Norwalk After Two Hundred & Fifty Years

Thomas Hanford, who came to Norwalk in 1652 and was assigned a home lot the following year. The men who founded Norwalk were not ignorant men nor ad- venturers in the sense of being of a roving disposition. Their bold journeyings into untried regions were not to ascape from the restraints of law, but to make homes for themselves under laws which were framed by themselves. Some of them were experienced in frontier life, having been in America twenty or thirty years. Self-reliant, hardy, not without money, they were of the strength of England. Many unmarked graves of Connecticut pio- neers might rightfully be decorated with coats of arms; for the men who wrought with axe and plow were of gentle families as well as from the yeomanry. The men of means who left old England for the hard conditions of the pioneer's life were of the religious class who be- lieved the pomp and glory of the world a hindrance in preparing for the next; and, while deference frorr the lower to the gentler born survived in social usages, all other class distinctions dropped out of sight. The task our forefathers had set themselves was too engrossing to allow them to spend time and money upon perpetuat- ing the traditions of their lineage. It remains for the descendants of this generation to connect the families of America with the English stock ; and, in most cases of those who claim their ancestry among the planters of the New England colonies, it is possible to trace the family history in English records. The lack of monu- ments to mark the graves of even the eminent men of those times is explained by the scarcity of suitable stone and the lack of the stone cutter's skill. The Connecticut colonists were more democratic in their ideas of town government than the Massachusetts colonists. The Rev. Thomas Hooker, a man of whom it was said "he could put a king in his pocket," was the leader of this senti- ment and his ringing words in a sermon preached at Hartford in 1638 "to persuade us as God has given us liberty to take it" give the key to the spirit of the men who planted the "three vines set in the wilderness," Windsor, Hartford. Wethersfield, honored on the sea! of the State. Our Norwalk forefathers were men of this stamp and the town records show the importance attached to the vote each man was entitled to in the town meeting ; so anxious were they that every voice should be heard, a fine was imposed for absence from it. There 104 were officials in those days who fill no place in modern town government. Thomas Lupton was chosen in July, 1668, "to look after the young people in the meeting house on the Lord's day and to doe his best endeavor to help them from playing and unsivill behavior in time of public wor- ship." Thomas Barnum undertook the same task in 1681, "to keep good decorum amongst the youth in times of exercise on the Sabbath and other publique meetings ; and the Towne doe impower him if he see any disorderly, for to keep a small stick to correct such with, only he is desired to do it with clemency." In 1665, Walter Haite was appointed to beat the drum for meetings at 10s., for the year, and Thomas Benedict to have the meeting house swept for 20s. A later drummer, Robert Stewart, son of one of the richest men, was "rewarded for his ser- vice with the drumb." In 1703, a bell superseded the drum in calling people to the meeting house, and in 1713 Zerubbabell Hoyt was engaged to ring the bell at 9 o'clock every night. No public business was transacted in town meeting after that hour. The first mill was not the old tide mill. Jonathan Marsh established the first grist mill at the foot of Mill Hill in 1657. The oldest road in town is the "Stamford path," which stretched from that place to Fairfield over Flax Hill and through Van Zandt avenue. This existed as a "trail" when the settlers first came to Norwalk, since Stamford and Fairfield are older settlements. The next oldest is East avenue, from Rev. Dr. A. F. Beard's home down to the old Benedict tide mill. The most convenient crossing place when the colonists took their cows to pas- ture on the west side of the river was at the ford above the falls where the iron bridge nowspans the river in Cross avenue. This naturally made the beginning of a road in that direction. Goodman Marsh was instructed by the town meet- ing to be ready to grind the townsmen's corn on the 2nd, 4th and 6th days of the week. In 1664 Henry Whitney was permitted to erect "a good and sufficient ground corne mill at the Point of Rocks on the Norwalk river below the falls." His home lot was laid out "on the mill plain on the right hand of the patch leading down to the old mill. The Point of Rocks, Mr. Selleck tells us, is now a part of the foundation of the Norwalk bridge and the mill and Whitney's house were the first build- 105 ings in the future city of Nonvalk. In 1680 the growing community required a bridge and the town committee chose the place "below the falls" by the mill for its site. Christopher Comstock kept the first ordinary for enter- taining strangers; in 1671, he lived at the corner of East avenue and the Old Fairfield road opposite the meeting house and very near our Founders' stone. Richard Holmes set up the first saw mill on Five-Mile-River with the liberty of a mile of timber on this side of that river. With the buildings of the bridge a movement towards uptown began ; then came the question of a new meeting house. The young people who looked towards the fu- ture thought a change of site was desirable and the old people who looked towards the past, remembering their struggles in a wild land when they came to Norwalk thirty years before, prized the associations of the original site. So a commitete of "three honest indifferent judi- cious men" was chosen to decide the question and the record reads "the town engages to sit down satisfied with their determination." The new meeting house was built on the site of the present residence of Dr. Beard in East avenue. The Rev. Thomas Hanford was growing old, but the town meeting affectionately requested him "to proceed in the work of the ministry and to continue in the sayd work till the Lord shall dispose of him other- wise," pledging him their faithful support. He died seven years later, after a pastorate of over forty years. In 1690 the atrocities of the Indians at Schenectady and Salmon Falls during the French and Indian war alarmed all the colonies. Norwalk took precautionary measures against attack by fortifying the meeting house and setting a watch. In front of this second meeting house another com- mon or green became the heart of the community and Matthew Sention kept a tavern or ordinary nearby. An entertaining old journal kept by a young woman who made the difficult journey from Boston to New York and back again in 1704 comments on her stop in Norwalk as follows: "About nine at night we came to Norwalk, having crept over a timber of a broken bridge about thirty feet long and perhaps fifty to ye water. I was ex- ceedingly tired out and cold when we came to our Inn and could get nothing there but poor entertainment and the impertinent babble of one of the worst of men, among many others, of which our Host made one, wrho, had he been one degree imprudenter, would have outdone his 106 Grandfather, and this I think is the most perplexed night I have yet had. From hence, Saturday, Dec. 23, a very cold and windy day, after an intolerable night's lodgings, we hasted forward, only observing in our way the town to be situated on a navigable river, with indifferent build- ings and people more refined (Pg. 2720 174.30) than in some of the country towns wee had passed tho' vicious enough, the Church and tavern being next neighbors." The second minister, Stephen Buckingham, was set- tled in 1695 and, after the custom of the times, a home- stead was given him, together with a piece of salt marsh for "crick thatch." His lot now lies under the roadbed of the New York and New Haven railroad. In 1717 the third meeting house was built and another lengthy deliberation as to its site ended in the choice of the place now occupied by Mrs. W. G. Thomas's residence, in East avenue. When it was completed in 1721 it was voted to use it only for religious meetings ; it had a steeple and a bell and broad stone steps. This was the meeting house during revolutionary days and was the one burned during Tryon's invasion. The burial ground on Mill Hill called Whitnev's Hill in the records, after the miller, was opened for the use of members of the First Society (Congregational) in 1767. The grant to St. Paul's parish was made thirty years before but addi- tional land was granted it in 1760. Just here we remark how strange it is that no mention is made in any records of the earliest burial ground in Norwalk. Probably the down-town cemetery is the oldest, but no very ancient stones are there to show where the "forefathers of the hamlet sleep." The early graves were probably never marked save by stones at head and foot which their con- temporaries knew, but with no inscription to tell later generations where the Marvins and Hanfords, Benedicts and Betts, Fitchs and Olmsteads, Sensions and Hoyts, Gregories and Seymours, Lockwoods, Comstocks, Whit- neys and Raymonds of the first two generations sleep. In 1708 land was appropriated on the west side of the river for a burial place which is doubtless Pine Island ; and many venerable stones stand there whose inscriptions are still legible. It seems as if the Down Town cemetery had not been reverently treated ; for stones with quaint epitaphs which were seen there ten years or so ago have disappeared. Surely if this is the spot where Norwalk's forefath- 107