Archive:Selleck's Norwalk

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Archives > Archive:Extracts > Selleck's Norwalk

Norwalk, by Rev. Charles M. Selleck, (Norwalk, Conn.: The author, 1896). See an online copy at Archive.org.


[p. 35]

Milling, in earliest Norwalk history, was a failure. ... Not many years, however, elapsed before Henry Whitney solved the mill problem bv utilizing the waters of Norwalk river, when streets began to spring up around "the great bridge."


[p. 36 note]

It is unfortnnate, in the interests of Norwalk [p. 37] milling history, that a record at the foot of the page of one of the "proprietor's books," should be so worn and torn as to be illegible. The record introduces the Whitney name, and it evidently treats upon the matter under consideration, but its full recital cannot now be ascertained. Mr. Whitney had, presumably, something to say upon the subject, the sequel to which was, quite possibly, the short tenure of Nathaniel Richards (who held the property only a brief period) and the grander Whitney scheme of abandoning the former smaller accommodations, and building a capacious structure at the "Point of Rocks" at the mouth of Norwalk river, by "the falles." It can be imagined that at the meeting held July 29th, 1665, Thomas Fitch, Lieut. Olmstead and Mr. Fenn gladly surrendered the tentative and troublesome primal projects, and welcomed the progressive ideas of Henry Whitney. Before this meeting adjourned there was granted to Mr. Whitney a home-lot in the near neighborhood of the mill-site. The earliest mill-site passed out of existence millwise, and was succeeded by John Nash's tannery, the said Nash retaining of the former facilities, only the water feature.

It may be remarked that Henry Whitney's removal of the milling interest was, probably, the entering wedge of the success, for two centuries, of upper over lower Norwalk. Norwalk was not then out of its teens in age, but the mill was even now the magnet. The millwright drew the wheelwright, the carpenter and the blacksmith, and of course their families and shops and apprentices. There was but little or no "back country" at that time but the farmers from the home division (East Norwalk) and the second division (South Norwalk) and from Strawberry Hill, and Saugatuck Playne, and not a great while afterward, from Cranberry and Poplar Plains, and Chestnut and Belden Hills, learned the way to Whitney's Mill. Hither they brought their produce, which created a market, and store and sloop quickly succeeded. This was the start. Had the tide-mill conception earlier entered the fathers' minds, East Norwalk's supremacy might have been less easily lost.

The story of the old corner mills, Nos. 1 and 2, at The Bridget is not devoid of interest. Trvon destroyed mill No. 1, but the age of No. 2 was great, its posts, joists, rafters and window-panes being gray with the dust of generations. Its wheels were a marvel to young eyes, and its music, if sometimes monotonous, is not an unpleasant memory. It proudly defied the ravages of many a spring freshet, and stood venerably immovable until touched by the hand of improvement, when it disappeared much more quickly than it arose. Among the names of its owners since Capt. Josiah Thatcher's day, are Gen. Joshua King, Taylor Sherman, Jabez Gregory, Benj. Isaacs and Samuel Cannon. John Adams had temporary quarters in its vicinity. Lafayette, if not Dr. Dwight, rode under its "bucket" overshot, and Madame Knight, 190 years ago, across its predecessor's bridge-planks. Mill No. 1 was consumed by Tryon's faggots, but a spell seemed to protect No. 2 from fire and flood, until it fell to Joseph W. Hubbell and Stephen Raymond to conclude, in 1854, a business that millionaire Stephen Whitney's great-grand-uncle, Henry Whitney, in 1665, there commenced.


[p. 40 note]

Asahel Steele, who married Nov. 16, 1806, Sophia Seymour, born in Norwalk (Canaan parish) Feb. 25, 1790, daughter of Samuel and Anne (Whitney) Seymour, and grand-daughter of David and Elizabeth (Hyatt) Whitney, was a descendant in the seventh generation from Hon. John Steele.


[p. 44]

Another existing ante-revolutionary home is that of the lower Main Street Hoyt sisters and brothers. On May 15, 1764, Goold Hoyt, Sr., paid Capt. Josiah Thatcher, who then owned the old Whitney mill, £47-15s. for a lot of one-half acre and fifteen poles area and situated on "mill plain," now Main Street.


[p. 45]

[Photograph]
THE TIMOTHY WHITNEY HOUSE.
Torn down by Bradley O. Banks in 1864.

[p. 53]

Beginning at the head of Norwalk river, the "ship-yard" was the first locality, anciently, of note in the west or Partrick section of Norwalk. This yard was a little below "Keeler's Hollow," and somewhere near the present freight depot of the Danbury and Norwalk R. R. It originated, probably, in the days of the Whitney milling enterprise, and there is record of the building of water-craft thereat down as late as Ebenezer Hoyt's day.


[p. 80]

Register of Additional Male Settlers who came too, or who attained majority in, Norwalk, from 1656 to 1700.

... [p. 81]
Whitney, Henry
    "    Henry, Jr.
    "    John, Sr.
    "    John, Jr.
...

[p. 84 note]

On Oct. 28, 1839, this remarkable woman died, at the age of one hundred years, in the Jabez Gregory home at "The Spring," in lower Main Street, (site in 1896 of the J. F. Bennett and adjoining store properties). This commodious edifice and its generous grounds somewhat resembled the "Isaacs House," on the other side of "The Bridge." The river bank in the rear was bough-overhung and with the tree growth in other parts of the large yard, the spot was inviting notwithstanding the changes that business surroundings were gradually bringing about. The house-interior had much in common with the fine old-time taste that reigned within a number of the Norwalk homes of the period. The "Spring" was a particular feature of the place. It issued from Harry's (afterward "Mullen") Hill, and was, possibly, first appropriated by Henry Whitney, Sr., the founder of the "mill at the bridge."


[p. 91 note]

Lewis St. John, born 1800, was son of Phineas2d. and Sally (Abbot) St. John. His father, Phineas2d. born 1778, was son of Phineas1st., born Dec. 15, 1748, and Esther (Whitney) St. John. Mrs. Phineas St. John1st., born Feb. 3, 1751, was a daughter of Capt. David and Elizabeth (Hyatt) Whitney. Her father, Capt. David, acted an important part on the morning of the burning of Norwalk, in 1779. The services of his vessel and himself were offered his suffering townspeople. Lewis St. John's mother, Sally Abbot,


[p. 121]

John Keeler1st. married June 18, 1679, Mehitable, daughter of John and Elizabeth (Weed) Rockwell, and had Daniel, who married Hannah, daughter of Joseph and Hannah (Hoyt) Whitney, and a sister of Hezekiah Whitney, the first elected vestryman of the Norwalk St. Paul's parish.


[p. 123 note]

Matthew [Keeler] had a son, Isaac, born April 20, 1759, who married, Sept. 26, 1781, Deborah, daughter of David and Elizabeth (Hyatt) Whitney. Isaac and "Aunt Debby" Keeler lived in primitive simplicity, in a house that stood abotit where stands the Henry P. Price West Avenue residence to-day.


[p. 125 note]

Horses, as has been elsewhere noted, seem to have been early Norwalk introduced. Of John Raymond1st. there is a record that when his first child was two years old (1667) he had "one black horse, one black mare, one Dunnish gray mare and one young colt." The mill at that time had been removed from the lot adjoining Mr. Raymond's premises to the N. W, corner of the present Main and Wall streets, and Norwalk's first Raymond "team" was, it is possible, often seen along the route to the new Whitney mill.


[p. 146 note]

Moses and Abigail Comstock's daughter Hannah, married Phineas, son of Eleazer and Hannah (Frisbie) Hanford. Phineas Hanford's brothers and sisters were Sarah (Mrs. John Darrow), Hannah, (Mrs. John Reed), Eleazer, Mary and Eunice (Mrs. Josiah Whitney).


[p. 147 note]

A portion of this sightly domain, nine miles north of "Whitney's Mill," is to-day held by the Keeler descendants.


[p. 156]

John2d. son of Thomas1st. and Hannah Seymour, married Sarah, daughter of Jachin and grand-daughter of John Gregory, Sr., and had:

John3d.
Mary; married Thomas Hanford.
Sarah; married Daniel Trowbridge.
Abigail; married, Nov. 5, 1729, John Selleck of Stamford.
Rebecca; married first July 6, 1734, Elijah Whitney; married second John Bouton

of Danbury.

Martha; married Samuel Jarvis.

[p. 211]

From this "Hollow" on the west, a street, "two rods wide," and running north and south, was, in 1764, laid out. At that date the "stumps of the old planks" of Henry Whitney's mill of a hundred years before, were still standing and formed a sort of surveyor's "point," from which the (now Knight) Street took a northerly [p. 212] course, ending at what was then denominated the "Upper Highway," but now "North Avenue."


[p. 213 note]

LeGrand Lockwood (see Lockwood lineage,) of admirable recall and who business-wise was one of the most clever and capable sons of this town, sprang from that branch of the Lockwood family to the ancestor of which the town proprietors allotted a tract, between the Whitney's and Kellogg's, on what is known to-day as that part of Main Street into which Centre Avenue opens.


[p. 215 note]

He had a brother Daniel, who married Lucretia, born June 27, 1786, daughter of Ebenezer and Ruth (Raymond) Whitney, and sister of Eben Whitney who lived, universally regarded and to a venerable age, in the old style comfort home now supplanted by the commodious Earie Last Avenue summer residence. Daniel and Lucretia Fitch had a son Harvey, born May 7, 1816, who married, May 29, 1838, Rebecca, daughter of Jared and Lydia Betts of Wilton.


[p. 221]

Henry [Fitch], the middle named brother, born. Jan. 29, 1773, married, July 19, 1796, Abby, born, June 8, 1775, daughter of Ebenezer and Ruth (Raymond) Whitney. Mrs. Henry Fitch's mother was a daughter of the patriot Simeon Raymond of "Old Well," and her father (a mariner) was the son of David Whitney who was proprietor of the Silvermine "Whitney Mill," which David was the second son of the first (recorded) vestryman of St. Paul's Church, Norwalk, Hezekiah Whitney (son of Joseph, who was son of John, who was son of Henry Whitney, the settler). The brother of Abby (Mrs. Henry Fitch) was Eben Whitney, for many years the well recalled silversmith of New York. To leave a watch for repair at Eben Whitney's Pearl Street store, or to purchase an article from his shelves was to be dealt by as agreed upon. He was a faithful man and closed an honored city and country life (in Norwalk) May 22, 1869. Henry and Abby Fitch had seven children. Daniel, their oldest son, born April 2, 1799, a man of solid integrity, married, Sept. 15, 1822, Sarah, daughter of Zechariah Whitman and Sarah Fitch. He lived on the old Marvin property at the foot of Strawberry Hill, where the ancient "Fairfield path" rounded, in coming from the east, into the Fort Point path. His house is still standing at the head of Fitch Street.


[p. 231 note]

Daniel Lyman was a classmate of Dr. Betts, and like his college fellow, was, it is probable, thrice married. His first wife was Sarah Whitney [sic: Should be Whiting.--RLW], of New Haven; his second wife Sarah Miles, of the same city, and his third, Mrs. Ellen (Fairchild) Benedict, of Norwalk. Mr. Benedict died in 1764, after which his widow married Dr. Thaddeus Betts.


[p. 246 note]

The third mentioned uncle, Isaac [Keeler, son of Stephen, son of Matthew], born April 20, 1759, married Sept. 27, 1781, Deborah, daughter of David and Elizabeth (Hyatt) Whitney, and lived about where now stands the West Ave. residence of Cashier Price. Isaac and Deborah Keeler's youngest son, James H., born July 17, 1801, married Matilda, sister of David and Morris Stephenson, who kept for many years, the Norwalk Hotel.


[p. 267]

Ensign John [Olmstead] (brother of James), who was baptized Dec. 30, 1649, married July 17, 1673, Mary, daughter of Thomas1st. and Mary Benedict, by whom he had his children, Mary, Sarah (Mrs. Jonathan Abbott), Rebecca (Mrs. Samuel St. John), Elizabeth (Mrs. Henry Whitney), Daniel, Jane (Mrs. Benj. Wilson), Richard, Eunice, Deborah, Abigail, Anna and John.

Mary, the oldest child of Lieut. John and Mary (Benedict) Olmsted, was probably born in the meadow home, neighbor-site of the recently improved Oscar Raymond East Avenue house. She was a sister-in-law of such early known Norwalk personages as Samuel St. John and Henry Whitney, and married in the spring (May 9) of 1694. Thomas, son of John1st. and Ann (Mrs. Ann Derby) Reed, of "Reed's Farm," Norwalk.


[p. 272 note]

Silas Hickox, born Jan. 8, 1714-15 was the oldest son of Benj., and Sarah (Selleck) Hickox. His father was one of the progressive men of ancient Norwalk (Wilton). He established himself near the present Congregational Church in Wilton, and was the "Henry Whitney" of that section.


[p. 274]

Stephen E. Warren was unmarried, and so is his brother, Dr. Nathan B. George H. Warren, Sr., born Nov. 18, 1823, the youngest member of the family, married, April 20, 1851, Mary Caroline, daughter of J. Phillips and Mary (Whitney1) Phoenix, of New York City. Their children were and are:

Mary Ida, Edmund,
Harriet Louise, Whitney,
George Henry, Jr., Anna Phoenix,
Emeline Whitney Dore, Edith Caroline,
Whitney Phoenix, Lloyd Elliot.

___________________________________________________________

1 A name which calls forth the following note: In the autumn of 1729 occurred a Norwalk marriage which was truly a strong "old family" alliance. The groom was the grandson of Henry Whitney, who sixty-odd years before had revolutionized Norwalk mill matters, and the bride was a grand-daughter of Rev. Thomas Hanford, first, in point of time and talent, as a scholar and a divine, in early Norwalk annals. After a wedded life of six years the groom and bride, Josiah and Eunice (Hanford) Whitney, had born to them a third child who took the name of the lad's great-grandfather, Henry Whitney, the settler, which infant Henry was the father, in 1776, of the modern multi-millionaire Stephen Whitney. Mary, the second daughter of said Stephen, married on the eve of the centennial anniversary of Josiah and Eu- [p. 275 note] nice Hanford's bridal, Jonas Philips Phoenix, of New Jersey, and was, personally and by inheritance, of such manner and character-gentleness and loveableness that she did and could not fail to command the admiration even of those who were entire strangers to her. Of the children of Jonas and Mary Phoenix, Mary Caroline married a descendant of a Norwalk family almost as old as that of her own, George Henry Warren, youngest son of Nathan and Mary (Bouton) Warren, of Troy, N. Y., and a grandson of Eliakiam and Phoebe Warren, of Norwalk and Troy. Geo. H. and Mary C. Warren resided in the metropolis but chose Mount Ida in the city of Troy for their country seat. A sister of Mrs. Geo. H. Warren, Harriet Whitney Phoenix, married Isaac Bronson, of the Greenfield Hill Bronson family. Mrs. Bronson was seized with illness while traveling, in 1864, in Germany, and fully aware that her malady would terminate fata11y, she, with tenderly true devotion, employed her last moments in dictating consoling messages to her soon to be bereaved mother. A brother of Mrs. Warren and Mrs. Bronson, Stephen Whitney Phoenix, had, before death, erected his monument by the publication of the colossal work, entitled "The Whitney Genealogy."

...

Josiah Whitney, the Norwalk great-grandfather of Mrs. Jonas P. Phoenix, was the brother of the great-grandfather, on his mother's side, of Rev. Samuel Jarvis, the father of Mrs. Elizabeth H. Colt, of Hartford. The four sisters of Rev. Mr. Jarvis, the Misses Lavinia, Amelia, Sarah and Mary, made enjoyable visits to their Whitney relatives in Darien, the descendants of which relations occupy, to-day, the old home-land vicinities. The drive between the Middlesex Warren and Whitney homes is of interest.


[p. 282]

From the foregoing it is noticeable that the children of James Olmsted1st. were boys, while the offspring of his brother John were, largely, girls. The sons of James remained in Norwalk and here transmitted the name, while of his brother John's three sons, two, Daniel2 and Richard,3 removed to Ridgefield, and John, it appears, to Fairfield. John's daughter Elizabeth, (Mrs. Henry Whitney), also found her home in Ridgefield. Her husband, born Feb. 21, 1681, was a grandson and namesake of Henry Whitney, the miller and settler. Elizabeth, who like her older sister, Mary, the Olmsted-Warren ancestress, was born close by the Rider, 1896, East Avenue, premises, married, June 14, 1710, her Whitney suitor, and both took up nine of the finest acres on the east side of the well laid-out "Ridgefield Street," which nine acres to-day represent a valuable sum. Henry and Elizabeth (Olmsted) Whitney had a grand-daughter Rebecca, (daughter of Henry Whitney), who, Jan. 18, 1789, married Josiah Olmstead. Josiah's father was Daniel, son of Richard and grandson of Lieut. John Olmstead1st. of Norwalk. Josiah and Rebecca Olmstead were the parents of William, born March 31, 1793, who married Clara, daughter of Jared and Rachel Nash, of Ridgefield, who had, Sept. 22, 1825, Charles (Gen. Charles Olmstead, 1896, of Norwalk).


[p. 291 note]

Isaac Lockwood1st. inherited his father Joseph's large home property. This estate fronted on the present Newtown Avenue (east side) from the Jarvis Hill upper corner (opposite the northern limits of St. Paul's Church site) almost as far north as the North Centre School house of 1896. From this latter point the boundary line ran east as far as the back road which forms the western limits of the new County Home for Children on the Westport road, from whence the line took a westerly direction (on the Westport road) back to the starting point opposite the Jarvis home. Isaac Lockwood married Jan 10, 1755, Ruth, daughter of Hezekiah and Margaret (Harris) Whitney. Ruth's father was the first elected vestryman of St. Paul's Parish. The children of Isaac1st. and Ruth Lockwood were:

Hezekiah1st., born Nov. 15, 1755.
Mary, born July 24, 1757.
Ruth, born April 4, 1759.
Isaac2, born Dec. 22, 1761.
Jeremiah, born March 23, 1764.
Josiah, born May 18, 1766.
Samuel, born Jan. 24, 1769.
Sarah, born Jan. 21, 1772.
David.
Mercie (or Mary) Mrs. Nathaniel Stuart).

After Isaac Lockwood's decease his widow married, second, a Lyons.


[p. 302]

A PETER LOCKWOOD MONUMENT.

The present Wall Street Lockwood building, of which structure Lockwood's Hall forms a portion, marks one of the most notable business sites of earlier Norwalk. When Henry Whitney, Sr., established the "Whitney Mill" (N. W. corner of Main and Wall Streets 1896) the land gradually sloped from the foot of the present High Street to the "coast," as old deeds describe the same, and for a long time that section of the settlement now comprising East Wall Street and the site of the Phoenix Block. Lockwood's Hall, MaHory and E. K. Lockwood buildings, was "common land," across which, from east to west, coursed, at first, the path to Whitney's mill, and later the "post road."


[p. 303]

Captain David Whitney was a Norwalk mariner in about 1775. He did good service in the Revolutionary War.


[p. 310]

Mr. [John] Platt was six years older than his Lockwood bride, and the happy father, on March 30, 1697, of his wife's namesake, Sarah, who at the age of eighteen, found a partner in a grandson of Henry Whitney, Sr., a man evidently of brain, brawn and breadth. Sarah Platt gave her hand in marriage to the young Nathan, son of John and Elizabeth (Smith) Whitney, which John, born shortly after Ludlow's purchase of Norwalk, was a son of Henry Whitney1st.. Nathan and Sarah Whitney had a son, Eliasaph, born Feb. 3, 1716-17. who married at the age of twenty-seven into the Bishop family of Stamford. Here was the Union of two ancient households, and a daughter, destined to become an ancestress of note, crowned the marriage. This daughter of Eliasaph and Mary (Bishop) Whitney was to quit the green Middlesex meadows and to marry, Dec. 13, 1778, (her second bridal) a well known Norwalk man of thirty-two, Hezekiah, son of Samuel and brother of Rt. Rev. Abraham Jarvis, second bishop of Connecticut. Hezekiah Jarvis and his new (second) wife became the parents on the last day of the winter of 1796, of a son William (Rev.), who on Dec. 22, 1825, married Elizabeth Miller, born June 22, 1798, daughter of Richard W. and Elizabeth M. Hart.


[p. 310 note]

John and Mary [(Talmadge)] Bishop's ninth child Mary, married May 10. 1744, Eliasaph Whitney, the father of Mrs. Hezekiah Jarvis, of Norwalk, which vereable woman, the grandmother of Mrs. Elizabeth H. Colt, was great-great-grand-daughter of Rev. John Bishop, whos great-great Stamford grandson was Alfred, father of the Rev. E. Ferris and Hon. W. D. Bishop, of Bridgeport.


[p. 311]

Rev. William and Elizabeth Jarvis were the parents of the present Mrs. Elizabeth H. Colt of the city of Hartford. Hezekiah Jarvis' first wife seems to have been a sister of the first husband of his second wife. There were five children by the earliest marriage, viz., Noah, Abraham, Elijah, Stephen and James, who were the only Hezekiah Jarvis children of Nash blood. The remaining son and daughters William, Sarah, Lavinia, Amelia and Mary were of Jarvis-Whitney blood.

The late Charles Edwin Whitney, of Darien, who was a grandson of Eliasaph Whitney, left a widow and children who still occupy the ancestral Whitney home site. These tell of the pleasing visits in gone days of the Norwalk cousins (Hezekiah Jarvis' children) to the Middlesex cradle. At the foreparent, Eliasaph's, one hundredth birth anniversary in Feb., 1817, the Norwalk grand-children, Sarah Jarvis, then aged thirty-four, and her younger sisters Lavinia, Amelia and Mary, formed a sleighing party and rode to the ancient hearthstone on the present Darien and New Canaan rural avenue, and there greeted their venerable sire. Their grandmother, who had died three years previous to this celebration, was wont in her devotion to her Church to ride, with horse under saddle, five lonely miles to St. John's, Stamford, or St. Paul's, Norwalk. In pew No. 29 of this last named Church sat her quiet-faced and quiet-minded, godly son-in-law Hezekiah Jarvis, with his well-demeanored household beside him. The picture of Hezekiah Jarvis,1 prayer-book in hand, leading his family on the Lord's Day to the sanctuary, recalls the custom of the English "Squire" of a former period carrying the same large sized volume in one hand, as, emerging from "the house" he early started on Sunday morning for the parish Church.

So devoted to the memory of her cousin Hannah (Mrs. Nathaniel Slauson) was the late Miss Sarah, oldest daughter of Hezekiah Jarvis, that she ill later life made her way, in winter, to said cousin's distant funeral in 1851.

Mrs. Hezekiah Jarvis' father was present in the Middlesex sanctuary, a few furlongs south of his home, when, on Sunday afternoon, July 22, 1781, he was captured by the enemy and marched to the beach, near Five Mile River, and taken thence to Long Island. Some of his younger neighbors jumped out of the window and escaped, but he was taken prisoner. After reaching Long Island, however, he fortunately fell in with a friend through whose intervention he was permitted to return to his family. Mrs. Jarvis was buried at the age of eighty-two in St. Paul's Church yard, Norwalk, on Jan. 15, 1834.2

____________________________________________

1 See portrait in vestry room of St. Paul’s Church, Norwalk.
2 For verification of foregoing Jarvis, Lockwood, Piatt and Whitney lineages see Norwalk land and Fairfield probate records, Hall's Norwalk, Jarvis and Whitney family genealogies and register of St. Paul's Parish, Norwalk, Conn. The Jarvis father came from Long Island to Norwalk.

[p. 317]

Benjamin, the youngest son of John and Elizabeth Boalt, married Dec. 29, 1748, Hannah, daughter of Daniel and Hannah (Whitney) Keeler.


[p. 333]

Benjamin [Isaacs], named for his grandfather Isaacs, which grandfather bore the first name of his Rumsey grandparent, was born on the site of the still-remembered sunny cottage, occupied later by Eben Whitney, on the Earle hill of 1896.


[p. 337]

John Platt2d., born 1664, married May, 1695, Sarah, born Nov. 3, 1670, daughter of Ephraim Lockwood. Their children were: Sarah, born Mar. 30, 1697 (Mrs. Nathan Whitney); Elizabeth, born June 11, 1699 (Mrs. Benj. Lyon); John3d., born April 2, 1702; Abigail, born Feb. 12, 1707 (Mrs. Samuel Warring); Josiah, born Nov. 6, 1704; and Mary (Mrs. Richard Bouton.) John Platt2d. died in 1736.


[p. 353]

The children of Zerubbabel [Hoyt] were Abigail, born Feb. 2, 1675; Joseph, born 1676-78; Daniel, born Jan. 1, 1681; Hannah (Mrs. Joseph Whitney); Caleb; Rhoda (Mrs. John Keeler2d.).


[p. 375]

Hard by where serpentine-wound the Canaan Indian way, denominated from of old, "Ponasses-path", and some two miles northwest of the ancient Whitney Mill (corner of Main and Wall Street, 1896), stood the old-time home of Epenetus Kellogg2d., son of Epenetus1st. and Jemima (Rogers) Kellogg.


[p. 407]

Of Mr. Theodore C. Camp's business qualifications, it is sufficient to say that he is the successor of [p. 408] his able and admirable uncle, the late Theodore Chichester of Brooklyn and Norwalk, in the care of the large Whitney estate of New York City.


[p. 424]

Evert Quintard2d., for many years the highly respected citizen and noted cabinet manufacturer and furniture dealer of Norwalk, married, first, November 29, 1819, Elizabeth, daughter of Timothy and Abigail (Smith) Whitney,1 and had:

William Lewis, born September 20, 1820.
Francis Edmond, born March 29, 1825.
Mary Elizabeth, born October 10, 1827, Mrs. Bennett D. Lum.

______________________________________________________________

1 The home of Timothy and Abigail Whitnev is depicted on page 45. Its two heads were of Norwalk, Conn., and Hadley. Mass., stock. Timothy Whitney ([[Family:Whitney, Timothy (1744-1825)|son of Timothy) descended from Henry Whitney, Sr., the settler. His wife, who was a Widow Wood when he married her, was a daughter of Eliakim and Abigail (Hoyt) Smith (see page 363), and a granddaughter of Ebenezer and Abigail (Bouton) Smith.

[p. 431]

Eliakim1st., son of Ebenezer1st. and Abigail Smith, married Abigail, daughter of Daniel and Elizabeth Hoyt, and had:

Martha1st., born June 3, 1728, died young;
Daniel1st., died in infancy, by accident;
Daniel2d., born September 25, 1731, living in 181 1 ;
Eliakim 2d., born December 25, 1734;
Hannah, born February 28, 1737;
Noah, born March 7, 1739 (see page 363);
[p. 432] Thankful, born May 15, 1745;
Elizabeth, born February 22, 1717;
Abigail, born July 25, 1749, Mrs. Alexis Wood, first, and, second, Mrs. Timothy Whitney2d.;
David, died young;
Nathan, born November 24, 1752;
Martha2d., born April 29. 1756, Mrs. Stephen W. Johnson of Albany. N. Y.;
Catharine, born March 12. 1762. Mrs. Jonathan Thompson.

[p. 436] Samuel Smith1st., who married Rachel, daughter of Matthew Marvin1st., (see pages 150 and 177) had Rachel (Mrs. Thomas Benedict). Lydia (Mrs. James Lockwood). Sarah, Hannah, Samuel2d. and Nehemiah1st. Samuel Smith1st. was brother of Joseph (page 431).

Samuel Smith2d. married, June 13, 1711, Sarah, daughter of John and Elizabeth (Smith) Whitney and had Samuel3d., Sarah (Mrs. Nathan Olmsted), Rachel (Mrs. James Northrop), and Patience (Mrs. Benjamin Hoyt), all of Ridgefield.


[p. 468]

Until advancing age Mr. [Josiah] Thacher held the old Whitney Mill (northwest corner of Main and Wall Streets, 1896). He was its proprietor and the owner, also of "Thacher's mill pond" in the rear. The Whitney-Thacher grain establishment has a history (page 35).


Copyright © 2018, Robert L. Ward and the Whitney Research Group.