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

Previous to 1784 the wardens and vestry appear to have received and disbursed the parish revenues. On October 7th, 1784, Nathan J arvis was chosen treasurer. The next appointment December 29th, 1803, was that of Thomas Hoyt. On July 28th, 1817, Ebenezer D. Hoyt was elected treasurer, and Henry Belden on January 7tli, 1824. Mr. Belden resigned office on Easter Monday, 1827, when Jonathan Camp, Jr., was chosen. Mr. Camp filled the office for twenty-six years, and wras followed, on March 28th, 1853, by Charles F. Osborn, Esq. Mr. Osborn’s term of office embraced twenty years. He was succeeded, in 1873, by the late Samuel E. Olmstead. Mr. Olmstead was followed, in 1876, by Charles E. St. John, Esq., and Mr. St. J ohn, in 1886, by E. K. Lockwood, Esq. ; men, all, of accuracy and ability. It has been remarked that the Greeks made such good colonists because of the excellent character of those who went out to found new provinces and establish new homes. And the early emigrants from St. Paul’s were largely of this order. From Huntington, one of those pleasant towns which rise a little back of the line of silver sand which rims the northern shores of Long Island, there came to this parish, during the year of its organization, the parents of the future successor of Seabury. Abraham Jarvis, the second bishop of Connecticut, was born, about three-fourths of a mile from this spot,* in May, 1739. He was prepared for college in Stamford, and two years after his graduation sailed for England where he was ordained, f He was called to Middletown, and, in 1797, was elected to the See of Connecticut. He was a true son of the church, and his administration of the diocese was able. The days were dark and his episcopate a not altogether untroubled one, but before his death the prospects of his beloved church had grown brighter, and he was permitted to see the bow at life’s decline. He died, in 1813, at New Haven, and is buried beneath the chancel of Trinity Church, in that city. James Brown, Esq., justice-of-the-peace and son of James Brown, attomey-at-law, in Norwalk, nearly two centuries ago, and a de- scendant, it is probable, of the house of the Browns of Lincoln- shire, England, was one of the men among men who went out from us carrying his liberality to the church with him. The statement is made that a few years before the revolutionary war “he was * Across the street from and slightly south-east of the residence of the late George A. Raymond, Down Town, property now owned hy Mr. Noah Wood. + In November, 1763, ordained deacon hy the Bishop of Exeter; and priest by the Bishop of Carlysle. conveying or had already conveyed “four thousand acres of land to the church. This land was granted to him, in 1752, by letters patent, from George II, king, and lay in the Oblong, so-called, in what was termed the undivided lands, on the confines of the col- onies of Connecticut and New York, but which, through irregul- arity in the transfer, or something of that sort, has been lost to the church. * Eliakim Warren, who, with his wife Phoebe and their three sons, Esaias, Nathan and Stephen, left us in 1798, was another of our old representatives. He was elected vestryman on Easter Monday, 1787, and filled the office until the spring of 1792, and was intrusted with the care of the society’s interests in Middlesex, now Darien, and went from us, leaving the registry of beneficence behind him, to become the first senior warden,! and himself and wife two of the first three communicants of one of the grandest parishes in what was then the diocese of New York, but is to-day the diocese of Albany. Mrs. Eliakim Warren, who, in her girlhood, came to this sacred spot from the home just at the head of what is now Wilson Cove, commenced, in 1815, in Troy, a Saturday sewing school, * In Dr. Dibble’s parochial register, see Bolton’s history, it is thus recorded : “1758, May 12th, baptized Obadiah, slave of James Brown, of Salem. Several of Mr. Brown’s slaves, viz., Cato, Lucas, Dyer and Tower Hill, now sleep side by side on the spot named after the last of these comrades. James Brown, according to Bolton, was brother-in-law of Samuel Isaacs, of Norwalk, whose sons were Isaac Isaacs and Samuel Brown Isaacs. In the family bible of the latter is written : “My dear mother, Mary Isaacs, departed this life November 26th, 1801.” tUpon marble in St. Paul’s Church, Troy, N. Y., are these inscriptions: This Tablet is erected by the vestry in memory of ELIAKIM WARREN, Senior Warden of this Church from its organization in 1804 until his death. To his great zeal and munificence This congregation is indebted, under God, for its origin and prosperity. He died Sept. 4th., 1 8 2 4, aged 77 years Mark the perfect man and behold the upright, for the end of that man is peace. This Tablet is erected by the vestry in memory of PHEBE, relict of Eliakim Warren. She died Jan. 17th, 1 8 3 5, aged 80 years. A mother in Israel For twenty years she supported and conducted a Saturday Sewing School for the Children of the Poor. The Blessings of him that was ready to perish came upon her and she caused the widow’s heart to sing for joy. 53 6 which was continued until her decease, twenty years later, and then followed up by a daughter-in-law, Mrs. Nathan Warren, one of the results of the pious work having been the erection of the sanctuary of the Holy Cross, a house of prayer, in Troy, New York, for all people, “without money and without price,” and the estab- lishment and endowment, in the same city, of a noble beneficence, under the corporate name of the Mary Warren Free institute.* The Rev. William Jarvis, youngest son of Hezekiah and nephew of Bishop Abraham J arvis, was another of the last century’s children who removed from St. Paul’s, and whom we name with gratitude to-day. Blest with gifts, Mr. Jarvis offered them in the Master’s service, and left home at an early age to prepare for his future work. He studied in Schenectady, New York, and afterwards in New Haven and was ordained to the diaconate, in 1822, in the old St. Paul’s, under Dr. Sherwood’s rectorship; in the following year he was admitted to the priesthood, and had the care of East Haddam and Hebron, in this diocese. He then became rector of Trinity Church, Portland, on the Connecticut. Failing health compelled his resignation of that parish, and the last years of his life were spent at the home of his daughter, Mrs. Elizabeth H. Colt, of Hartford. With the exception of during youth, Mr. Jarvis was not a resident of Norwalk, but his personal merits and professional devotion were not unknown to us. His sisters, Amelia, Levinia, Sarah, and Mary, of fond memory, still occupied the old contented hearthstone, and a brother’s affection for them often brought him hither. He died fourteen years ago, October last. Miss Sally St. John, afterward Mrs. Luke Bush, of Greenwich, in this state, youngest daughter of William St. John, Sr., was a Christian lady, who, attached to the parish and its work in Green- wich, was a valued aid of her warm friend and pastor, the Rev. B. M. Yarrington. LeGrand Cannon, another of our honored sons, left this parish and became one of the best known citizens of northern New York. He was the only son of Samuel Cannon, and was vestryman, in *The Warrens were from Roton Hill. The home stood near where now stand the house and grounds which were until recently the property of Horatio Bigelow, Esq., of New York. Vestryman Eliakim Warren, grandson of Edmond, the settler, was a descendant, through his mother, of the Reeds, of Cornwall, England, and the Derbys of the colony of Rhode Island. John Reed settled first in Providence, where (see Talcott) he married a Miss Derby. They came to Norwalk about 1684, and their son Thomas married Mary Olmstead. Thomas and Mary Reel’s son, John, had a daughter, Ann, who was the mother of Elia- kim Warren of St. Paul’s. See further, notes, page one hundred, and para- graph, page one hundred and twenty-six. The older Warren family names were Edmond, Edmond, Jr., Nathan, John, Jacob, Mary, and Hannah. Ed- mond and Elizabeth (who was daughter of Sergeant John Bouton, and a de- scendant therefore of Matthew and Elizabeth Marvin), were the parents. 54 1818. His sisters, Mrs. Hugh Knox and Mrs. Moses Craft, were daughters of St. Paul’s. They removed from Norwalk, and Mrs. Knox* died not many years afterward; Mrs. Craft+ lived to a good age. Both sisters are remembered in Norwalk. Nathan and Stephen Bouton, (sons of Esaias) went to Troy, New York, where they became leading business men and churchmen. Nathan was warden of St. Paul’s church in that city, and lived to the age of eighty -one. His son-in-law, Nathan Warren, Esq., who was twenty-one years old at the time of the family’s removal from Connecticut, died four years before his father Bouton , at the age of fifty -seven. It was his desire, in 1834, to once more breathe his native air. A steam vessel brought him down the Hudson and through the Sound to “Old Well,” where the boat was moored a sufficient time to allow a portion of the party | to visit this part of the town, and take a brief look at the place. Mr. Warren died in August that year. These were some of St. Paul’s children who re- membered the Christian birth-spot, and who, wherever they went, kept the altar-fire to mother church ever burning. There were a number who came, in former times, some in the primitive gig, some in the family square box, some with horse un- der the saddle and prayer book under the arm, and some on foot, but all from a distance, to church. Among them Jonathan and Mrs. Abbott, § from, so the old people used to say, the greatest distance away, from near the state line ; and the Sterlings, || father and mother, from what is at this day called Cannon’s Station; and the Fitches from Wilton, and the Hanford’s from New Canaan; and the Boutons, Esaias, from Belden’s Neck, and Samuel and his * The Knox House stood upon the Green, and is now the inviting homestead of George R. Cowles, Esq.