Norwalk

Elizabeth; born, March 21, 1721-2. Stephen; born, Jan. 1, 1724-5. Sarah ; born. July 6, 1727. James; born, Oct. 2, 1729. Susannah; born, Aug-. 28, 1732. Martha; born, Jan. 5, I734"5- Joshua; born, Sept. 12, 1738. Uriah. This last son, Uriah, was born after his father's decease. He may have accompanied his mother from Nonvalk after her second marriage to Rev. Elisha Kent of Putnam County, N. Y. Uriah, son of Joshua and Elizabeth (Fitch) Raymond, was the great-grandfather (see page 12S) of Hon. Henry J. Raymond who established the New York Times. 1IAYNES-MARVIN-KITCH-BENEUICT DESCENT. "Mr. William Haynes," the first planters-deed proprietor of Haynes' Ridge, mar- ried, second, Marcie, born 1660, daughter of Matthew2"1- and Mary Marvin. His bride was one of several children and her brothers and sisters headed some of the solid homes of the Norwalk of that day. This new Haynes union was blest by the birth of only one child, to whom was given the name of Mary, whose half sisters were Isabella (Mrs. Samuel Han- ford) and Elizabeth (Mrs. John Bartlett). The three seem to have had no brother, at least in Norwalk. Young Mary Haynes grew to become quite a maiden and had probably watched many a drill of the Norwalk planters sons on the colonial parade ground which edged her home. Across the street from her home dwelt, when he was living, the first minister of the new settlement. He, however, was now dead, and the new "minister's house" was just around the corner from her father's, where stop in 1896 (for East Norwalk) the Consolidated trains. The Rev. Stephen Buckingham, a Harvard College man, but one whose diploma may be seen and read at "Yale," tenanted the parsonage, which was pre- sided over by one of the fairest of New England daughters, Mrs. Buckingham, who be- longed to the Hartford Hooker family. There came, on occasional visits, to the parsonage a youth (nephew of the minister) who was born in old Saybrook, Oct. 2, 1696. The young man's father was an eastern Connecticut Buckingham and his mother a Griswold from the same section— two noted family names— and he was welcomed at his relatives. He here made the acquaintance of Mary Haynes of the neighborhood, and finally married her. At XORWALK. the age of twenty this promise-man, Rev. Jedediah Buckingham, received a call to a parish in New Jersey, the old first church of Newark. A little one was there born i William) to Jedediah and Mary, whom the parents named after his Xorwalk grandfather, William (Hayncs). Soon after the Newark birth of this son the father made a visit to his uncle, the second pastor of the Xorwalk church, in whose home he sickened and shortly died. His grave, elsewhere alluded to, is in the present East Xorwalk cemetery. Mary, his wife, re- mained for a time a widow and then married, for her second husband, the youngest brother of Gov. Thomas Fitch, James, son of Thomas3d- and Sarah Fitch. It was young Fitch's first marriage and he had several children : James2d\ Haynes, Elijah, Man and Elizabeth. James 2d- married, in Oct. 1746, Ann, daughter of Elnathan Hanford. This EInathau was the son of Thomas Hanford 3d-, (whose wife was the widow Burwell), which Thomas was the son of Rev. Thomas Hanford. Thomas Hanford purchased the property now cover- ing and adjoining the Selleck School property. This was the branch of the Hanford house- hold from which the Ebenezer Hoyt-Hanford descendants sprang. James 2d- and Ann had a daughter Nancy, born April 1 1, 1758 (one of a twin birth), who married Feb. 20, 1782, William, son of Nathaniel and Mary (Lockwood) Benedict. Here was a union of two old time families, viz : Fitch and Benedict. William Benedict owned quite a Nor walk territory- slice (now bisected by Knight Street). "Federal Hollow'" was the ancient name of the depression east of the upper part of Knight Street and southeast of the William B. E. Lockwood home estate of 1896. From this "Hollow" on the west, a street, "two rods wide," and running north and south, was, in 1764, laid out. At that date the "stumps of the old planks'* of Henry Whitney's mill of a hundred years before, were still standing and formed a sort of surveyor's "point," from which the (now Knight)' Street took a northerly 'Named for Dr. Jonathan Knight '■•<•, a physician. Dr. Knight was born in Norwich, Jan. 10, 175s, and settled at tweni v -three vwir? of age in Norwalk. When lie fame, in 1781, to this town, the new lane, now Knight Street, was sparsely settled. At it-* upper end, west-side, were the Benedict-Camp premises. William and Nancy (Fitch) Benedict (son and daugh- ter-in-law of Nathaniel Benedict), had, after Captain Josiah Thatcher's death, bought of his estate and owned somewhat i.lo.ig this new lane. On Aug. '5> 1 7 ^5 1 a month and one half before their daughter Charlotte's marriage to Jeremiah Camp, they sold for £2$ the two acre lot (now Lyon's) directly opposite their home. Dr. Knight, the purchaser, had been married since Oct. 11, 1781, and he here erected a dwelling similar in architecture to the existing Oscar Raymond house, in which, it is probable, were born these children : Jonathan ; born Sept. 4, 1789, Yale professor. James Gale; born June 3, 1800, a young physi- cian of Stamford who died early. Abigail Ann ; born July 24, 1K05, married Chas. E. Disbrow, and had James and Emily. Dr. Jonathan Knight'"1- was a skilled medical practitioner who continued active in his work until his death in March, iSjy. His next neighbor south was Stephen St. John, son of Col. Stephen and brother of Mrs. Dr. John Cannon and of Mrs. Isaac Scudder Isaacs. Mr. St. John was an apothecary whose store was in the old Cannon building just east of the Holmes. Keeler & Selleck Co. business house of to- dav. His mother was a Fitch (Ann, daughter of Samuel) and his wife was a daughter of Col. Thomas Fitch and grand daughter of Gov. Thomas Fitch, lie had two daughters, Julia Ann and Henrietta, the first of whom married Horace Gibbs (first wife) to whom the property finally felt, and the sciond, John Hall of Troy, N. V. Immediately below the Stephen St. John place was what was formerly called the "brook lot," (three acres) and covered in part to-day by Gregory's livery establishment. This lot was sold Feb. 1787, by William Benedict to Benjamin Bost- wick for 1:40 To the south of this lav the Cannon property in the lower end of which stood the Cannon well. Opposite to Dr. Knight's, west, was the afterward 2 12 NORWALK. course, ending at what was then denominated the "Upper Highway," but now ".North Avenue." This was, largely, the ownership of William Benedict. William and Nancy Benedict's family gave to the Norwalk of to-day well known households. Their second daughter, Charlotte, married Jeremiah, a grandson of Jonathan1" and Ann Camp. Ann Camp, who sleeps quietly in St. Paul's Church yard, was an ancestress of the blood of whom any New Englander might be proud. In the blush of the young summer that im- mediately followed the purchase of Norwalk by Ludlow there was baptized, in "Old Mil- ford," the second son of Thomas, the ancestor of the stout Buckingham family of America, and one of the rich company that founded New Haven, and also the first of the Bucking- ham name to be born in the New World. This Milford infant grew and aged to become, through his daughter Hester, the grandfather, on Nov. io, 1710, of Ann, who married a young man, eight years older than herself, Jonathan Camp"-'- of Norwalk, the grandfather of Jeremiah who married Charlotte, daughter of William Benedict, which Jeremiah and Charlotte lived in the old fashioned dwelling, supplanted many years ago by the generous sized modern Charles F. Raymond home of 1896. Susan, the sister of Mrs. Jeremiah Camp, married James Isaac, son of Isaac and Mary Hoyt, the home grounds of whom are depicted on page 1 34 and their old (fac -simile) hearthstone at the head of the Hoyt lineage. James I. and Susan Hoyt were the parents of the late James A. Hoyt of East Avenue- Another daughter of William and Nancy Benedict, Esther, born, May 10, 1793. married in New York city, May 22, 1*11, (by the Rev. Mr. Howe of Trinity Church, ) Edward Smith of Norwalk. who had : William Duff; born, March it, 1812, father of William H. Smith of 1896. Edward James ; born, Sept. 16, t8l4. Alexander; born, March 7, 1817. Jane Gordon ; born, July 29, 1819. Henry; born. July 24, 182 1. Fanny R., daughter of William and Nancy Benedict, married Seth Williston, only son of Nathaniel and Esther (Bouton | Benedict, and once proprietor of the Norwalk Gazette Jeremiah Camp I le. Mr. Camp was the grandson ol Jonathan Camp, Sr., and his wife was a daughter (if William lienedict and sister of the wives of James I. Hoyt, Edward Smith and S. Williston Benedict. ISelow this home, as far as the Arnold Inn (Street R'y station to-day) was an unbroken bank-side. The Ar- nold House (northwest corner 1896 of Wall and Knight Streets) was an old-fashioned structure with second story gallery running across its entire south front. This gallery commanded something of a har- bor view and was occasionally used as a band-stand. The square in front was a scene of bustle on market days and especially at the time of the arrival of the steamboat from New York, which in earlv davs had ils Norwalk berth at the head of the harbor. The "com- ing-in" and " going-out " of the boat created a stir. An accustomed summer evening walk for the young bridge-people in days seventy or eighty years agone was from Main Street, or across the bridge, through Arnold Square down the river side to "Aunt Jennie Metrash's," where root beer, cake, etc., were served. At that time ices were here unknown. Ice cream, pure cream flavored and frozen, was, it is said, first introduced in Norwalk at the table of the Main Street llovt's. Few of the olden inhabitants had ice houses. Cream and butter were kept in the well, and in some cases, notably the case of Mrs. Jabez Greg- ory, in a "milk house.'* See page 190. NORWALK. 213