Norwalk

The boys were dismissed from the Haynes Ridge (now Bond) home in time to allow for the beginning, when the sun went down, of Sunday. This "Satur- day night keeping" marked life in ancient Canaan, the peaceful after-supper hush of its primitive house- holds (amid which quiet the family bible on the stand was opened and reverently read from and the simple evening prayer offered) being a blessed prelude to the duties of the succeeding day, and involving a prac- tice-principle which was, individual, community and nation-wise, beyond value-estimate. The keeping of Saturday night was general throughout New England. 3lndian women in some cases were of service. After the victory over the Pequots at Fairfield, there seems to have been an influx, in South-western Con- necticut, of such help-element. 202 N O R W A L K . and grand-daughter of John Piatt, the Norwalk Piatt progenitor. Three sons were the gifts of this marriage, viz: Josiah, Eliasaph (who were twins, and who died within a few hours of each other on the day of their birth, March. 1731) and Joseph, the subsequent Gen. Joseph Piatt Cooke of Revolutionary mark, who was the parent of Samuel B. Couke, who was father of Rev. Dr. Samuel Cooke1 of St. Bartholomews Church, New York. The third Mrs. Rev. Samuel Cooke died May 16, 1732, and her husband married for his fourth and last wife, Abigail, widow of Rev. Joseph Moss, who was mother of Mrs. Rev. Jonathan Ingcrsoll of Ridgefield, and great-grandmother of Chancellor James Kent. 'Rev. Samuel Cooke, an excellent, highly rated and now venerable presbyter of the Protectant Epis- copal church, lias direct Norwalk descent. (See Piatt lineage.) He commenced his ministerial life in Lyons, N. V., and there continued until called to the rector- ship of St. Paul's Church, New Haven, from whence he was selected to fill the same position at St. Bar- tholomew's New York, Norwalk data appertaining to which opulent metropolitan parish is not entirely bar- ren of interest. The imposing Madison Avenue Church of 1896, and it> belonging rectory, stand near if not exactly upon the meadow lots, owned long ago in the family of the founder of the cure, Effingham Howard Warner, son of George James Warner and brother of Mrs. Susan Warner Nichols of Greenfield Hill, a New England eminence of extensive and ex- ceptional vision. Effingham H. Warner of the drug- gist house of Warner, Pratt Si Co., was a grandson of the old time prosperous merchant and intense patriot, George Warner, of benevolent and singularly pious remembrance, and concerning whom President Wil- bur Fiske wrote that should it, at the last, be his privilege to reach Heaven, he would surely see George Warner there unless the latter should be so close to the throne as to make it impossible for him so to do. The wife of the projector of St. Bartholomew's was Ann, sister of the famed John Summerfield of Lan- cashire, England, and the rival, if possible, of the eloquent George Whitfield. The parish was auspi- ciously inaugurated and the orator-divine, S. V. Kel- h-v, who had then b.-en in the county some little time, vra* invited to assume its maiden charge. Indeed the church, planned by Mr. Warner, and of striking har- mony-beauty, was built (in La Fayette Place) for Mr. Kelley, whose eleverncs>. intellectual and physical, was remarkable, and whose fervent sentences were similar to those that later fell from the lips of Dr. Frauds L. Hawks. The congregation, of cultured parts which ran parallel with substance -ability, formed, consequently, a strong constituency. The Warner family w«s a St. Bartholomew pillar, Effing- ham H. was hiimclf a host. He was a business man of large interests, as well as a public official who had Iain out one or two parks, which signal commercial capability was brought into helpful St. Bartholomew service. Jlis grandfather, George, the founder of the Warner house, came to the western world in 1765 and set up a sail establishment in John Street, which grew to important dimensions, and his grandmother was a Waldegrave descendant. George Warner and his wife occupied an elegant house and grounds on the corner of Fourth Street and the Bowery, and their yard, garden and orchard covered a large plot It was deemed a rich treat to go over the Warner property and lake a look at its rare flower beds. This beautiful enclosure fell to the use of Mr. Warner's daughter Sarah, Mrs. Judge Azariah Williams. This lady of refinement, and the very atmosphere of whose home was grace, had her pew in St. Bartholomew's and was devoted to parish interests. Within her grandly old fashioned " vestibulum '■' reigned a warm response to ecclesiastical and social demands. George James Warner, her brother, dwelt, in olden state, on the corner of the Bowery and Bleecker Street. Ifis wife was a daughter of Elias Nexsen, a name which calls up repaying memories of people of noble natures, generous aspirations and about whom there was noth- ing disappointing. Susan, born Jan. 4, 1799, daugh- ter of George James and Susan fNexsen) Warner, married Samuel Nichols, D. D., rector for many years of St. Matthew's Church, Bedford, N. Y., and who afterward, having purchased the Richard Varick l)ey country establishment on Greenfield Hill, occupied the choice old home-hearth which his children take pride in excellently preserving, and where his only daughter, sister of Rev. Dr. George Warner Nichols of Norwalk, presides and aided by her brothers, cor- dially welcomes the visitor to the historic hill and happy hearthstone. The afore mentioned were some of the original St. Bartholomew's flock who have been succeeded, shepherd and sheep, by those who have taken their places and continue to carry on a most benevolent work. Lewis P. W Balch. D.D., followed Keliey and Cambrellingcame after Warner and after Cambrelling a Vanderbilt. Succeeding Dr. Balch the headship fell to the gifted and highly prized Dr. Samuel Cooke, whose Piatt blood it is an honor to Norwalk to have bequeathed. Dr. David H. Greer, of signal parts, purpose and power is the present leader under whom NORWALK. The Norwalk (as well as the Norwalk-Canaan) Cooke-Leete blood is a matter of deserved registration, and its interesting and hitherto intricate story runs, evidently, thus: John, born March 30, 1715, son of Rev. Samuel and Anna (Trowbridge) Cooke, married, first, Elizabeth (Toucey) (as it would appear.) John1 and Elizabeth had a daughter, Anna, born Dec. 13, 1740. The infant's mother died only a few days after her only child's birth. Hannah Toucey2 of Newtown, Conn., who, May 12, 1752, married Josiah Hooker, was an aunt of Anna Cooke. After the decease of Anna's mother the child was brought to Norwalk and became a member of the family of Rev. Stephen Buckingham, whose wife was a grand-aunt of Josiah Hooker. She was so highly esteemed by the clergyman (who had no children of his own) that he bequeathed to her his valuable library of one thousand volumes which, it is said, was purchased in England. This library stood in his house which occupied the east side of East Avenue, and the present site of the intersection of N. Y., N. H. & H. R. R. with said avenue. The library, it is supposed, was destroyed by Tryon nearly thirty-five years after the decease of its original owner. Anna Cooke lived to marry Haynes, son of James and (Mrs.) Mary (Buckingham) Fitch. James Fitch, youngest brother of Governor Thomas Fitch, married the young widow of Rev. Jedediah Bucking- ham, a nephew of Rev. Stephen Buckingham. Mrs. James Fitch had one child by her first (Buckingham) husband, and nine children by her second marriage. Haynes and Anna (Cooke) Fitch were married Sept. 23, 1770, and had: Hannah Toucey ; born, July 4, ijjl. William Haynes; born, Aug. 21, 1772. Josiah H. ; born, Sept. 23, 1773. Jedediah; born, July 17, 1775. Cooke; born, Feb. 5, 1777. Daniel; born, June 12, 1779. David; born, March 29, 178 r Grant3; born, Dec. 2, 1782. Zalmon ; born, April 1, 1784. the parish, so favorably founded and so faithfully fos- tered, is extraordinarily strong, and engaged in grand performances. The already alluded to Mrs. Azariah Williams, daughter of George Warren, occupied a Vermont country home which took for its pattern the Jay man- sion at Bedford, N. Y., the drive to which from Nor- walk, via Haynes' Ridge, Found Ridge, Stony Moun- tain Valley and 'Catonah Woods" is one of the most inviting New England-Oblong trips. To select for such an excursion a June afternoon, on the date of the June full moon, and to stand at the trip's ending, with the Jay forest-fringed homestead on the north and the Sachem Catonah's granite-guarded grave just south of you, and while the west is still golden and the shut of day has not yet concealed the Hudson Highlands1 soft blue, is a sort of inspiration. At that hour and in that spot, one may not, Persian like, adore, but one must, Catonah like, admire. The second rector of St. Bartholomew's, Dr., sub- sequently Canon Balch, married Anne, daughter of judge William and Augusta McVicker Jay, and sister of the late Hon. John Jay. Of the sisters of Mrs. Balch, one married John F. Butterworth and another Henry Edward Pellew. Their two aunts, Ann and Mrs. Ba oyer, lived at 20 Bond Street, New York, and were attached to St. Bartholomew's Church. Peter A., a brother of these aunts, had his home in Rye, N. Y., and was the father of Miss Elizabeth Clarkson Jay whose visits to Norwalk and interest in its family history is a matter of grateful recall. ijohn Cooke married, second, Martha Booth, from which union the 1896 Wordins of Bridgeport sprang. Mr. Cooke lived to be about a century old. "She left her property, by will, to Mrs. Haynes Fitch (Anna Cooke). 3Grant Fitch, son of Haynes and Anna (Cooke) Fitch, married Millicent Halsey and had Daniel Grant, born 1812, who married Sarah, daughter of Judge Miller, and had William Grant, born 1834, who married Martha E. Curtis, and had Grant, born 1852, Yale graduate, who married Ida, daughter of Robert Eliot and is now an officer of the First National Bank, Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 204 NOR W A L K .