INTRODUCTORY.
 

EORWALK is a seat of accredited antiquity. Few places in the United States rank
it in age. Liber "A," of English transcribed deeds. New York City Hall of Records,
registers an execution in 1661, in favor of Nicholas Bayard, while the first book of Nor¬
walk transfers thus recorded antedates by one and twenty years that of the Bayard trans¬
action referred to, and by seven years the arrival of immigrants of this name in a country
wherein it was to be their destiny to establish families of fame, the ancestor-headship of an
off-shoot of one of which same households the ancient plantation of Norwalk has itself
furnished, as witness the following :

Benjamin Woolsey Rogers, oldest son of Moses and Sarah Woolsey Rogers of New York and a
grandson of Nehemiah and Elizabeth Fitch Rogers of Norwalk, married Susan, daughter of William and
Elizabeth Cornell Bayard of New York. These had four children, one of whom, Sarah, wedded William
Patterson Van Rensselaer, the oldest son by his second marriage, of Gen. Stephen Van Rensselaer of Albany,
and -1 whilom resident at Belden Point, Norwalk. The fourth child was about one year old when the mother's
health declined, and an ocean trip was determined upon. It was during the war troubles of 1814, when com¬
merce found its way to and from the sea through Long Island Sound. England at that time so controlled
the Sound waters as that the ship in which Mr. and Mrs. Benjamin W. Rogers were passengers, was detained
in the East River. Permission to proceed, however, was at length given, and in passing Shippan Point, the
residence of Moses Rogers, a prayer for tlic vessel's party was offered on shore by Dr. Timothy Dwight,
a brother-in-law of Moses Rogers, and the President of Yale College. Before the company reached South¬
ampton, the spirit of the sufferer had flown, and her remains were interred beneath the walls of a parish
church in that city. Her husband married, for his second wife, Catherine Cecilia Elwyn, a grand-daughter
if Governor John Langdon of Portsmouth, N. H., who was father of Judge Woodbury Langdon, who mar-
jd Sarah Shcrburn, and had Walter Langdon of New York, who married Dorothea, daughter of John
Jacob Astor, and had Woodbury Langdon, wlio married Helen Colford Jones and had Woodbury G. Langdon,
owner of, and summer resident at, "Half-Mile Isle," Norwalk.

The title of this book in one word indicates, and this note-intertexed introductory
illustrates, its object. Norwalk is the book's thought and theme. The work is an attempt
to bring this ancient town's recondite history more fully to light, and to preserve and per¬
petuate its mentions and memories. Many of these were gathered by the author while
engaged in the necessarily hasty preparation of his 1886 St. Paul's Church centennary ad¬
dress, but the most of them have since been collected, and their public presentation upon
the eve of the town's quarter-millenial birth anniversary will, it is hoped, prove a not un¬
welcome  nor unimportant contribution to existing local  annals.

C.  M.  S.
Norwalk, Connecticut,
1S95.