Norwalk

" IV —Matthew Fitch ,s,< Matthew Fitch'st, born, May 1708 idied April 16, 1779) was twice married. His first wife was Jemima, daughter of Ebcnezer and Elizabeth (Comstock) St. John. Eben- ezer St. John was the son of Matthias St. John and the grandson of the pioneer Matthias St. John, Sr. Mrs. Ebenezer St. John was the daughter of Christopher Comstock the settler. The fruit of this St. John-Comstock alliance was three sons and one daughter, which last married Matthew Fitch1*'- To Matthew and Jemima Fitch was born, at Christmas-tide, 1735, a daughter, called for her mother, Jemima. Shortly after Jemima's birth her mother died, and the little one was within a few days of three years old when she became a step- daughter, her father having married, second, Dec. 7, 1738, Lydia, daughter of Nathan, a grandson of Richard Olmsted, Sr. and Xorwalk settler. There was a large Fitch family by this second marriage of Matthew Fitch ,5t- The children were : Nathan; born. Oct. 12. 1739. Lydia; born, April 4, 1746. Mercy; born, Dec. 29, 1740. Rebecca; born, July 9, 1748. Hannah; born, Aug. 24, 1742. Susanna; born, Aug. 29, 1750. Matthew''''; born, June 17, 1744. Abijah. 'In the tenter of the ancient meadow, now tra- versed from xve«t towards the cast by the Morgan Avenue of iS0. -tood, before the Revolutionary War, .1 house that sheltered several o( tit i s cottMi'v's re- markable ancestors and ancestresses. One of that hearthstone s descendants, Grace Ingersoll, had cap- tivated the French court, and even were she the cause, as she most undesignedly was, of an ungracious re- mark on the part of the Emperor Napoleon, yet she possessed bewitching influence at the gay European capital. Grace Babcock was another descendant of the old meadow home alluded to. She was handsome and accomplished and Lord Howe fixed his headquar- ters under the very roof of the Babcock house on the r:i-t bank of the lower Hudson. This Norwalk girl was nou a widow and became of her fuse illations the EnglWl Col. Gist urged hi- suit for lift hand. Mrs. | Babcock dismissed him on the very evening of the musketry-discharge announcement that her attractive home was under siege. Another descendant of the home-lot lias been a Connecticut governor, while an- other sleeps beneath the church chancel in Branford, east of New Haven. In the particular of notable as- sociation the unpretentious last century structure in the southeast lot at the foot of the Norwalk "Green " had perhaps no rival. The last night of that dwel- ling'- occupancy was that of Frklav, July 9, 1779- Before the next night's light in the west had died out its final occupants, William and Esther (Belden) St. John, who had been married about eighteen months, had probably hastened awav because of the British landing at Calf Pasture. The house was burned on Sunday morning. July it, 1779, and Mr. St. John built in the same lot, further north ami nearer tile street. NOR WALK. Nathan ,st-, son of Matthew'* and Lydia (Olmsted) Fitch, married, first, Jan. 8, 1760- 1, Mehitable, daughter of Beiiajah and Dinah Hoyt, and had : Nathan 2d-; baptized, July 5, 1761. Jemima; baptized, March 27, 1763. Asahel,5t-; baptized, Feb. [ 1, 1765. Presumably sick at time of baptism. Nathan Fitch I5t-, married, second, March 7, 1769. Mary Reed, and had: Asahel3d-; baptized, July 12, 1772. married, Martha Denison. Rebecca; baptized. Oct. 7, 1773, married, Hezekiah Middlebrook. Mercy; baptized, June 4, 1775, married, Adam Swan.' William; baptized, Feb. 2, 1777. Lydia; baptized, Feb. 2, 1 777. Polly; baptized, Dec. 12, 1793, married, Amos Denison. Anne; baptized, May 13, 1795. Most of the children of Nathan Fitch Ist- were born in New Canaan, and it is an added credit to that goodly-ancestral and rare-ridged, handsome and healthful old town that its children, largely, have brought no reflection on their birth-place. Asahcl Fitch 2,L, named for a deceased young brother, left New Canaan with his family at the time of its re- moval (see note) to New York state and married, as did his sister Polly, into a household which numbered among its heads, Major John Mason of colonial eminence, and which the pen of Chancellor Reuben Hyde Walworth has been successfully employed in registering 'In the peaceful "Canaan parish" home of Na- than ls<- and Mary Fitch, a daughter, Mercy, was born, at the Bunker Hill period, who was destined to become the mother of a line of illustriously descended children. Nathan 'st. Was third cousin of Gov. Thos. Fitch. The Governor's son, Ebenezer, born in 1729, had married in Greenwich, and his father, in 1758, gave him a home on Chestnut Hill, in what is now the town of Wilton. In this town Ebenezer lst- died, in 1762, leaving his widow {nee Lydia Mills of Green- wich) and three sons, Jabez, Ebenezer 2t^ and Giles, who were distant cousins of Nathan Fitch Ist- The widow and her son, Ebenezer^. from (now) Wilton, and Nathan >st. and his family, from (now) New Ca- naan, emigrated, the same year (1785) to a portion of the Saratoga, N. Y , district, called Greenfield. It was within a short distance (some three miles) of the famed "Congress Spring" which at that time was be- ginning to attract attention. Mere, two years after the New Canaan and Wilton Fitch arrival, was born, (Sept. 9, 1787) in the family of the Wilton branch, a child, Hannah, daughter of Ebenezer 2<i- who, at the age of twenty -five, was to marry into the Saratoga Kullard family, and be planted in a home on the edge of the Sparkling Saratoga Lake. She was the mother of Gen. Edward Fitch Bullard of the Civil War of nearly forty years ago. From the New Canaan Fitch branch proceeded Mercy Fitch, (a dozen or so years older than her cousin-remote Hannah) who, some six years after the family's Connecticut departure, mar- ried (Dec. 29, 1791) Adam Swan, who, through the Stonington, Conn., Swan's and Gallup's, was of im- perial descent, several crowned heads (see note, page 104) having been among his ancestors. Adam Swan and Rev. Roswell R. Swan, {1807) both of Norwalk and both originally of Stonington, ma}-, possibly, have been from this same family. The tomb, on Town House Hill, of Rev. Mr. Swan has, within a few years past, been put in order by an eastern member of the family. Its occupant, who was born in Stonington the year that Norwalk was burned, came hither at twenty-nine years of age and spent his ministerial life of a dozen years with the Norwalk people. He was much beloved and died (in the Geo. W Hunter East Avenue house) in comparative youth. Adam Swan, who married Mercy Fitch of New Canaan, was a Stonington youth also. His parents were Joshua and Martha (Denison) Swan. Joshua Swan was the son of John Swan, Jr. and Lucy Denison, which John Jr. was a son of John Swan, who was a son of Robert, who was a son of Richard Swan, the Boston 1638 col- onist. 220 NORWALK. the membership of. Of Mercy, third daughter of Nathan Fitcli ,s'-, and who took her name, in all probability, from her aunt, who was the niece and most likely namesake of Mercy, wife of Moses St. John, it is sufficient to say that her children could scarcely, on their father's side, be more conspicuously descended. She married, Dec. 29, 1791, Adam Swan, (see foot note, page 104) born, June 28, 1768, and through "Capt. John Gallup" of Ston- ington, of royal descent. The children of several king's (including the Emperor Charle- magne) blood, of this Norvvalk-Canaan Fitch daughter, were : Maria ; born, April 25, 1793, married Chester Stebbins. John'-'-; born, March 24, 1795, died in infancy. John24; born, July 25, 1796, died, Sept. 26, 1859, unmarried. Adam: born, May 13, 1799, died, June 9, 1 86 1 , unmarried. Henry; born, Sept. t2, 1802, married, Maria Mills; died, Aug. 3, 1867. Cynthia; born, April 25, 1805, married, John Williams; died, Oct. 9, 1881. Nathan Fitch; born, June [, 1808, married, Juliette Smith; died, Oct. 12, 1875; had : Hattie M., who married Charles F. Cadle of Muscatine, Iowa, 1896. Erasmus D. ; born, Oct. 8, 1810, died, July 10, 1878. Mercy Ann. ; born, Feb. 10, 1813; died, Dec. 8, 1877, unmarried. DeWitt C. ; born, May, 14, 1817, died, 1879, unmarried. Roswell N. : born, April 6, 1820, died, June 9, 1864, unmarried. Adam Swan died in 1835, and his wife, Mrs. Mercy Fitch Swan, June 28, 1850. Asahel Fitch 2d- of Canaan parish, son of Nathan ,at-, married, in 1 793, Martha, daugh- ter of Joseph and Mary (Smith) Denison. They took up their residence in Cayuga County, N. Y., and had : William Reed; born, Oct. to, 1794, married, Aurelia Dunning. Alvah; born, June 7, 1797, married, L. TJ. Morse. Charles D. ; born, April, 5, 1800, married Flo' Smith. Cynthia; born, Oct. 27, 1802, married Eli Smith. Matthew Fitch *>; born, June 17, 1744, son of Matthew'"- and Lydia (Olmsted) Fitch, and next brother to Nathan '«-, married, Dec, 27, 1770, a Reed, and had five sons (Matthew*. Samuel, Enoch, Simeon, Silas) and three daughters, viz ; Esther, who married Ansel Ford ; Sarah, who married, first, a Vandeveer, and second, a Champlain ; and Eliza- beth, who married a Graves. From Matthew Fitch «•-, through his son Silas, born, Jan. 28, ■ 773. who married, Sept. 7, ,795, Clarissa, born, Jan. 4, ,774, daughter of Isaac and Abi- gail Howell, has descended his great grandson, Theodore Fitch, born, March 30, 1844, who married, Feb. 4, 1869, a daughter of Rev. Samuel Goodrich and Grace Ingersoll (Hawley) Coe. Mrs. Theodore Fitch is a cousin of Mrs. George B. St. John (.896) of Norwalk. NORWALK. FITC H -W H I 'IN E Y M K NTION.