xorwalk, son of David, and grandson of John and Joanna Rusco of Rusco Ridge, married Man', daughter of Rev. James Brown of Salem, and sister of Lucy- (Mrs. Isaac Selleck). He had Samuel and Joseph. Joseph married Emma, daughter of Lewis and Anna Fancher and had Frank Rusco, the 1896 Business College principal. John and Rebecca, the Xorwalk Rusco fore-father and mother, were honored ancestors. The old house-lot and home, Xo. 6, continued for about fifty-five years in the family. The father died without having made a will and the estate was court-inventoried on Nov. 20, 1702. On Feb. 19, 1705, the original home was sold by the heirs to Samuel, the youngest son of Rev. Thos. Hanford, to whom fell his late father's adjoining home property This extended the Hanford acreage. The Hanford front yard and well are shown to-day, but every vestige of the Hanford Rusco-annex has disappeared by the Con- solidated road's changes. //O.I//;-/, o r \ I I. Rai.I'H KEELER, Sr., of Home-Lot No. 7. was born in 1613. He was one of the settlers, in 1639, of Hartford, and appeared in Fairfield in 1645, from whence we find him in Norwalk in 1655. He was twice married. His second wife was Sarah, widow of Henry Whelpley of Fairfield, who had at least two Whelpley children. He had assigned to him the four-and-a-half acre home-lot. the south-west corner of which is occupied to-day by \V S. Hanford of Fast Norwalk. He retained his original premises until Oct. 21, 1662, when he parted with them, and Richard Raymond became their proprietor. On Sept. I, 1665, was executed a deed whereby was made over to him the dwelling house, barn and lot that had belonged ,see page 39) to Thos. Ward, now the garden land of Wm. H. Earle. Ralph Keeler, Sr,. who died in 1672, left four sons, viz., Ka:I" "': Samuk,.; *OH** Jonas; died unmarried. Mr. Keeler had, also, four daughters, one of whom married, Nov. .6. .67., Benj. lurney o, Fairfield; another, Rebecca, who married. July ,7, ,673. James Pickett; and another, Isabel, who married Thos. Morehouse of Fairfield. Xorwalk and Ridgefield are widely- Keeler-spread, and the family's lineal and col- lateral branches are numerous. The discovery, if ever made, of the first Keeler mother NORWALK. will be an interesting disclosure. The after generations documentary-attested maternal descent, however, is something of an equivalent for information-loss concerning the senior Mrs. Ralph Keeler. OF RALPH KEELER, SR., DESCENT THROUGH RALPH KEELER, JR. Rev. John Davenport, the first minister of the New Haven colony, baptized in the spring (Apr. 5) of [656, Grace, daughter of Henry Lindall, one of his deacons. Deacon Lindall had a family of seven daughters, four of whom, Mary, Rebecca, Grace and Mercy came, after their father's decease and their mother's second marriage to Nathaniel Richards of Norwalk, with their mother and step-father, to this town and, being young, were a delightful addition to Norwalk society. Mary here became Mrs. John Hoyt, Rebecca, Mrs. John Fitch, Mercy, Mrs. Joseph Ketchum and Grace, Mrs. Ralph Keeler, Jr. Ralph Jr. and Grace Keeler had a daughter, Sarah, named, probably, for her grandfather Keeler's second wife, who, Dec. 2, 1702, married, for his first wife, Nathan, son of James and Phcebe Barlow Olmsted and grandson of Richard, the Norwalk Olmsted settler. Nathan Olmsted married, second, Mercie, daughter of Christopher Comstock, and had a daughter Mercy, who, by her marriage to her cousin Moses, (see page 83) son of James and Mary Comstock St. John, became the foremother of a numerous Norwalk offspring, and transmitted the oldest of Norwalk blood to the Chichesters, Cunninghams, Merrills and Stevens of the present day, as well as to several of the Betts and Gregory families. OF RALPH KEELER, SR., DESCENT THROUGH HIS SOX JOHN, John Keeler'"1- married June 18, 1679, Mehitable, daughter of John and Elizabeth (Weed) Rockwell, and had Daniel, who married Hannah, daughter of Joseph and Hannah (Hoyt) Whitney, and a sister of Hezekiah Whitney, the first elected vestryman of the Norwalk St. Paul's parish. Daniel and Hannah Keeler were residents of New Canaan, where their daughter Hannah married Dec. 29, 1748, Benjamin, son of John and Elizabeth Bolt, the founders of the Norwalk Bolt, Boalt or Boult family. Some of the most advantageously situated land in New Canaan was Bolt owned, noticeably the acres contiguous to the Congrega- tional Church. Benjamin Bolt ended his days in the extreme northerly section of the town and in a domicile the door-yard plants of which bloom and blossom to this day. Daniel Keeler made his will Nov. 14, 1764, and it was probated within two months. He will-named five sons, Daniel, 2d' John, Joseph, Isaiah and Jeremiah, and mentions his daughters, Lydia, Hannah (Mrs. Benj. Bolt), Dorothy (Mrs. Abram Hoyt), Dinah (Mrs. James Campfield) and Elizabeth. His son Daniel,'*- born about 1730, married at about twenty-one, and had two sons, Isaac and David, and two daughters, Hannah and Ruhama. Both these sons served their count!')' in the Revolutionary War. They lived at the upper NOR WALK. end of Smith's Ridge,' where now resides the widow of Stephen E. Keeler, who was the grandson of Isaac °Keeler and wife Catherine.' Mrs. Isaac Keeler. who was a Tuttle, was brought up in what is now "Luke's Woods," a portion of which sylvan stretch, lying between Canaan Ridge and Vista and bordering the New England and Middle States demarkation line, was, in the days of the Tuttles more than now, a cleared and cultivated tract, and remarkable for the purity of its water springs. OF RALPH KEELER, SR., DESCENT THROUGH HIS SON SAMUEL. Samuel Keeler""- married March 10, 16S1-2, Sarah, born Jan. 18, 1659, daughter of Mark and Sarah (Stanley) St. John. These had a son (Samuel2'1-)"5 who married, first, Jan. 18, 1704-5, Rebecca, born 1679, daughter of James and Sarah Benedict, of Danbury, and grand-daughter of Thomas Benedict and John Gregory of Norwalk. Samuel2d- and Rebecca Keeler had two children, Samuel*1- and Rebecca, when the mother died, March 20, 1709. Her husband married, second, Dec. II, 1712, Sarah, born Jan. 22, 1686-7, daughter of Thos.3d- and Sarah (Marvin) Betts, and had Matthew,""- who was born March 14, 1717. Matthew Keeler'sL and Sarah, his wife, had Rebecca, who married Feb. 13, 1774, James, ,st- son of John and Ruth (Belden) Seymour. This was a noticeable ancestry-union from the fact not alone of the Keeler, Stanley, St. John, Betts, Marvin, Benedict and 'Smith's Ridge is one of the sightly summits for which the adjoining town of New Canaan is famous. It derived its name, obviously, from the early Norwalk family of Samuel and Rachel (Marvin) Smith. This blanch of the Smith household originally owned a considerable portion of the elevation. One hundred and twenty-five years ago the Lombardy poplar was looked upon with considerable favor in southwestern New England. A quaint ancient Norwalk entry records a provision for the setting out of a " row " of the species near the Norwalk Green. Their re- mains are still seen in various portions of the country designated. It is ascertained that a poplar-row lined the sides of both "Smith" and its twin "Canaan" heights in that now sister town. The former travel- route from the Oblong to New Canaan was ;•/,/. Smith's Ridge, Isaac Richard's cross-road and Enoch St. John's corner down Haynes Ridge. The old-time " Houton path from Smith's Ridge to the meeting house," however, must, at the south end of the ridge, have deflected from this "way." It was the delight of the southern Isaac St. John children, during their summer visits to the north, to accompany farmer Monroe when he drove the stock from the Samuel si. John home, on Church Hill, up to their great- grandfather Richard's splendid Smith's Ridge mead- ows. To-day, these same meadows are cedar-over- grown, hut in Isaac Richards' time their «rt*fl velvetv surfaces were a beautiful landscape feature. The lower end of Smith's Ridge is a view-point at which to tarry. The southerly and southwesterly " scape " from that spot, terminating land, water and sky, in the distant Greenwich pearly-haze, is a "joy forever." " The gods of the hills are not the gods of the valley," wrote Ethan Allen, and if one can stand at the Eliphalet St. John Canoe Hill school-site or on the Frederick Lockwood Brushy Ridge veranda, or the noble-dimensioned Alexander piazza, or the fine Child sunset piazza, or Hollingsworth summit, and remain unimpressed, one must be well nigh color, comprehension and conviction-blind.