Norwalk

this side of the water, with the eminent pastor of Scituate. afterward Rev. Charles Chauncey, the second president of Harvard College. He was a no dull pupil, but, splendidly equipped, quickly followed the settlers to Norwalk, here commencing (before full ordina- tion, if Dr. William Allen be reliable) his labors in 1652. The discriminating Edwin Hall, D. D., a well versed theologian and a later distinguished pastor of the same Hanford estab- lished Norwalk church, after deliberation, made use (in 1848, and upon the marble inscribed tablet that surmounts the inner vestibule door of the present Norwalk First Congregational Church) of the term "gathered," as one best calculated to rightly express the initial work in this old town, of its first Christian minister, who was not a man of straw nor his people of like slender constitution. When, attired, if "Mather's Magnalia" is correctly quoted, in the preacher's gown, he rose to open (in his quaint 30x18 feet, and for safety's sake, one win- dowed sanctuary)' divine worship, he faced, among others, such solid men as Matthew Mar- vin, Sr., late of Hartford, who, because of proper qualifications had been appointed a colonial "assistant Magistrate"; and Thomas Fitch, Sr., a monied and a brainy pioneer; and Matthew Campfield, Sr., who had openly taken issue with the entire Connecticut settle- ment; and Nathaniel Richards, whose near neighbors before his coming to Norwalk had been settlers of Gov. Winthrop's calibre; and Ephraim Lock wood, son of Robert, whose wife is believed to have been close kin to the Bulkleys of England (fore-parents of ex-Gov. Rulkley of Connecticut) ; and Richard Olmstead, the new plantation's chief engineer; and Samuel Hayes who was selected to lay out Danbury ; and the energetic and efficient Rich- ard Raymond and his son John ; which men represented strength, sense and substance, as Chester Cathedral. Thomas Belden, of Norwalk, was the land agent of the family in Revolutionary times. The Isaac Hoyt house stood until about 184^, when the late A. E. Beard, having procured the property, added the same to his acreage. Mr. Beard's first purchase-intention was to control, for manufac- turing purposes, the water that flowed from the rear height of the Hoyt site, but deciding, afterward, to thereon erect his own home, he bought the adjoining Hoyt house (then unoccupied by the family} and had it taken down. Among the last ones to tenant the old ancestor-domicile was the venerable Mrs. Hotch- kiss whose previous home had been the elder James Seymour house at the lower part of the present Mat- thews West Avenue grounds. Family silver was found secreted between the walls of the Hoyt house when it was taken down. The orchard trees, which the Beards still allow to remain, remind of the Ed- ward St. John testimony as recorded in the last text- paragraph of page 61. Isaac Hoyt's grandmother was a Hannah Goold, who was born the same year that the death of a Hannah Goold is recorded. This introduced the Goold name to this Hoyt family. The well-known Goold Hoyt »«• of Norwalk, was a brother of Isaac Hovt, as was also Jesse, the father of the influential and estimable James Moody Hoyt, who built the commodious edifice that crowns the summit directly east of the southern entrance to St. Paul's Church. These three brothers, Isaac, Goold and Jesse were the uncles of Munson Hoyt, whose fine Bridgeport home is now supplanted by Park City business houses, and some of the adornings of which home are kept intact, in the old town of Fairfield. Hannah, sister of Mrs. Charles R. Sherman, married Joseph Keeler, a useful citizen of Norwalk, who lived where now stands, in Water Street, the Anson Quintard house. Joseph Keeler's home, in those days, fronted the water. He belonged to the Norwalk Keelers. One of his daughters, Eliza, married a southern Wynette; another, Susan, married a Truman, and another still, Sarah Hannah, married Joseph Ketchum. Joseph Keeler did business near his own residence. 'This first meeting house (a trifle below 1896 H. M. Prowitt house) faced the King's Highway, but its Lord's day services were undisturbed by the colonial courier's bugle blast or the hoof pattering of John Perry's mail steed; a condition of Sunday calm which perceptibly marked Norwalk life down, almost, to the times of Jackson Kemper and Henry Benedict. White these more modern Episcopal and Congrega- NORWALK. did the housewives of that day culture and character. These last were custom-prevented from occupying places next to their husbands in church, but they formed a "goodly company" on the "other side" of the house, where sat, first, Mrs. Thomas Hanford, clever and conspicuously connected ; and Mrs. Thomas Fitch, sister-in-law of Abraham Pierson, the first rector of Yale College; and Mrs. Matthew Campfield, whose brother was Gov. Robert Treat; and Mrs. Christopher Comstock, whose father owned acres "in what is now the best part of the Elm City"; and Mrs. John Piatt, who was a Milford Clark; and Mrs. Ephraim Lock-wood, a daughter of the influential Matthias St. John, all these constituting an ancient but an apt and appreciative constituency. The same year that Mr. Hanford came to Norwalk he married, first, Hannah, third daughter of Thomas and Jane Newberry of Windsor. Thos. Mew-berry, died in 1635-6, leaving several children, among them the future first Mrs. Hanford. The widow Newberry married, second, Rev. John Warham, earliest minister of Windsor. She died while upon a visit to her Norwalk daughter, (April 23, 1655.) Her daughter Hester, baptized Dec. 8, 1644, (half sister to Mrs. Hanford) married Rev. Soloman Stoddard and was consequently the grandmother of President Jonathan Edwards. The first Mrs. Hanford, leaving, as far as is known, no children, soon followed her mother to the tomb, and her reverend husband married, second, Oct. 22, 1661, Mar)-, daughter of Hon. Richard Miles of New Haven, and widow of Jonathan Incejd- of that same city. The second Mrs. Hanford, as was the case with her husband's first wife, was from one of the prominent families of the new land. Judge Richard and Catherine Miles were English and afterward Milford and New Haven people of position and property. The mother of Mrs. Hanford 2d-, before she married Judge Miles, was a rich British widow with several children, and Mrs. Hanford's !lL half brothers and sisters fell heirs to the estate across the water. She (Mary Miles) married, first. Dec. 12. 1654, Jonathan «••, son of Jona- than Ince1-1-, one of the original proprietors of Hartford. Jonathan Ince2*1-, was a graduate,' tional pastors were giving out their closing Sunday hymn, the first perchance announcing the familiar lines, Almighty Father bless the word, Which through thv grace we now have heard; and the second the fervent verse beginning, Thine earthly Sabbaths Lord we love. But there's a nobler rest above; then- was quite likely to be heard, rolling. down Jarvis Hill and around the Bissell corner, the old Boston Post coach. Still this attracted only a moment's attention, and so the Abbots rode undistractedly home to Smith's Ridge and Phoebe Comstock to Sil- t-ermine, to peacefully end, when the sun had disap- peared across the New York state line, a day of pure soul refreshment. Thomas Hanford's congregation, however, was not as distantly scattered as were the assemblies of his successors, and after he had pro- nounced his afternoon benediction the people were soon at their homes and saw Sunday, which they be- »m on Saturday evening to keep, calmly drop its evening dusk over the waters of the near-by keel- unploughed river and bay. 'Jonathan Ince2*1-, accompanied by two college mates, Nathaniel Pelham and John Davis, had, says Sibley, taken passage, in Nov. 1657, "in the best of two ships," then hound for England. This ship, James Garrett, master, was never heard from after- ward. The month before Ince sailed the Indian apostle, John Eliot, who desired, upon his return, to secure (for work among the red men) the services of Mr. Ince, wrote thus to the treasurer of the Mission- ary Corporation. He. Ince, "is a goodly young man, a scholar who hath a singular faculty to learn and pronounce the Indian tongue.'' lie was also a remarkable mathematician. The Massachusetts court appointed, June I, 1652, a commission to ascertain the northern line of their colony. The commission desired Ince to be added to the party. This was done and when the head of the Merrimae was reached him- self and John Sherman of Watertown determined the latitude of the spot. NORWALK. '39 in 1650, of Harvard College, and with his wife, Man- Miles, intended to establish a home in Xew Haven. Death, however, cut short his career and he perished at sea, leaving a widow and one son, Jonathan Ince,3d- born June 27, 1656. This widow and her son afterward became, as has been observed, the wife and step-son of Rev. Thomas Hanford, of Xorwalk. The recorded Hanford children were all born to this second wife, who lived until about 1722. She is possibly buried, as also her renowned husband and quite possibly his first wife and her mother, beneath the entirely obliterated flat stone parallelogram in the present East Xorwalk cemetery.' Her European mother's headstone is to-day distinctly legible. It stands in Wallingford, where she died in 1683, at the great age of 95 years. il AN FORI), FITCH AND PL ATT ASCENDANTS OF SAMUEL I) ASK AM, Sr., AM) 1 I IS DESCENDANTS.