Address at the Centenary of St. Paul's Church, Norwalk, Conn.

*The descent of whom appears to be as follows : Josiah Marvin, (chosen a vestryman, in 1754, in which capacity he served with such men as Jonathan (lamp, and Nehemiali Rogers, and Micajah Nash, and Thomas Hanford, and David Tuttle,) was the son of Samuel, who was son of Matthew, Jr., who was son of Matthew, Sr., or the father of the Norwalk family, and one of the two fathers of the American family of that name. The original Marvins were two brothers, Reynold and Matthews, and one sister, Elizabeth. Matthew, brother of Reynolds and Elizabeth, was thirty-five years old when he came to this country, and fifty-one when he came to Norwalk. He went first to Hart- ford, of which place he ivas one of the settlers, and in which city he was a surveyor, residing on the corner of the old “Village” and “Front” streets. His son, Matthew, who was now twenty-four years old, accompanied his father to Norwalk : they occupied adjoining home-lots, the father close by the present house of H. M. Prowitt, Esq., and facing East avenue, and the son backing upon his father’s lot, fronting the south, and bounded in that direc- tion by the present street running west from East avenue, and just north of the Consolidated Railroad. This street was a part of the ancient mail-coach route between Stamford and Fairfield. The Marvins came from the same coun- ty as the Fitches, and father and son lived in Norwalk about the same length of time. Matthew, Sr., died somewhere between 1680 and 1790, it is thought about 1687, and his son died in 1691. Among Matthew, Sr’s., brother Reinold’s (or Reynold’s) descendants are : Gen. Elisha Marvin, and Judges Richard P. and William Marvin, and Congressman Dudley Marvin ; and from Matthew are traced the honored Norwalk, and Wilton, and Westport families of the Marvins Matthew Marvin, Jr., had six children, one of whom, Sarah, mar- ried Thomas Betts, the ancestor of that branch of the family from which the late George W. Betts, Esq., and the venerable Norwalk sisters, Miss Juliette and Miss Harriet Betts descended, and the youngest child, Samuel, was the father of Josiah, the vestryman, in 1754. Josiah died about the time that the church was burned. He had six sons and four daughters. His sons were Daniel, William. Jared, John (who died in Nova Scotia), Josiah, Jr. (who died on Long Island), und Samuel (see Talcott’s New York and New England Fami- lies.) Vestryman Josiah Marvin’s aunt, Elizabeth, (Matthew, Jr’s., daughter), married Joseph Platt, who has the remarkable record of General Assembly representative from Norwalk for one-half a century. The occupant of the office for the greatest number of years since the Revolution, was the late Benjamin Isaacs, who represented this town at the state capitol during thirteen sittings of the legislature; the same Benjamin Isaacs (St. Paul’s parish clerk from 1815 to 1846), who so possessed the confidence of his fellow townsmen, that he held the office of town clerk during a period of thirty years. Matthew Marvin, Sr., had several children. Four were born abroad. The first one born in, America was Abigail, who, on June or January 1st., 1657, married John Bouton, of Norwalk. John Bouton came to this country before he was twenty-one yeai-s old, in 1635, and went, after residing in Massachu- setts, to Hartford, where he married and had a child or children. He removed from Hartford to Norwalk, in 1651, and, in 1657, married Abigail Marvin, as before stated. To them were born five children, the oldest of whom were sons, John, born Sept. 30, 1659, and Matthew, born Dec. 24, 1661. Matthew, after a time, removed to Danbury, and John remained in Norwalk, married, and had two sons, Jakin and Joseph. Jakin was twice married, had two children by his first wife, and two sons and several daughters by his second wife. His oldest son by his second wife was Esaias Bouton, made a vestryman, in 1792, and who was father of Nathan and Stephen Bouton, of Troy civil and ecclesiastical note and great-grandfather of one of Westport’s highly respected residents, and for many years principal practicing physicians, George B. Bouton, M. D. t He married Mary Reed, oldest daughter of John Reed, of south-western Norwalk. John Reed was an Englishman — one of Cromwell’s officers. After residing in different portions of the colonies, he removed to Norwalk, in 1684, and purchased a farm at Five Mile River. His son-in-law, David Tuttle, (ves- tryman, in 1754), had three sons and four daughters. Matthew Reed, St. Paul’s vestryman, in 1782, and Matthew Reed, the New York city alderman and bank president, of some forty or fifty years ago, and also Mrs. Isaac Belden, and the Wilsons of Belden’s Neck, and the Benedicts, and some of the Seymours of South Norwalk, were, and are, the descendants of Vestryman Tuttle’s father-in-law, and Vestryman Eliakim Warrens gr. gr. grandfather, John Reed. 41 Joseph Hitchcox, Jr., John Betts. Jr., Samuel Fitch, Jr.,* Elias Scribner. Hezekiah Whitney was the first recorded vestryman of this *The familiar name of Fitch — anciently Ffytche, and in early Norwalk an- nals, Fiitch, but now Fitch — Samuel, Jr., Lindall, John, Joseph, Platt, Stephen and Bushnell, occurs at different times in the parish records. The branch of the family represented by some of these is historic. Samuel, Jr., who was vestryman as early as 1757, was the nephew of Governor Thomas Fitch, and Lindall, who was a generous donor in 1742 and 1751, and son of Nathaniel, who, in 1742, left a legacy to the parish, was second cousin. As a number of the members of this old colonial family, and several direct descendents of the crown-commissioned governor and his nephew have been attached to St. Paul’s and its daughter parishes, the author has borrowed a limb from that sec- tion of the family tree, which, as a help to him in tracing its genealogy, he had constructed, and which, for the convenience of any who may be interested in the matter he has caused to be placed at the close of the appendix to this docu- ment. Samuel Fitch, Jr., son of Governor Fitch’s brother Samuel, and vestry- man as early as 1757, married Elizabeth Platt and lived upon the fine eight- eenth century Fitch estate, near the property of the Finch Brothers, (1886) on Chestnut Hill. Himself and wife rode regularly to and from St. Paul’s, stop- ping in cold weather at Mrs. Fitch’s relatives, on Newtown avenue, to re- plenish the foot stove with live embers, there being in those primitive days no other fire in the church. The son of Samuel Fitch, Jr., viz. : the Samuel born in 1761, was the father of Joseph Platt Fitch and grandfather of Mr. Sherman Fitch and his sisters who are to-day such active members of St. Matthew’s church, Wilton. The Chestnut Hill homestead, a hundred or more years ago, was one of the favorite resorts of Mrs. Nehemiah Rogers, nee Miss Eliza- beth Fitch, who, after her husband’s decease, in 1760, and her subsequent removal from Norwalk, often returned hither. Her own and Mrs. Rogers’ relatives were numerous in this town. Her father lived for a number of years after his son-in-law’s death. She had a brother on Chestnut Hill, and her daughter, Mrs. Susanna Lambert, resided in great comfort about one mile to the west of Chestnut Hill. Some of our people to-day tell of the arrival, in early times, in Norwalk, and of the call at the doors of the Rog- erses, of the Lambert establishment, if not a modern Tally-Ho, yet approxi- mating to it, which was quite an event in the place. An eloquent tribute has been paid to the late Mrs. Hannah Fitch Bullard, mother of Gen. Edward Bullard, of Saratoga Springs, and possibly the same might have been said of Mrs. Elizabeth Rogers of a century and a quarter ago, viz. : “A descendant of Sir Thomas Fitch, she inherited the energy and magnamity as well as the blood and honor of the English nobility.” It was Mrs. Rogers’ practice to leave with those who had entertained her some souvenir of her visit, as those of her line to-day tell and produce the evidence of. Her portrait, and a fine painting of her daughter Susanna (Mrs. David Lambert, Jr.) grace the walls of the Lambert home in Wilton, in which the clergy of St. Paul’s in gone days were so warmly welcomed. The late David Rogers Lambert and his brother Samuel Fitch Lambert in their youth attended school in Norwalk, residing at the Fitch home, down town, now occupied by Mrs. Theodocia Bradley. Some of the Norwalk kindred of Nehemiah Rogers, whom his widow, Mrs. Elizabeth (Fitch) Rogers visited, have been the progenitors of families of note in America. Her brother-in-law. Dr. Uriah Rogers, Sr., who bought where the brothers James and Alfred Mallory afterward built, was a citizen of high standing. His daughter, Hannah, was the mother of Chancellor Kent, and his granddaughter, Hannah, married into the Zephaniah Platt family, of Plattsburgh, and his cousin, Elizabeth, was the grandmother of Miss Francis M. Calkins, the historian, of New London, Conn. His relative, Betsey, may be remembered from the circumstance of his grandson (Chan- cellor Kent) visiting and caring for her in Norwalk. His son, Dr. Uriah, Jr., occupied what has since been known as the Betsey Church place, which after Miss Church’s death, became the property of St. Paul’s parish, and then of the late Reuben Williams, but is now owned by Mr. Edward Merrill, who has within a few years erected a new house upon it. Dr. Rogers, Jr., was a man of promise. He married Elizabeth Raymond, sister of Esther (Mrs. Hezekiah Rogers), and of Mary (Mrs. Isaac Hoyt, General and Senator Sherman’s grandmother), and of Hannah (Mrs. Lemuel Brooks, who, as well as the other sisters, were all staunch church women), and he was great-uncle of Judge William Kent, professor in Harvard College Law School, and was a brother of the maternal head of that branch of the Scribner family from whi h the late Charles Scribner, the senior of the large New York publishing house of Scrio- 4 2 parish. He was elected one hundred and thirty-five years ago. His father, Joseph Whitney, owned the Thatcher Mill site on the