Norwalk

Stratford for several years, Four of his children, Samuel, Joseph, John and Bathsheba are there birth- registered. He then removed to Milford, where James 2d- and Jonathan were born. Afterward he made New London his home in which place his two younger children, Elizabeth and Sarah, came into the world. In about 1664 he bought, with Major Pymelion <>f Hartford, two thousand Groton acres. In a letter dated Hartford, June 5, r666, John Winthrop sub- scribes himself as his (James Rogers ISC-) " loving friend." Mr. Rogers died Feb. 16, 1687, at the age 1 64 N OR. WALK. brought hither from New London a portion of his large family, one of the sons of which, Nehemiah, was, in the ordering of events, to win for a wife the young Elizabeth Fitch, whose sister Ann, born 1734, had married the "handsomest man in Norwalk," Col. Stephen St. John, of Thomas Hooker, Richard Law and Nathan Gold blood. After the bridal of Ne- hemiah and Elizabeth Fitch the two established for themselves a home close neighbor to the groom's parents (site of present East Norvvalk station for west bound trains). Seven children, Fitch, Moses, Susannah, Henry, Nehemiah, Esther and Elizabeth, were born to them, when the father was summoned hence leaving to his widow the care of their offspring, aged at the date of their father's death in 1760, respectively, twelve, ten, eight, seven, five, four years and an infant. The children's grandfather Fitch being still hale, became, doubt- less, their mother's counsellor. The sons upon arriving at maturity removed from Norwalk and were afterwards well known city business men. They reached man's estate at the time of the Revolutionary War, and attached to the King's cause, retired, temporarily, to the provinces. One of the three daughters married in Norwalk, one in New York and the other remained unmarried. The following article was, some years since, solicited from the author, for public- ation by the head of a monthly journal. Said journal having suspended issue before the article was prepared accounts for its presentation and preservation in this place. PARENTAGE AND HISTORY OF FOUR EMINENT BROTHERS. On the east side of the ancient Norwalk "Town Street" which beginning narrowly at the founders "Cove" near the harbor widened gradually for a few rods from the water's edge until it reached its breadth of 60 feet, and thus continued, losing itself, quite like a lane again, in the northern forest, and at about a quarter mile from the cove-end of the street, stood, during the last century, the home of a quartette of destined metropolitan merchant- men. Of the parents who had received the homestead from a previous proprietor the re- mains of one were, in 1760, laid away in the "plantation" burial plot a few rods remove from his late estate, while the mother, who for many years survived her partner, was buried from the city mansion of her daughter, Mrs. Archibald Gracie, and interred in one of the New York cemeteries. The two were the son and daughter, the former of James Rogers of New London, Connecticut, a lawyer and speaker of the assembly, and the latter of Samuel Fitch, Esq., a New England King's Commissioner and a brother of Hon. Thomas Fitch, Governor, from 1754 to 1766, of the Colony of Connecticut. Hon. Samuel and Gov- ernor Fitch with their brother James and sister Elizabeth were children of the throne-ap- pointed notary for Norwalk. "Mr." Thomas Fitch*'-. Their grandfather Fitch was a son of seventy two. Samuel, his oldest son, lived to ex- ceed, by one year, the age of his father, while James »d- reached only the sixty. third mile stone. This son, father of James3i, the Norvvalk settler, was a ship- master and married one of his passengers from the old to t he new world, Mnry, daughter of Jeffrey Jor- dan. The first child was a son, Jamesi*1-, named fur his father and the second was a daughter, Mary, who took her mother's name. Four other children were born to James JJ. but the oldest was the only one that <ame to Norwalk. The others probably lived and died in the eastern part of the State. N O R W A L K . 165 of Thomas Fitch the settler, and a nephew of Joseph Fitch the ancestor of the inventor of the first steamboat, and an own cousin of Maj, James Fitch the son-in-law of Maj. John Mason, conqueror of the Pequots. Through their grandmother Fitcli the three brothers and one sister were gr.-nephews and niece of Rev. Abraham Pierson, the first rector of Yale College, and of "Old Lymes Captain," Reynolds Marvin, the renowned Indian fighter. Xehemiah Rogers, son, as before noted, of James Rogers^-, and brother of the just- ly celebrated Dr. Uriah Rogers, Sr., and also the grandfather of Mrs. President Charles King, LL.D., and of Mrs. James Gore King, and a grand-uncle of Chancellor James Kent, and who, in [726-7, removed at nine years of age with his father from the southeastern to the southwestern confines of the colony, was. as pre-revolutionary records certify, a use- ful man. Chosing for a life companion a comely, courtly maiden, Elizabeth Fitch, the daughter of a distinguished near neighbor, the two were wedded and had born to them four of Norwalk's best bred representatives, and later of New York's most reputable citizens, Moses, Nehemiah, Fitch and Henry Rogers, Esqs. As far as a judgment in the matter may reasonably be formed one of the legacies bequeathed to these boys was the inculcation that a sound mind deserved to tenant a sound body, and that both required to be dominated by the principles of religion. Not far from their grandfather Fitch's dwelling, and upon the generous sward that faced it, might have been seen, as narrated by a Rogers descendant,' the primitive Norwalk youth's vaulting rock and, possibly, highway running course. Here tradition tells of the manly exercise indulged in by the children of the period, while we can legitimately surmise that "Indian Field," a short stroll to the east, with its wild beauty and legend lore, and " Fruitful spring,"-' a bubbling fresh water fount hard by the salt water Sound, were calculated to tempt boys curious for information and to prompt to investigation on their parts. Of one of the Rogers lad's diligence, a quaint line in a quiet register still in existence gives assurance, and to his own and brother's zeal, as years passed on, for the honor of God a published volume1 bears decisive testimony. As to the date of the family's departure from Norwalk, it is difficult to exactly deter- mine. I'"rom the town and other writings it is inferred that the elder Nehemiah spent most of his days in his adopted home. His tombstone informs as to his decease, and the parish journal witnesses to his interest, churchwise, almost to the year of his demise. The attest- ation to the marriage of his daughter, Susannah, on '•Sunday evening, Dec. 27, 1769, at about 8 of the clock, Samuel Fitch, Esq., her grandfather, giving her away" is still pre- served, and albeit the bride's father had nine years before gone hence, the certificate's text argues that the family was not yet entirely broken up in Norwalk. As to how much or how little time was here spent by the four sons it is not easy to ascertain. They were left 'A Lambert grandson of Nehemiali Rogers. *Found bv tile Norwalk pioneers upon their ar- rival, find situated northeast of Woodbury G. Lang 1 66 NORWALK. fatherless at a tender age. Moses the first named, was a boy of eleven when he lost his parent. About one mile from the Rogers', and on the same Norwalk street, was brought up, in a meadow-encircling domicile, the mother, Mrs. Benjamin Woolsey, Jr.,' of the two sis- ters, Sarah and Mary, who subsequently became, respectively, Mrs. Moses Rogers and Mrs. Dr. Timothy Dwight. Moses Rogers eventually selected for his country seat the sightly promontory upon the north shore of Long Island Sound known as Shippan Point,1 and at the present time the property of Col. Woolsey Rogers Hopkins, a son of its original owner's oldest daughter, Mrs. Sarah Elizabeth (Rogers) Hopkins. Julia Ann, youngest daughter of Moses Rogers, married Francis Bayard Winthrop, Jr., whose promising son Edward was Yale valedictorian in 1831 and who followed, in the enjoyment of this dignity, it is inter- esting to observe, his clever cousin, Henry Rogers Winthrop, valedictorian of the preced- ing year's class. 'This young lady, the charm of the Isaacs' sunny home, was (see Ralph Isaacs lineage) of the same Hyde blood as Edward, Earl of Clarendon, whose daughter married James II, King of England. Her name was Esther, born July 19, 1730, daughter of Ralph >*<■■ and Mary (Rumsey) Isaacs. In a Norwalk meadow, bisected in 1896 by Morgan Avenue, stood an old-time house which (meadow and house) became the properly in 1727, of Ralph Isaacs 'st. Ralph Isaacs (see Isaacs lineage) brought a Fairfield bride to Nor- walk and here founded a large family. The children had ample room in which to range, while adjoining hill and forest ("Grumman'! Hill" and " Betts' Woods" of 1896) tempted, doubtless, their spirit of adventure. Esther, the second daughter, at the age of nineteen, married Benjamin Woolsev, Jr., son of Rev. Benjamin and Abigail (Taylor) Woolsey of Long Island. Her life was short as she saw only twenty-five summers. She left one son, who died young, and two daughters who became Mrs. Timothy Dwight and Mrs. Moses Rogers. Her husband mar- ried, second, Anne, daughter of Dr. Geo. and Anne Muirson of Brookhaven, L. I. By this marriage there was a son who was the father of Dr. Theodore Dwight Woolsey, President of Yale College, and who preached one of the sermons at the dedication in jX4u. of the present First Congregational Church in -N orwalk.