“One of these bureaus was later owned by his granddaughter, Matilda Rathbun, in Mossup Valley, and highly prized. The other came into possession of his grandson, Albert Tyler, near the Centreville, R. I., depot. These two bureaus were altered by Israel Lyon in 1833, while he carried on the carriage business in the basement of the house in Foster, where his brother, Hon. Sheldon P. Lyon, lived and died.
“An old-fashioned silver tankard, holding two quarts, with a cover like a Brittania teapot cover, was sold at the same time, and it was a well-known fact that Major Dorrance, when first born, was very small, and was put into that tankard, and the cover shut down, although he was a man afterwards six feet two inches in height. John Tyler always regretted not buying the tankard.”
The Dorrance mills remained in the Dorrance family down to 1808. During the next few years the mills changed hands several times. In 1813 they were sold to Peleg Place, whose daughters married Dorrances. Mr. Place occupied the mill property until 1824, the balance of the estate, or most of it, still remaining in the Dorrance family.
In 1824 Mr. Place sold the mills to Stephen Potter, who put up another building, introduced “water looms,” and made cotton cloth for several years.
George Dorrance and Phebe (Place) Dorrance left several sons. One of them was named Thomas G., and another Albert L. The latter became an influential farmer on the homestead inherited from his grandfather. He died, leaving a widow and two daughters.
The Dorrance name is still found in Rhode Island, and Dorrance street, a leading thoroughfare in Providence, helps perpetuate it. Bearers of the name, descendants of the immigrants, are likewise found, some of them in Providence. The old dam at Dorrance mills was long since demolished. The original dwellings have long been ruins, the great chimneys being the last to go, but the history and the memories of the Dorrance Purchase still form one of the charms of that section of the state.
AN EARLY IRISHMAN OF WATERBURY, CONN.
BY MARTIN SCULLY,[[13]] OF WATERBURY.
A good deal of research has been indulged in during the past ten or fifteen years, with a view to ascertaining for a certainty the name of the Irishman who first visited the territorial limits of Waterbury, Conn.
So far the question seems to be an open one, the preference having been ascribed to various persons by different writers. Half a dozen or more of the old Irish settlers of the town who came here over half a century ago and who have resided here continuously since, tell conflicting stories in relation to this subject, and as they were the only source from which much information on this matter could be obtained, the question has never been fully decided, each naming a different person as being the first to lead the way for his countrymen into this section of the state.