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                    NICHOLAS DISBROW

     All we know of Nicholas at this particular moment in
history is that he was born at Walden in Essex in 1612,
and that his father too was a joiner in that village.  So
far I have found no mention of when he came to America
but as to what happened after he arrived in Hartford, the
record is surprisingly explicit.
     In the first place, we learn from the later pension
rolls that he had hardly got himself settled before he
had to drop the work of clearing his land and leave with
all the younger men on an expedition which was to wind
up in a burst of glory.  For in the spring of '37 came
the first of the terrible Indian wars that were to cul-
minate in New England with King Phillip's War and were to
continue as the frontier moved westward for the next 250
years.
     This one became known as the Pequot War and was the
settler's introduction to the Indian technique of pillage,
burning and massacre which was to become so familiar
later.  Connecticut acted very promptly and, from the
five or six hundred settlers now scattered along the val-
ley, collected a tiny force of seventy men at Hartford
under Major John Mason who, early in May, sailed down
the river in "a shallop, a pinnace, and a pink" to Say-
brook where they were joined by twenty men from Boston
and seventy Mohegans under their chief Uncas.
     On May 20th they sailed out of Saybrook eastward
past the known location of the Pequot stockade near
Stonington.  They landed near Point Judith and then,
doubling back, surprised the Indians just before dawn on
Friday, May 26th, 1637 - "with the moon as light as day."
Within two hours the place was burned to the ground and
over 700 savages were dead.  Cotton Mather, that first
flower of Puritan divinity, gives us, in his inimitable
17th Century English a brief but vivid flash of what fol-

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                    NICHOLAS DISBROW

lowed.  True, he wasn't present in person but his few
words show such restrained good taste and such sympa-
thetic kindliness toward the poor misguided red brethren
that they deserve preservation here.  He says -
     "Twas a fearsome sighte to see them (the Indians)
thus frying in ye fryer, and ye streams of blood quench-
ing ye same; and horrible was ye stincke and sente
thereof.  But ye victory seemed a sweete sacrifice, and
they gave prayse thereof to God."
     The campaign wound up on July 13th with the Great
Swamp Fight (not to be confused with the one thirty
eight years later in King Phillip's War) which calmed
down the Indians for nearly a generation.
     From the Pequot War onwards we are able to follow
the career of Nicholas with surprising detail.  He was a
property owner in Hartford by 1639, where he lived at
the north end of Burr Street, now North Main Street.  In
1640, when he was twenty-eight, he married Mary Brunson
though no mention is made of whether he was a widower or
a bachelor at the time.  Ground for speculation on this
romance is provided by the following quotation from the
Public Records of Connecticut (Vol. I, p. 45) during his
suit against the Royal Governor Allen which we shall
touch on shortly.
     "On April 6th, 1640, in the Particulars Court, Mary
Brunson, now wyfe to Nicholas Disbrowe, and....certayne
other females....were corrected for wanton dalliance
and selfe pollution."
     In 1660 he obtained permission to build a 16-foot-
square shop on the highway - probably the first recorded
road-side stand.  He held the office of "Chimney Viewer"
(Tax Assessor) in 1647, 55, 63, and 69.  In 1665 he was
Surveyor of Highways, thus preceding your Uncle Don in
that office by exactly 270 years.
     In 1669, Mary Brunson having presumably died mean-

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                    NICHOLAS DISBROW

while, Nicholas now 57 married again, this time Elizabeth
the young widow of one Thwaite Strickland, and the mother
of four children.  This union of June and December seems
to have been the cause of no end of excitement for our
Henry Disbrow in the neighborhood of Oyster Bay that same
summer as we shall later see; but the marriage itself
must have worked out smoothly enough for we find no en-
tries to the contrary.
     For his services in the Pequot War, Nicholas was on
May 11th, 1671 granted fifty acres of land.  On March 16
1673, at the age of 60, he was freed from further liabil-
ity for military service.  A little later he was charged
with practicing witch-craft, the charge apparently being
dragged into the proceedings surrounding a disputed bill
for a chest he had made and delivered to Colonel Allyn.
It was here too that Mary Brunson's unfortunate girlhood
experience was entered as evidence of something or other.
     Through all these years Nicholas continued his trade
of furniture maker and when he died in 1683 he left a to-
tal property of £210, a sizeable estate for Hartford in
those days.  He is today rated highly as the earliest
American cabinet maker.  In Ormsbee's "Early American
Furniture Makers" we find -
     "A two drawer chest was discovered in the early
1920's ornamented with an elaborately carved all-over
design on the front.  On the back of the lower drawer of
this chest is written in 17th Century handwriting -
     `Mary Allyn's Chistt Cutte and Joyned by Nich Dis-
browe.'  This is the earliest piece of American furni-
ture of proven origin."  Mary was the daughter of Col.
John Allyn, Secretary of the Colony (who later, as Gover-
nor tried to get out of paying the bill as we have seen
above).
     "In Mr. Lockwood's opinion, Disbrowe was no ordinary
carver and his designs are distinguished by undulating

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                    NICHOLAS DISBROW

bands of carved tulips flowing from stiles to rails with-
out breaking...Disbrowe's designs were carefully worked
out to fit the individual piece and no two pieces were
identical."
     When we come to Henry Disbrow shortly now, we shall
refer again to Nicholas, but before proceeding with our
family history, there are one or two things worth jotting
down, both as to the Disbrows and as to the political
events leading up to what follows.
     As the Colony of Connecticut grew through the years
covering the life of Nicholas, two factions developed a-
moung its worthy citizens; one centering around Hartford
which we might call the liberals, and one around New Ha-
ven which were definitely the conservatives - the demo-
crats and the theocrats, the ungodly and the Puritans.
The more liberal were irked by the strict blue laws of
the Puritans and preferred the laxer viewpoint of the
Dutch in New Amsterdam and the regions more under their
influence.  The Puritans of the Guilford and the New Ha-
group feared the back-sliding of those from Hartford.
     This conflict crystallized upon the uniting of all
Connecticut under one governor and the Royal Charter which
was granted by Charles II in 1682.  This charter defined
Connecticut as all that land stretching South from the
border of Massachusetts to the Sea, or to Latitude 41
North; and West from Narragansett Bay all the way to the
Southern Ocean (the Pacific), thus including all of Long
Island, all of New York State north of Manhattan, part
of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio and all the distant un-
known West north of 41ø.  Texas was but a fly-speck be-
side this - had there been a Texas at that time.  What is
today Westchester County as well as all of Long Island,
was then Fairfield County Connecticut so far as the Eng-
lish were concerned.  The Dutch, however, had other ideas

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                    NICHOLAS DISBROW

and claimed all this land clear to Narragansett Bay.
When the British took New Amsterdam in 1664, the local
confusion was dispelled somewhat, but there was argument
and actual fighting over these Connecticut claims which
involved all the other bordering states at one time or
another until the Revolution put an end to it.  Henry
Sterner refers to this in his letter of Dec. 19th, 1932.
     So, for years before the British occupation of New
Amsterdam and for long afterward, the district north and
east of Manhattan, particularly Long Island and the main-
land bordering the Sound, was filling with settlers from
Connecticut who were disgruntled with one group or the
other of the two factions.  One lot, under Robert Treat,
even migrated to the banks of the Passaic, founding Newark
and transplanting Puritanism to our own fair State for a
brief, a very brief, interval.  In 1672 Treat returned
home where he won laurels for himself in King Phillip's
War, and eventually became the Royal Governor.  He it is
who figures as the judge in the following bizarre inci-
dent.
     It seems there was a special court, presided over
by Robert Treat, Esq., which was held at Fairfield on
June 2nd, 1692, convened by order of the General Court
to try the "Witche Cases."
     At this trial it was testified that Mercy Disbrow,
wife of Thomas Disbrow of Fairfield County, had bewitched
animals and a child.  Witnesses told of optical illusions
- a pig that looked well on the table but could not be
eaten, an enchanted canoe that went upstream of itself,
high tide made low, etc., etc.  One said Mercy could not
read one word of a panel of the Bible in her hand although
she could read other books without difficulty.
     On September 14th 1692 a true bill was found against
Mercy Disbrow in these words -

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                    NICHOLAS DISBROW

     "Mary Disbrow is complained of and accused as guilty
of witchcraft, for that on the 29th of April, 1692 and in
the 4th Y're of their Majesties (William and Mary) Reign,
and at sundrie other times, she hath, by the instigation
and help of the devill in a preternatural way, afflicted
and done harme to the bodies and the estates of sundrie
of their Majesties subjects, or to some of them, contrary
to the Law of God, the peace of our souveraigne Lord and
Lady, King William and Queen Mary, their Crowne and Dig-
nity."
     On September 15th, 1692 test by water was made.  Two
witnesses testified that Mercy and another woman, Eliza-
beth Clawson, bound hand and foot were thrown into the
water and swam like corks.
     On October 8th the Jury was sent out a second time
and again found her guilty, seeing no reason to change
the verdict.  Thereupon Governor Treat sentenced her to
die on October 17th although Jos. Eliot and Timothy Wood-
bridge made a statement in which they say that to them
"the evidence stands on slender and uncertain grounds,
some of the statements and some of the witnesses being
quite untrustworthy.  From the easy deception of her
senses and the subtle devices of the Devill, do not
think one of the witnesses competent."  She must have re-
ceived a stay of execution for on May 12th, 1693 Samuel
Wills, Wm. Pitkin, and Nathan Stanley request a further
reprieve for Mercy Disbrow - say none of the evidence
against her amounts to much.
     There is no record the sentence was ever carried
out; on the contrary it would appear that she was still
alive in 1707, in which year she is mentioned as Thos.
Disbrow's widow when his will was probated.
     But to return to those, particularly in the Hart-
ford group, who became restless under the yoke of Puri-

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                    NICHOLAS DISBROW

tanism; among whom, unless the tribe has utterly changed,
we may safely number the Disbrows.  The more adventurous
of these malcontents very early started drifting westward
toward New Amsterdam.  A glance at the map shows how Long
Island Sound stretches like a broad, sheltered highway
for anyone who possessed even a small sloop (shallop they
called them then).  Gradually a string of new settlements
formed along both shores of the Sound - Fairfield, Nor-
walk, Bridgeport, Stamford and Greenwich on the mainland;
Hempstead and Oyster Bay on Long Island.
     Among these westward drifting settlers was a group
led by a Peter Disbrow who, after settling temporarily
at Greenwich, led a small party still further west and
settled on Manussing Island just off what was soon to be
the site of the village of Rye.  Just when he arrived on
the island we do not know but in 1659 we find him associ-
ated with his brother Henry operating a ferry between the
island and Oyster Bay.  And here, while it is Henry who
founded our Disbrow line, let us spare a word for this
Peter for he was an interesting lad.
     He was born in 1631 and died May 2nd, 1688 at Rye.
     "The successors of the Dutch West India Company in
1660 were Peter Disbrow, John Coe, and Thomas Studwell.
These were all residents of Greenwich at the time when
the first Indian treaty was signed.  Their leader was
Peter Disbrow, a young, intelligent, self-reliant young
man who seems to have enjoyed the thorough confidence of
his associates; his name invariably heads the lists of
the proprietors; and it is on all the treaties and declar-
ations."  On January 3rd, 1660 he made a treaty with the
Indians of Poningoe Neck for the purchase of that tract
of land described as follows -
     "Lyeing on the Maine between a certain place called
Rahonaness to the East and the Westchester Path to the

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                    NICHOLAS DISBROW
North and Southe to the Sea or Sound."  This includes the
lower part of the present town of Rye on the east side of
Blind Brook.  On June 20th of that same year they conclu-
ded another treaty which gave them Manussing Island.  With-
in the next two and a half years they had acquired title
to pieces of real estate that included, besides the area
now covered by the towns of Rye and Harrison, much of the
towns of North Castle and Bedford in New York, and Green-
wich in Connecticut.
     But now to return to our direct ancestor, Henry.

                        21

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