Norwalk After Two Hundred & Fifty Years

Three Sinter Stocks o 9 o Four Hundred Black oak Staves for fox o 9 o Seed Casks at 5 pr 1 o o Two Shaving horses 0 6 o One Hundred hoop poales o 4 o One Sedar Tub half Barrell o 4 o One Churn at 4 pr o 4 o One half dozen round bottles o 2 o Three athorn pals 1 Gallon Each o 3 o Six wooden boles 2 quarts each 0 6 o One Bread Tray o 3 o One Larg Salt Moter 0 6 o One Weaned Calf 1 o o Fifteen Geas at 1-6 pr. p 1 1 o Two Iron Candlesticks o 3 o One half Barrel of Soape 010 o Fifteen pounds of Soap Greass o 3 o Six pounds of Tallow at 6 o 3 o One hundred of Chestnut rayls 1 10 o Thirty weight of Good Flower 0 5 6 Three Large Bee hives at 1-6 o 3 6 One half hogshead Tub o 3 6 One half barrel Cask of Vinnegar Barrell and all ... . o 18 o One Box Iron o 3 o Two wooden bottles of 3 o 6 o Two outside jackets half worne Both Wooling 015 o Six pair of Good pillow bears at 3 pr. pair o 1 6 One large earthern platter o 1 6 One Large Earthen Pan o 1 9 One Cradle White Wood 016 o One pair of hand Bellows o 3 o Three Cross stocks for hogsheads And 2 Barrell Cows Stocks at 1-6 0 7 6 /rr: The Fountain Smith farm is on Raymond street just off from East avenue, near the old schoolhouse. Early in the morning of July 11, 1779, Mr. Smith was strolling about his door-yard without his coat, enjoying the summer air and peaceful landscape. Suddenly he was seized from behind and he found himself a prisoner in British hands. Being very deaf he had not heard the approach of the soldiers up the street, and was taken completely unawares. Subsequently Fountain Smith 290 was sent to a wretched prison in New York, where many patriots suffered ; and he died soon after of hardship, at the age of fifty-four. Up the same street, further on, is the home of Josiah Raymond, who married Molly Mer- wine, of Greenfield Hill, in 1765. There are interesting associations connected with both the Beard and Earle places, on what was known as Meeting House Hill early in the eighteenth century, but since nothing here looks as it did then we will pass by these traditions and come to the Fitch lands. First is the homestead of Thomas Fitch, Governor of the Colony of Connecticut, 1754- 1766, whose virtues are set forth in a long eulogistic epitaph on the brown table stone which marks his tomb in the old East Norwalk burial ground. Many of our townspeople trace their ancestry to Gov. Fitch, and feel a venerating interest in this home- stead. The old house, one room of which had served as Norwalk's first town clerk's office, was burned ; but the kitchen wing of the building was saved, and this remnant which was subsequently moved onto the foundation of the main house, together with a new addition, constitutes the present dwelling. If we search a little we will find the old well with green moss-grown stones and its waters clear and sparkling as ever. A great elm, one of the finest specimens of its race until the beetles killed it, a few years ago, was a joy to every passer-by. It was planted one hundred and fifty years ago by Gov. Fitch himself. Two brothers of Thomas Fitch had homes near by. That of Samuel Fitch, a deputy to the Colonial Assembly, has long since disappeared; but a portion of James Fitch's home survives in the present residence of Oscar Raymond, which was built by Jonathan Fitch early in the nineteenth century. At a street on our left which runs to Oyster Shell Point, we find a house which once belonged to "Yankee Doodle" himself, otherwise known as Col. Thomas Fitch. About 1755 Col. Fitch com- manded American troops who joined a detachment of Rritish regulars in an expedition to Ticonderoga and Louisburg. As they marched into Greenbush, where the army was quartered, Col. Fitch at the head of his raw- looking regiment, a witty Englishman exclaimed, "So that's your Yankee Doodle!" and thus the nick-name was fastened upon Col. Fitch. The popular song was written at about this time by "Dr. Schackburgh who was attached to the British staff. Written in derision of the 291 Americans, it nevertheless was adopted by them with much enjoyment, and was a favorite song during the Revolutionary War some twenty years later. The G. W. Kunter house on the high bank, a little further up the avenue, was tli.- Congregational parsonage ninety years ago ; and here occurred a historical calamity, the destruc- tion of the oldest records of the First church, containing the births, and marriages of its early members. The precious volumes, stored in a wicker basket in the attic, were reduced to rags by rats. Rev. Roswell Swan, pas- tor 1807-1819, died in this house and was buried in the Town House Cemetery. The meeting house, which was burned in the Revolution with its steeple, bell and broad stone steps, stood on the site of Mrs. W. G. Thomas's residence. Rev. Mr. Swan's church, which succeeded that one, stood on the lower end of the Green until the present edifice was built in 1849. A relic of the old church, the lantern which lighted the vestibule, is owned by Mr. C. A. Quintard. In this building "Parson Hall" preached a little later, under a sounding board hung over the high pulpit which was just large enough for the preacher ; if a visiting clergyman assisted at service he had to sit outside. To a broad flat stone under a great elm tree, came the carriages of the parishioners from a distance ; among them Joseph Marvin's from Westport and Miss Phoebe Comstock's from Comstock Hill, accompanied by her white-haired slave Onesimus, the last slave held in Con- necticut, because he had refused his freedom. For fifty years he never missed a Sunday in his place. Miss Comstock, or "Aunt Phoebe" as everyone called her, might have adopted a certain text in Galatians for her own, "Rejoice, for the desolate hath more child- ren than she which hath a husband" ; because, in the course of her life, she adopted no less than thirteen boys and twenty-six girls, orphans, keeping them until the boys were old enough to be apprenticed and the girls to marry or become housekeepers for other people. Some of Aunt Phoebe's boys became well-known in the world as men. Her home in northern Norwalk was famous as a ministers' tavern for visiting clergy, nor did she fail to cheer the lot of her pastor by sending him presents of poultry and other farm delicacies ; while the poor of the parish were not neglected. In 1878, nearly fifty years after Miss Comstock's death, there was an auction of her household effects, the account of which makes a collector envious. Old dishes were sold, and furniture, among which was the Tryon chair (now owned by the Rev. C. M. Selleck), spinning wheels, and all the paraphernalia of colonial housekeeping, hand-woven coverlets and linen, besides attic treasures innumerable. The Noah Wood house on East avenue was the parsonage in Dr. Hall's day, and he wrote his three books, "The History of Norwalk," "The Puritans and Their Principles," and "Infant Baptism" in its front upper room. A town house, used as a guard house during the Revolution, stood on the site of our present old town house, which was burned in 1779 and replaced by an uncouth-looking structure which came to a violent end one night some forty years later, at the hands of a mob of young blades who called themselves "Ensign Andrews." On its ruins our own "Old Town House" was built, which is not so very old after all, since it was built in 1835. It is one of the oldest brick structures in town, however ; the old bank on Wall street (Dr. Walter Hitchcock's office) be- ing the first, two houses in Rowayton next and the Town House fourth in age ; all of them the work of Lewis Raymond, mason and builder. The Town House used to be the only public hall in Norwalk and it served for 01 her gatherings than elections and town meetings. It was used by the Baptists during the late thirties before they had a meeting house of their own. School exhibi- tions, lyceum lectures, and the Wasliingtonian temper- ance meetings of sixty years ago, when total abstinence was a new idea, were held in the Town House. On one occasion the volunteer fire company of popular young men filed up to the desk in a body to sign the pledge. The glib Mormon apostles preached their doctrines from the Town House platform, winning a few converts, in the days of Joseph Smith. Col. F. St. John Lockwood's beautiful lawn is the site of a notable colonial home, that of Commodore John Cannon, whose ships plied between Norwalk and the West Indies just before the Revolution. Few people to- day are aware of the important carrying-trade which existed at that time, when hams, horses, staves, hoops, flour, butter and earthenware were exported, and sugar, molasses and liquors imported. The Cannon house was spacious, with a great chimney in which a whole ox might be roasted, besides affording room for game and poultry on spits, and kettles hung from swinging cranes,