Book Description

Excerpt from Newtown's History and Historian: Ezra Levan Johnson It was the fond desire and studied purpose of the late Ezra Levan Johnson, to publish and preserve the early history of his native town and in this labor of unrequited love he gave unstintedly of time, travel and research. The Newtown Bee furnished him opportunity to reach the public and this memorial volume to Mr. Johnson's memory aimed to gather and perpetuate some of his published articles. It by no means includes the wealth of material at his disposal for additional articles, which would have been published had his life, strength and faculties been prolonged. It is but the plain truth that no man was so well equipped for the task which Mr. Johnson set for himself with such unflagging zeal, both in his own knowledge of Newtown's past and in his painstaking search into local records, as well as those of the Colony, State and Nation. Connecticut Colony, formed by the union of Hartford and New Haven in 1665, appointed a committee at the May session at Hartford in 1711, to lay out such divisions of land within the said Newtown as shall be agreed upon by the proprietors thereof. At the October Session at New Haven in October of 1711, this committee reported to the General Assembly that, "having lately had a general meeting of the said proprietors and their agreement or order for laying out a certain division, or sundry lots of lands within the said town of Newtown, the said committee have thereupon preceded and laid out the same." William Junos, Justice Bush and Samuel Hawley had bought this Newtown land, a tract six by eight miles of the Indians, July 25, 1705. Junos sold half of a third interest in this land to John Glover, making him a large landholder in the early settlement, which he served as town clerk. Glover's purchase from Junos took place Dec.6, 1708 and the deed of sale was copied by Glover from the records of Stratford, to which town Newtown then belonged. Dec.19, 1710, two years after Glover's purchase, Samuel Hawley, who had a third interest in this six-by-eight-mile Newtown tract, united with his father, Joseph Curtis, Rev. Charles Chauncey (the Stratford minister) and 38 others, with "Richard Bryans heires," to buy Junos remaining sixth interest and Bush's third for 22, 10s, currant silver money of the Colony of Connecticut. This deed was copied into Newtown records from those of Stratford by Joseph Curtis, one of those buying out Junos and Bush. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."