Norwalk After Two Hundred & Fifty Years

bells evidenced, what the aged veteran seemed to inter- pret they evidenced, that his comrades's liberty struggles had been forgotten; or if a prolonged and persistent communication which is preserved in this town, in rela- tion to one of Norwalk fatherhood not yet in his teens, James Alexander Perry, in recognition of which boy's bravery Congress took action ; or if her enthusiasm, the wife of the beloved Presbyterian pastor for over fifty years of Pound Ridge, N. Y., if Mrs. William Patterson's . remembrance-warmth of her grandfather, a son of this church of which his parent was a deacon, and who was very likely baptised from that basin which, filled with pure water, the eyes of more than one here gathered must have looked upon as it used to stand, so modestly, upon the plain communion table which fronted the pul- pit pillars in the old church on this Green, if said grand- child's memory-zeal for Capt. John Thatcher, who. it is claimed, raised and equipped a company at his own ex- pense and proceeded with it to Lake Champlain, where he commanded the galley Lady Washington and rendered such illustrious service, the enemy, even, paying him a conspicuous compliment : or if Father Barnum's regard, Father Barnum, whose eloquence during a recent pas- tor's incumbency made St. Mary's walls on West avenue to ring, if Reverend Barnum's lengthened and learned letter received in this place and appertaining to his hon- ored ancestor, an officer of this society, whose dooryard is still well-defined at the foot of Strawberry Hill and whose grandsire sleeps abroad beneath a sculptured mausoleum of alabaster : if all this rightful and de- lightful respect for a worthful past ; if all this patriotic feeling ; if all this standing up for the dead as Dr. Na- thaniel Bouton in 'his historical discourse fifty years ago so splendidly stood up for the valiant departed and their valor deeds, if all this be sentiment then do we with all our might exclaim beneficent, blessed sentiment; and would God that bursting all bonds and bounds a flood of it might deluge Norwalk, for we believe it would work a sort of moral regeneration, and be an uplift in the com- munity. But let us, dejving a little deeper down into this mat- ter of witness bearingTconsTder 'more~precisely the sub- jects of our commemmoration, and the subject qualities we are recognizing at this interesting epoch. A recent writer describes the seventeenth century Puritan as one who looked upon one's advantages and opportunities as trusts to be invested, and that this should have been a characteristic redounds to the re- nown of the Norwalk founder constituency which was not a band of explorers altogether, but to a noticeable extent, of already established colonists whom neither necessity nor an adventurous spirit wholly drave or drew to a new home, but with whom one spur to the planting of the settlement was, it is not illogical to infer, the pub- lic interest — appeal addressed them by the great Nor- walk idea originator. History when thoroughly searched, teaches Canon Miley, of Paris, will always conduct to the right path. Scan the Ludlowlian Norwalk enactments ; first the pur- chase in 1640 and no recorded occupation hint thereof until the "agreement," so-called, in 1650. Read be- tween the lines of this paper, and answer whether the "mind" of the genius whose associates abroad were none the less than Vane and Humphrey and Venn, and on this side the Atlantic Mason, Maverick, Hooker, Steele and Stone, is not apparent. Who but Oliver Crom- well's elect and select commissioner ; who but the po- tent destroyer of the Pequot terrors and Saviour, conse- quently of all the New England colonies ; who but the pious one who wrote to Pychon "we do stand merely by the power of our God" ; who but Deputy Governor Roger Ludlow may have inspired the "convenient speed" clause in the Norwalk compact, and the "ap- proved minister" and "thirtie approved families," and "obnoxious" party paragraphs in that document. True the pioneers pledge back the purchase price, but are we sure that the munificent Ludlow required the paltry amount at their hands? Are we confident that it was not their own sense of propriety that demanded his ac- ceptance of the same? The paper of June 19, 1650, will stand search-light examination and we opine that pos- terity will constitute that day as the date of a Norwalk founding act if not the date of the Norwalk founding fact. We turn to the "considerable company" mentioned in that document, reminiscences concerning which are instructful. The Norwalk "newcomers" were a sensible, serviceable and a forcible purpose folk, purpose that led to results ; and they were a positive company; <% company the members of which entertained positive con- victions, and held positive opinions, and spake positively. Their Hartford pastor once compared a certain kind of 25 preaching to a legal citation in which no name appears, but the Norwalk members, unlike Mr. Hooker's name- less indictment meant and amounted to something. Feople will read you who may not read their Bibles. So a young Hartford convert, to whom the words were addressed, was taught, and such teaching clinches. A tree is known by its fruits and the full effect of old time Norwalk stock conscience and conduct fruits can no more be calculated than can their effect value be figured up — dollars and cents. Robert Stuart was a live man. He lived adjoining the present home of Dr. Augustus F. Beard, but he was one of the founders of "The Village," so styled, below Old Well, where he had a wharf and where he kept an eye open for traffic. Besides this, lands were called after his own name which demanded care. But he was also a "Lord's Witness," one of his maxim's reading, "They who are in the Lord are happy indeed." His stalwart faith, ineradicable perchance from his Scotch blood stout- ly told and the Yale tutor and Andover profound scholar, Dr. Moses Stuart, dates back to him for heredity, as did also the later recalled Matthias Hubbell, whose gray hairs were a crown of glory, as were the same to his constant and ever commendable contemporary in this house of God, Evart Quintard. Bouton Hoyt had been taught that it was a sin to break the Sabbath and Freelove Wright a duty to go to church on that day, and therefore when the sun went down on Saturday night the water was shut off the Five- Mile River raceway and everything was still at the Hoyt mill until Monday, and when Sunday morning came the wagon stood before the Wright home which, ere it start- ed upon its dozen miles' trip over Long Island sands, was filled. Now to stand at Bouton Hoyt's headstone and thereat retrospect concerning the rigorous restrain- ful training in his own case and that of his next door neighbor, Daniel Weed, how it developed strengthful men and prayerful women and con- tributed through these to the world's betterment, sending out representatives, from the one fam- ily, to mould hearthstone excellence at home and run excellent careers in India, and from the other household the brilliant William B. Weed to shepherd this church and his brother, John R., to serve this community, or to muse before Deniss Wright's door first in Loyd's Neck and after in Saugatuck how that the habit of his 96 daughter was the leaven hid in the meat, one of the workings of which helped raise up such God strivers and lifelong serviceful ones as were her grand-children Han- nah Morgan and Andrew and Edward Nash ; to ponder such faith-inflexibility products, is to be convinced of the worth of this old town's old-time discipline. A lad who by a deed recorded to have been per- formed on one of our ancient streets, thereby evidenced that he had been a sturdily brought up Lockwood, grew to himself have a son who had been so stamana reared as that while a college student Peter Lockwood still made time to further occupy, as the master expressed it, one of the fruits being the conversion of the Old Well youth who afterward so idolizedly ministered, for fifty odd years, in Concord, New Hampshire. We read that Aristole was conscientiously opposed to putting out money at interest, the proof, if so, of high moral preponderance ; not higher, however, than was the strict principle of our "pound for pound" progenitors who may not have lived and died millionaires, but who really lived and died richer than millionaires, and the character and candor wholeness of whom was the out- come of their righteous raising, which was strict, stern and by way of contrast severe indeed, but it is one of the recommendations of early New England family bringing up that it had a strong viking vein running through it, which vital tide was fructifying as nothing of a modern diluted sort ever, it is to be feared, can be. We repeat, the Norwalk planters hither came duly bent. Among them were, undeniably, some, several, of means and mind moderation. They were yeoman rather than, conventionally speaking, noblemen, nevertheless Matthew Marvin left a well-appointed home on Village street, Hartford, to come to Norwalk ; and Nathaniel Richards a desirable residence in Cambridge where he had for neighbors New England elect and elite; and Thomas Fitch was opulent and well, otherwise, endowed. These men were not dissatisfied with the civil adminis- tration of affairs at the Colony's crib, neither did they sit uneasy under Thomas Hooker's ecclesiastical ruling, and certainly thev did not come to Norwalk with power on the brain, nor to acquire great possessions. It was beyond doubt a sacrifice on the part of at least a portion of the party to surrender the growing comfort which Richard Webb, Richard Olmstead and Richard Seymour were indulging under the satisfactory shaping of things 27