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

ner & Co., sprang, and was also a connection of John Hone, the prominent last century New York merchant, and of William Pinckney Stewart, and of the Lorillards. He was a young man of repute, and his profession was a benign one, but his life was short, and when the circumstances of his con- spicuous kinship, and fine attainments, and brief career are recalled, there is seen to be real pathos in his epitaph : “ Beneath this humble stone lye the remains of URIAH ROGERS, M.D. who died Dec. 23, 1776 agd 38 ‘ Sic transit gloria mundi.’ ” Before his death he sold his house in lower France street, and after his day its tenant was Roger Minot Sherman, a nephew of Hon. Roger Sherman, one of the Connecticut signers of the Declaration of Independence, and a cousin of Mrs. Martha Day, wife of President Day, of Yale College, and of Rebecca, wife of Hon. Simeon E. Baldwin, and of Mabel, the grandmother of Hon. William M. Evarts, of New York. Taylor Sherman, who practiced law in this town contemporaneously with Roger Minot Sherman, and who was the forefather of some of the distinguished of the land, was not of the same lineage as Roger. There seem to be two lines of the Sherman family in this country. Captain John, great-grandfather of Roger M., married, it is thought, before he came from England. He died in 1690, and left a son Joseph. Joseph had a son William, who was the father of Hon. Roger Sherman, and another son, Josiah, who was the parent of Roger Minot, the Norwalk lawyer. Taylor Sherman, grandfather of Major General William T. Sherman, U. S. A., and of Hon. John Sherman, late Secretary of the Treasury, was a descendant, it is probable, of William Sherman, who came over somewhere about 1630. The family is evi- dently an ancient one, and of German origin, although it has been represent- ed in England for many hundred years. Taylor Sherman’s son, Charles R. Sherman married Miss Mary Hoyt, who belonged to one of the oldest of St.Paul’s families. Her mother was a Raymond from South Norwalk, sister-in-law, it may have been observed, of Hon. Hezekiah Rogers, who lived fora time in the old Quigley place, on Main street, but who died in Washington. Major Heze- kiah Rogers, who was delegate to the Connecticut convention, held in 1788, which ratified the Constitution of the United States, was another son of Dr. Uriah, Sr., and consequently nephew of Mrs. Elizabeth (Fitch) Rogers, and granduncle of Rev. James Kent Stone, for a number of years past the princi- pal of a monastery in South America, and uncle, by marriage, of the New York Lawrences, who, it may be remembered, resided many years since transiently in Norwalk. The junior doctor Rogers’ wife survived him for sixty years. The doctor sold the France street property before his death, and the widow’s home, for a portion of the time since, appears to have been at the foot of the hill near St. Paul’s. She is buried at a little distance from her husband, and there is danger of her tomb becoming an uninscribed one from the gradual crumbling of the marble, the record of which is : — “ In Memory of Elizabeth, Relict of Doctor Uriah Rogers, who died October 27th, 1836, aged 91 years.” Her hus- band’s honored father and mother, Dr. and Mrs. Uriah Rogers, Sr., are buried, the former in Norwalk and the latter in Redding. The doctor has this memorial : Here lyes interred the body of DOCT. URIAH ROGERS, who departed this fleeting scene on the evening following the 6th day of May, 1 773, In the 63d year of his age. It was this same physician’s son who was the extensively known Dr. David Rogers, of Greenfield Hill, while Dr. David Rogers, 2d., of East Broadway, New York, (uncle of Judge Alfred E. Austin, of Norwalk, and of his sister, the wife of Professor Richardson, of Trinity College, Hartford,) was his grandson ; and it was a direct descendant, in the fourth generation from his father, (buried down town,) who was the Captain Moses Rogers, (see Dwight’s Rogers’ lineage) commander of the first steamship (Savannah, fourteen days by steam, and eight by sail) that crossed to Europe. One of the Fitch families, from 1700 to 1730, is an unusually interesting sub- ject of contemplation. Thomas and Rachel Fitch presided over it, and, with 43 corner, now the property of the heirs of the late Joseph W. Hub- bell. Mr. Whitney was the uncle of Mrs. Sarah McGriggor, of Main street, who gave twenty-eight thousand dollars to church purposes. His grave is near the south gate of this yard, and his gravestone is thus inscribed: “In memory of Hezekiali Whitney, who departed this life April 30th, 1790, in the 86th year of his age.” Amos Manvow brought of the products of his land, timber, logs and wood, and gave to the church. Peter White dwelt next below the Phillips place, on West avenue, and himself and son, their four children, Thomas, Samuel, James and Elizabeth, composed it. The father was grandson of the most important proprietor of the place, was throne- appointed notary, and elected selectman of the town, and was not a stranger outside of it. He was addressed as Mr., (Master) which was a colonial title of respect, and he provided that at least one of his sons should receive a complete education. The home was an unbroken one until the decease, in the spring of 1731, of its paternal head, who before he was taken hence, saw his daughter settled in life, and his college boy graduated, and started upon a career which became illustrious, and also beheld several grandchildren who were destined to celebrity. Twenty-nine days before his departure, he had distributed portions to those who were to be left behind, making thoughtful provision for the one about to be widowed, and dividing between the brothers and the daughter that which would conduce to the comfort of both, and intrusting his landed interests to the management of his competent sons, the descent from one of whom, (Thomas, the governor,) is detailed at the conclusion of this volume. His son Samuel was the father of Samuel, Jr., the vestryman of St. Paul’s parish in 1757. Samuel, Jr., made choice, for a bride, of a miss in her very teens, but she was a sensible and industrious young woman and made the Chestnut Hill home a happy one. The handed-down narrative of the visits to the couple, by their kin, is pleasing, and the picture of the two coming from such a distance to the old St. Paul’s, is instructive. It was from this goodly pair that Mr. Sherman Fitch and his sisters, now of Wilton, have descended. Through Samuel, Sr’s, other sons, Daniel and Jonathan, Mrs, James Mallory, and also the children of the late Mrs. Lucretia Daskam have claim to the Fitch blood. Elizabeth, the only daughter of Samuel, Sr., mar- ried Nehemiah Rogers, another vestryman of St. Paul’s; and it may be ques tioned whether, in the whole United States, there can be found a family con- taining a larger number of prominent (socially and professionally) members than does the family which has Elizabeth Fitch, daughterof Samuel Fitch, Sr., and neice of Governor Thomas Fitch, for its progenitress. James Fitch, the other son of “Thomas Fitch,” and brother of Governor Fitch, and of Samuel, Sr., and of Elizabeth (who married Josiah Raymand,) has descendants living in Norwalk. One of these, Miss Susan Fitch, peacefully dwells to day in the lot through which thunders the “lightning train,” the old quiet home lot of the Seamores or Seymours. After the author had gotten well to work upon his Rogers’ genealogy, and was bringing the family lines together, his eye ran across the following par- agraph from the pen of one whose contributions have considerably aided him : “ It is to be hoped that, at some near day, some one will undertake to tell to others, who are specially interested in knowing it, just as it was truly unfolded to view, in its historical aspects of beauty and power of inspiration, and of influence for good upon others, the story of ancestral virtue and ex- cellence, in the full measure of its real worth, in respect to the two kindred lines of Rogerses, of Norwalk, Conn.” That some one, competent so to do, may continue and carry on to comple- tion that which has been by several commenced in this direction, is a con- summation to be desired. His summer and autumn work has been a pleasing one to the author, and he looks upon it as a privilege, that he is permitted, by these reminisences, to plant his sprig of ivy around the memories of so many of these excellent ones, and improves this opportunity to give expres- sion to a practical thought which has every now and then suggested itself to him, during the closing season’s efforts, viz. : that action, public or private, be taken, before it is too late, to rescue from obliteration the graven histories in St. Paul’s, and the Down Town, and the Town House Hill, and the Pine Is- land burial grounds. 44 Samuel, deserve mention. There is good account of help rendered and work done by Josiali Marvin and Gideon Kellogg. Nehemiah Rogers* stands with the very first as to amount subscribed for the church of 1743. *A stone of slate, which stands in the East Norwalk (Down Town) burial ground, is thus inscribed : “ Here lyes Buried The Body of Mr NEHEMIAH ROGERS, who departed this life May ye 30th 1760 aged 42 years & 12 days.” and the sleeper beneath was in life a vestryman of St Paul’s, and the founder of a family of wide reputation in this land.