Norwalk

2This southwestern Connecticut cape so projects, at Stamford, into Long Island Sound, as to create! east, south and west, a marine expanse of unexcelled beauty. It is one of the sightliest and most salubrious peninsulas on either the Connecticut or Long Island shores. It possessed especial attractions to Moses Rogers who, at the time of the purchase of an im- portant portion of its area, went abroad to study the design for a family mansion thereon to be erected One of Mr. Rogers' early and clever conceptions was that of the planting of a row of trees which grew ,0 nobly line the long avenue which fronted his stretch- ing estate. This elegant Shippan feature tempted the descriptive pen of President Timothy Dwight 'St- 0f Yale College, and remained quite intact until the spring of 1895 when many of the grandly bough-sup- porting trunks were leveled by the Shippan Tramway Company. A wall of native stone with arhoreally draped granite posts faced the verdure surrounded house within which culture and comfort held sway. Mr. Rogers was a nature-lover and took great delight in making his exceptionally commanding sea-situated domain additionally attractive and inviting. At the exteme south end of the point stands to day a chim- ney section that survives the ruins of its old proprie- tor's house, not far from which is a tombstone bear- ing this inscription : I" Memory of RICHARD BKLDKN, Who Died ,;i4. A spring of never failing pure, soft and cool water, fed, it is probable, from a far-away or from a far-below- the-surface fountain stands upon these grounds and but a short distance from the beach. This singular spring supplies, to-day, the entire home establish- ment of Col. Woolsey Rogers Hopkins, who is pro- prietor, to a goodly extent, of his honored grand- father's ancient estate. A window in memory of Moses Rogers has re- cently been placed near the transept of the new St. John's Church, Stamford, by his grand children Col. and Mrs. Hopkins. The pane was ordered in England by the late William Tatlock, D.D., rector of said venerable parish. Nehemiah Rogers, father of Moses, is interred in the old plantation burying ground in Norwalk. His wife sleeps, it is probable, in Trinity Church yard, New York city. X OR WALK. 167 Nehemiah Rogers2di, next of mention to Moses, married at the age of twenty-six, one whose progenitors' possessions were but a few miles remove from those of the Rogers'. The name of his wife's father. Isaac Bell,1 is perpetuated to-day, and the Capt. Isaac Bell Cove home site is a fond Norwalk and Stamford memory of the past. Fitch Rogers, who had barely entered his teens when his father died, was attracted to Stamford from whence during the w ar troubles he departed to Xew Brunswick w here we find him at thirty years of age numbered among the incorporators of the city of St. John's in said province. His name is to this day familiarly repeated by the older people of Nor- walk. His daughter Catharine married Rev. Reuben Sherwood, who was for years the rector of the parish of the welfare of which the Rogers brothers had been so mindful, the venerable cure of St. Paul's, Norwalk. Henry Rogers, the last mentioned brother, who, at the decease of his parent, Nehemiah, had just passed his seventh birthday, lived to become a man of signal integrity and influ- ence. His greatly esteemed daughter, recently laid to rest, the relict of Rev. Smith Pyne, D. D,, and who has been the care of devoted children, was a queenly lady. She took a deep interest in the family history, and contributed to its story. As to Moses, Nehemiah, Fitch and Henry Rogers' mercantile careers, it may be affirmed that they accomplished a signal work. They possessed extraordinary business qualifications, were discreet, experienced, sagacious and ranked high among their commer- cial contemporaries. An "old New York merchant" is a proud designation, and without abating one jot of the praise to which modern enterprise is entitled, still one cannot call to mind the well kept up reputation for method and management excellence of the Nexsens, Livingstons, Hoffmans, Murrays, Beekmans, Crugers, Lispenards, Ludlows, Desbrosses, Bogarts, Gracies and Woolseys of old merchant fame, without holding the remembrance of the same in regardful estimation. The Rogers brothers had three sisters, Susannah, Esther and Elizabeth. Their •Norwalk and other well kept records define the Bell ancestry as mentioned in foot note, page 94. Catharine Bell (Mrs. Nehemiah Rogers2*1-) was a daughter of Isaac and Susannah Bell. Mr. Hell was a son of James and Sarah (Weed) Bell. He first mar- ried Jemima Holly and had a daughter, Hannah, born Dec. 10, 1758, who married Fitch, oldest son of Nehe- miah and Elizabeth Rogers. Mis. Bell died Feb. 23, J760, and Mr. Bell married, second, Sep. 14, 1761, Susanna, daughter of Ephraim and Isabel (Bart- lctt) Smith, and grand-daughter of John and Isabel (llaynes) Bartlett, and great grand-daughter of "Mr. William llaynes" of "Haynes' Ridge," lite Haynes property comprising the to-day spreading and splen- did Dr. Parker New Canaan acreage. Ephraim Smith, father of Mrs. Isaac Bell, was the sixth son of Ebenezerand Abigail (Bouton) Smith, which Eben- ezcr Smith, born July 11, 1668, was a grandson of I.ieut. Samuel Smith, an "ancient sergeant" and Wethersfield "Deputy" 1640-61, and "Deputy to the General Court Colony of Massachusetts Bay" 1661- 1673 ; also a commissioner to negotiate with the Mo- hawks 1667. (See Society of Colonial Wars Year Book 1896.) Lieut. Smith was born in England and his character may be inferred from this clause of his will bearing date June 23, 1680: " I bequeath to each of my children a bible. My executors are to cause to be written, plainly and legibly, in each bible, the last verses of the eleventh Chapter of Ecclesiastes and the first verse of the twelfth Chapter." Isaac and Sus- anna (Smith) Bell had James, born April 14, T762; Henry, born Nov. 25, 1765; Isaac (Capt. Isaac of New- York see page 94), born Feb. 16, 1768; Katharine, born Feb. II, 1770, and Thomas, born March 9, 1774. Their daughter Katharine married Nehemiah 2d-, son of Nehemiah and Elizabeth (Fitch) Rogers of Nor- walk. Norwalk's 1896 Bells, have Stamford ancestry. NORWALK mother passed most of her latter life with her daughter Esther, ill New York, but her visits to her Connecticut relatives were frequent. Near by her own and husband's father's Nor- walk domains stood, and to this day stands, a favorite stopping place to which she was wont, in olden-time circumstance, to repair. Portions of her uncles, Gov. and James Fitch's residences may remain, but there is nothing, save only three sites, to remind of the Rogers structures. Her husband's properly inclosed tomb, and the portrait of herself (on page 1 6 1 ) are the two souvenirs of their two notable children that Norwalk and Fairfield County now hold. The comprehensive constituency of the Norwalk Rogers' lineage while affording a lesson susceptible of profitable study is also a rare genealogical fact. The most extensive research, as another hints, will hardly make more remarkable discoveries than those di- vulged by the pedigree investigation of a household that has been the cradle of divines, authors, scholars, and men of genius, taste, skill and opulence, and which has embraced as a part of its great whole such a relationship host as that which the families of the Austin's, Botsford's, Bradford's, Dix's, Dwight's, Grade's, Grannis', Hawley's, Hopkins, Kent's, King's, Lambert's, Lawrence's, Montgomery's, Piatt's, Pyne's, Read's, Stone's, Scribner's, Sherwood's, Van Rensselaer's, Verplanck's, Winthrop's and Woolsey's form. The branches of the family tree are wide-spread, but its root having been sound, and its trunk character-strong, its multiplied members consequently, are blessed by the example-inheritance of lofty hearth- stone virtues which in every generation never fail to command admiration and reverence. It was long ago claimed that the patronymic Rogers, signifies one who is true to his word. This being the case, then were the four New England brothers referred to in this article's caption, loyal to the etymology of their name. The blood of the sleeper at the side of his sire in the Norwalk fathers burial acre courses the veins of many of the most broadly known people of the land to-day, all of whom are, in the eloquent language of one of their own affinity,1 "pledged by the bright past of ancestral ideas, aims and endeavors, to lose nothing that they had already gained, as a family of worth, in the long ages before them, in their future." Some one writes that it is proverbially easy to be wise after an event. Moses Rogers on the contrary, was a man of forewit and thought. He sagely selected ' ' Shippan " for his home and on this wise introduced to Stamford one of its most excellent early citi- zens, Royal L. Gay. Leaving his boyhood home Mr. Rogers amassed a fortune and, as has been seen, chose the Stamford point for a country residence. This naturally beautiful tract was vastly improved by the skill and taste brought through the instrumentality of Mr. Roger's wealth, to bear upon the sea girt promontory. Its owner took pride in redeeming the soil and adorning its surface. He does not seem to have been particularly fond of yachting, nor excessively devoted to driving, but his farm, garden and park grounds were the delight of 'The late Benjamin Woolsey Dwight, D.D. NORWALK. 169