Friday, March 9, 2018

Genealogy Story – My Prospect Connections

The city of Waterbury, CT, has a section which juts out to the east. This roughly rectangular part of the city is about a mile wide and between 1.5 and 2 miles high. It is known as the “East Farms” area of the city. And it is here that most of my Pierpont ancestors lived for several generations. To the north of this area is the town of Wolcott, to the south is the town of Prospect, and to the east is Cheshire. I’ve written previously about all the connections between the Pierpont family in East Farms and Wolcott (*1), so would like to now write about all the connections to Prospect.

As I noted in an earlier blog (*2), Ezra Pierpont was the first Pierpont to move to this area. “In 1781 they purchased 40 acres in what is now Prospect.  Over the next few decades Ezra purchased several more properties in the area between Prospect and Wolcott in what was known as the ‘East Farms’ area of Waterbury, just to the south of Meriden Road, which was also the southern border of Wolcott, and in 1801 he became the first Pierpont to settle in that area.  He eventually owned most of the property in East Farms.”

Back then the area where Ezra made his first purchase was called the “Columbia Parrish” of Waterbury. Prospect did not become a recognized town until 1827 (*3). My next family connections to Prospect after Ezra settled in Waterbury would not come until the end of the 1800s.

In 1898, Ezra’s great-grandson, Wilson Pierpont and his wife, Annie, were living in East Farms. When Annie died in childbirth with her eighth child (my grandfather), Harold, he was “given away” to be raised by the family of Sam and Hattie Nichols who lived in Prospect (*4) (about 2.5 miles to the south over Austin and Scott roads – Austin Road being named after Ezra’s son Austin (Wilson’s grandfather)).

Prospect was not a very large place – the population for the first 100 years after its founding being only 500-600 people (*5). Most people in town knew each other, so it was no surprise that my grandfather, Harold Pierpont, met and married my grandmother, Sara Blackman, who was the same age and lived less than a half-mile away (*6).

But she was surrounded by many of her other relatives. In the 1910 census for the town (which was only 12 pages long for 539 people), we can find the following families within just a few pages of each other:
·       Nichols/Pierpont – my grandfather and the family raising him [page 4]
·       Talmadge – the maiden name of my grandmother’s mother, not only did her grandparents live in the town [page 12], but so did her uncle George and his family [page 5]
·       Blackman – both my grandmother’s parents and siblings [page 7] and her grandparents as well [page 6]
·       Hotchkiss – one of the most important families in town (*7), but also relatives of my grandfather (David Miles Hotchkiss was his 4th cousin, 3 times removed, through his mother Annie) [page 8]
·       Cowdell – Ruth and Nellie Cowdell, whose mother was a Hotchkiss, were neighbors of my grandmother’s family [page 7]. They were also best friends of my [great-]Aunt Edna (*8), with Ruth being 2 years older and Nellie being a year younger. Neither Edna, Ruth, nor Nellie married. Ruth and Nellie inherited the Hotchkiss family farm and in their later years donated it to the Prospect Historical Society (*9).
·       Clark – my uncle Dick married into the Clark family (*10) [pages 8-11]

In addition to Austin Road which leads from Waterbury to the edge of Prospect, the following roads in Prospect are named for some of these relatives:
·       Talmadge Hill Road
·       Marie Hotchkiss Road
·       Clark Hill Road

When my wife and I were married, we lived in Prospect for the first 3.5 years of our married life. We lived on Merriman Lane, just a short walk from the homes where my grandparents grew up. The Merriman family after whom this road was named were also distant relatives as my grandfather’s great*7 grandmother was a Merriman.


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