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

Page 85, Ralph Isaacs’ paragraph, lines ten and eleven, instead of “Mary, Esther, Sarah and Isaac,” read “Mary, Esther, Sarah and Grace. ” Page 86, line fifteen, last word, instead of “Esther,” read “Eliza- beth,” and in same paragraph, on same page, last line but four, instead of words “Ralph, Jr., removed to Branford, New Haven County; and Grace the last child and daughter, etc.,” read “Ralph, Jr., removed to Branford, New Haven County, and Grace his daughter, etc. ” The last century there came, (see page thirty-six) as it seems, a young man of intelligence and industry, (from Hartford, tradi- tion says), to Norwalk. His name was Ebenezer Church. He was possessed of some capital, especially for those days, and select- ing, in 1744, a convenient location for the plying of an useful art, established himself in this section of the colony. One of the mothers of this parish sought, it is said, the stranger out, and invited him to attend St. Paul’s, and the result was that he was led, first, to take an interest in its services, and then to recog- nize the claims of the church. He was evidently a young man of character, and became an intimate, almost immediately, of one of the staunchest families of Norwalk. He married Susannah, daughter of John Fitch, Jr., (cousin of Governor Fitch), and two children, Daniel and Richard, were born to them. Mrs. Church died early in her wedded life. Her husband, whose clear, calm judgment must have won upon his cotemporaries, was elected, in 1751, with two such men as James Brown and Alexander Resi- quee, to “make up” parish accounts of years standing. He was elected to the vestry very soon afterwards, and, in 1757, was chosen church warden. He married for a second wife, the widow of Captain Sears. Mrs. Sears was a Ruth Raymond, of South Norwalk, (aunt of the late Charles Hoyt and of the mother of General William T. Sherman). By Captain Sears she had a son, Thatcher, who married a Long Island lady. During the Revolu- tionary War, Thatcher Sears removed to New Brunswick, and re- ceived a grant from the British Government. His first wife (by whom he had several children), died in the provinces, and he married again. The three children by the last wife are Robert, Edward and John. Robert (the bible publisher) lives in Toron- to, and Edward and John in New Brunswick. Mrs. Ruth (Sears) Church was the mother of Ebenezer, Jr., (a name of which the parish may justly be proud) and of his brothers Samuel, Josiah, Isaac, and John. There were several sisters also All of the sen- ior Ebenezer’s children are gone, and but three of his grandchil- dren remain, viz., William, who occupies the Josiah Church home; and Mary, who lives in the “new,” the second house that her grand- father built, and who, loyal to the Church blood, reveres the fam- ily traditions; and Charles, whose success as a New York business man has multiplied for many returning years. It is a family mention, that after the burning of Governor Fitch’s house, the widow, (second cousin, by marriage, to Ebenezer Church, Sr.) temporarily occupied the old, the first house that 117 Ebenezer Church built. It stood at the foot of the garden be- longing to the present Miss Mary Church. Attention in this next dissmissal paragraph, is directed to page twenty-seven, note three. In connection with the gift of St. Paul’s parish of “Mrs. Ogilvie and Mr. Phillips,” as there alluded to, is an interesting bit of history. The Hon. Verderych Felypsen, Patroon of Philipsborough (a portion of the ancient province of New York) came from Holland to America, in 1658. With General Stuyvesant and others he was one of the fathers of Nova Belgia (New York city.) He made heavy purchases of land in the new city, laying out the same in streets, and marking out building lots. He also bought a large tract on the east side of the Hudson, some thirty or forty miles above the city, and erected thereon an out-of- town mansion. His wife was Margaret Dacres, and he had two children, a son and daughter, Verderych and Eva. Verderych married first, a Hardenbrook, and for a second wife, a daughter of Stephen Van Corlandt of the Corlandt manor. Eva married into the same family. Verderych died, somewhere near 1700, and left Philip, and Adolphus Pliillipse. Phillip, as a child, was in delicate health, and his father had purchased an estate at Barbadoes, and sent him there. He died at about the age of forty -two, and left the son referred to in note on page twenty-seven. The child’s mother also died at about the same time, and the grandfather sent the young orphan to New York, and that he might not be tempted to again return to the Barbadoes the grandfather sold the island estate for about fifty thousand dollars. This Frederick died, in 1751, and left his property in New York city, and upon the Hudson, to his namesake son, Frederick, or in event of Frederick having no heir, to his second son, Philip. Frederick, however, married. He died, in 1768, and his widow married the Bev. John Ogilvie who had had temporary charge, in 1749, of St. Paul’s church, and was the father of the Rev. George Ogilvie (see note, page ten) rector of St. Paul’s, in 1790. This statement (condensed) is borrowed from an article (copied from the English press) in one of this country’s au- thentic genealogical works, and it reveals the probable fact that the last century “Mrs. Ogilvie and Mr. Phillips” donors to St. Paul’s Church were — mother and son — Mrs. (Phillips) Ogilvie and Mr. Frederick Phillips, the latter a descendant in the sixth gener- ation from the Knickerbocker patroon of 1658; while the statement (one of the Phillips married a Livington) may throw light also upon the of late years unaccounted-for “Phillip Livingstones” membership, at the same period, of St. Paul’s church. 118 The old New York Livingstones, and Phillipses, and Jays, and Frenches, and Ludlows, and Rutgers, and Van Hornes, were relatives, and some of them are of savory memory in Norwalk. Several of these families had temporary representatives in this town during the closing years of the eighteenth century; and the even- ing, or morning, as the case may be of General Tryon’s arrival, in 1779, at Fitch’s Point, found General VanHorne and quite a com- pany of his connections enjoying (for the time being) comfortable quarters (now the Cowles home) on “the Green.” These facts suggest the conclusion that the “Phillip Livingston” of the ancient list, page two hundred and two, of the “members of the Epis- copal Society in Norwalk” may have been of this same family group ; and the owner and occupant, consequently, of the Livingston mansion which stood towards a hundred years since, in Park Place, New York city, and after Mr. Livingston’s death, was purchased by, and became the home of Goold Hoyt, of Norwalk, whose benefac- tion to this parish has been already mentioned. Mary, daughter of Frederick Phillips, of the afore-mentioned distinguished family combination,- married into the family of the Hon. Gouverneur Morris; and the fact that Norwalk was the home of some of the affinity may perhaps also account for the trusteeship in this place of the valuable property alluded to in the following note from the pen of Judge Jones: “Upon burning the town of Norwalk, a most elegant, large, beautiful, and well-collected library, an heir-loom belonging to the Morrisania family in the county of Westchester, which had for safety been removed to Norwalk, was pillaged, carried to New York, and disposed of.” Quoted by the “National Quarterly,” October, 1879, from Judge Jones’ History of New York. James Rogers, son of Dr. Uriah Rogers, Sr., (consult concluding portion of note two, page forty -two,) was, says Todd in his History of Redding, ‘ ‘ A prominent man in his day, and filled may respon- sible offices in town.”. He must have left Norwalk when a young- man, as he appears in Redding, in 1762. One week before Christ- mas day, 1789, he sold to Nathan Jarvis, the first treasurer of St. Paul’s parish, a portion of the home estate of his father, Dr. Uriah, Sr., now the pleasant site of the homes of Mrs. James Mallory, and Mr. Mannice B. Lockwood. The Rogerses, and the Couchses (Jonathan Couch, father of Norwalk’s Major-General, Darius N. 119 Couch), and the Fitche’s (Dr. Ashael Fitch, of the Norwalk Fitches, as the writer supposes, and father-in-law of Dr. Jonathan Knight), and the Davieses ( Dr. Thomas Davies, ancestor of the rector to-day of one of the most important parishes in Philadelphia, the Rev. Thomas F. Davies. D.D.), were old Redding residents. One of the Rogers homes in Redding became later the property of the father of the late Mrs. John Osborn. Dr. David Rogers, Jr., (see lower foot note page forty-two) son of Dr. David Rogers, of Greenfield Hill, whose visits to Norwalk are even now spoken of in this place, has a son-in-law still living at a very advanced age, in Redding. This individual, the venerable Jedediali Rogers Hawley, married, for his first wife, Deborah, daughter of Dr. David Rogers, J r. , and sister of one of the leading physicians of this country, the late San Francisco physician and port health officer, Dr. James H. Rogers, great-grandson of the senior Dr. Uriah Rogers, who lived, as before stated, on the Lockwood and Mallory properties, on Mill Hill. Mr. Jedediah R. Hawley’s second wife was the daughter of Moses Hill, of Redding, a relative of the late Dr. Moses Hill and his brother, Ebenezer, of Norwalk, both of whom were natives of Redding.