Norwalk After Two Hundred & Fifty Years

at the capital, and to come to the Mahackemo wilds to struggle against rocks and in swamps and where life was far from being a bed of roses to them. These men sought an end and this brought them hither. The presumable Ludlow argument that the Lord's waste between Stam- ford and Fairfield afforded Dutch and Indian manoeu- vering and marauding protection which English occupa- tion would prevent, or that this wilderness tract offered another plantation site the tenantcy of which would be a further plea in the colonies' favor with Matthew Crad- ock and such other magnates as he at the govern- ment seat across the sea appealed, most probably to their sense of responibility to which they praiseworthily re- sponded. , The character of our Norwalk fathers, and it was men of their identical brand who laid New England's stable foundations and made America, men of convic- tions which they were not given to recant and men who met the truth face to face, will bear investigation. They were a plain-mannered folk and they lived in a day of plain measures. There was no call among them for great military daring any more than there was for gigan- tic financial risking, nevertheless the spirit of the Nor- walk veteran who in public assembly, and opposed to a man by the other voters of that assembly, unflinchingly — Athanasius against the world — maintaining his ground, declaring if I am wrong in the matter before us I ought to stand alone, but if right I can afford so to do, the spirit, we repeat, of this father was every inch as brave as was that of the Duke of Bohemia who pro- nounced "this bridge shall be my way to Antwerp or it shall be my sepulchre," or that of the dashing stock op- erator who flew up the steps of the exchange flinging ringingly behind him "I'll reach the millions column or die in the attempt." The avowed principle and veracity of our sires, who, if frugal, were fair, and if not always as liberal as they might have wished, yet were just and so, if they could not divide up their previously Indian cleared land into forty acres apiece yet squarely made it four acres all around ; their principle constancy, their impartiality, protecting all along their extended water front the red man's canoe as well as the pale face's shallop anchor- age ; no man, the decree ran, be he English or Indian, shall disturb another's bark; their championship of right, their keen apprehension of their obligations ; their 28 zealous impulses, for John Gregory, John Rusco, John Bouton, Thomas Betts, Christopher Comstock and such like, were no fossil treasures, but men of diligence, en- ergy and fortitude ; these as well as their unswerving faith, and genuine piety, and appreciation of education, and their patriotism and love of freedom gave them a title to respectability, proved them capable of larger undertakings and are a memory which not alone con- stitutes their children's glory, but is, as another says, cal- culated to help build up those children to the same grand level of honor and honesty. A stone dedicated to a predecessor of one of these foreparents is thus inscribed: God sifted a nation in order that choice grain might be sent to the wilderness, and the seed in God's providence delivered in our Nor- walk field-and-forest-embracings was fine. Thomas Hanford, pastor primus of the town, was a scholar who fed his flock with the manna of the morn- ing. A strong mind has such a strong grasp that it is possible for it of a titan to make a peak. The Hanford family was a power. The head of it had been college- prepared by a master from the Westminster school near the Parliament House, and was so singularly and sus- ceptibly endowed that even the savage Winnipauke from his twelve miles distant weird and "wild cat" wigwam was apparently led, as a child, by his hand. He was called when young to the new settlement and his life was spent in adherence to convincings which philosophy then was, and which the whole fraternity of philosophers now would probably have been, utterly powerless to sup- plant. Of the first Mrs. Hanford's family it is told the town came to one of its members to learn what should be done and of the mother of the family that she was a fore- parent who moved the world. This woman, who died in a corner house the grass around which home grows in its original plot in East Norwalk to this hour, married the titled grandson of Ware, the historian of Ireland, and so influential were her precepts and potent her pat- tern that down to our own day and here on one of our streets, one of her blood who chanced, a stranger in the town, to tramway pass one of God's Norwalk creations, involuntarily, with clasped hands remarked its presence. That crystal stream was to its accidental beholders inher- ited intuitions a stream which rose in Heaven. Time may dim and change impair, but it is impossible to so wholly eradicate such effective tuition as was imparted by the first minister of this place and his family. His argument in defense of the constitution of the United States, a bit of bulwark-reasoning, won for Dan- iel Webster deathless terrestrial fame, and had John Warham, Jonathan Edwards or Thomas Hanford sub- stituted for their masculine presentation of God's immu- table verities our many wheel-and-pulley parish appli- ances these giants would, in all presumability, from thence have dated their downfall. That the flock of one of such signal mentality and spirituality as Thomas Han- ford should have been benefitted and elevated is plain enough to understand and was simply inevitable. And here let us enter Norwalk's maiden meeting house, finished in not even shell plastered walls, pos- sibly, and prudently provided with but a single window and that on the side opposite the swamp from which the Indians were wont to dart their arrows, and study the composition of the flock referred to, a flock which believed a whole Bible and was accustomed to perpendicular preaching and concerned itself with no theory of "inter- pretation" further than the courageful one that enabled them to read "Jehovah Shammah" wherever they offered a prayer or sung a hymn, or lent an ear to the teaching of the word. Here we find Thomas Fitch and Ann his wife of family beyond the ocean of culture and competence. Roger Ludlow himself registered Thomas Fitch as the wealthiest man in the town. Mr. Fitch's father died some years before, having will-named as his loving friends Thomas Hooker and the subsequent founder of Harvard College. Matthew and Alice Marvin have seats in that ancient building, and while Mr. Marvin complied with the con- tingency that demanded the performance of a practical branch of industry from him still the court took care to commit the local administration of justice to his com- petent self. John Gregory, son of Henry of Boston — there wor- shipped, while near to him prayed his sister, Mrs. Richard Webb, whose husband, research indicated, was a great grandson of a knight lisher of King Henry VIII. Thomas Barnum walked a little over a quarter of a mile to attend that sanctuary and of his accredited grand- father the monumental record in All Saints church, Hol- lingbourne Hill, to this hour, runs: "A man on every ao side of gentle birth, most happy in the extreme piety of his life and death alike, on whom God poured of this world's gifts of nature, grace and honor. Richard Olmsted, naturally endowed and acquire- ment-gifted, was a visitor beneath that humble roof, and so was Matthias St. John, of acknowledged descent, and Nathaniel Ely and Nathaniel Richards, whose converse before his Norwalk residence was with the eminent of the land, and Ruth Clark, sister-in-law of the first rector of Yale College, and Richard Raymond, the honored fore- father of five commodores in the American Navy. Richard Seymour was another parishioner of Mr. Hanford and about, if not the earliest one who was com- mitted to the Norwalk earth, leaving a widow who wed- ded one of Connecticut's renowned sons and thenceforth resided near the Colony's government seat. There were some of the progenitors of early Nor- walk, all of whom were numbered among Mr. Hanford's own people — a people dominated, seemingly, by the idea implied in the injunction "drink deep or taste not." The pastor had just died and the church was vacant, but at least one family had been so thoroughly taught that, without waiting the choice of their pastor's successor its members journeyed to Fairfield, where the father made profession of his faith and consecrated his little one to the Lord and had his four-years-old niece, who sleeps under the oldest inscribed tombstone in Norwalk, a little Belden bud, baptized. It is not the analist's part or policy to keep on the blind side of events, certainly not to be blind to his clients' blemishes. It is but sensible to suppose that this town's virgin story was that of a not altogether flawless administration. But as it would be invideous to imply censure unless there is known cause for it so is it dishonest to withhold praise where it is manifestly due. The training, civil or ecclesiastical, which furnished to Canaan parish such a head as Theophilus Fitch, or Wilton with a James Betts, or Westport with a John Taylor, or Ridgefield with a Matthew Keeler, the rearing, in a home lot within a stone cast of this church which developed Esther Isaacs, whose daughter Mary was the grandmother of the Prince of College Presidents, Timothy Dwight, D. D., now in Europe, and daughter Sarah, a mother from whom sprang the Kings, Grades and Hopkins, and son Ralph, the grandfather of Ralph Isaacs Ingersoll, 81