A salty acre…a first book…and a 50th anniversary

The many connections between the Mathers and the Weeds

The Mather Cemetery is full of Weeds.  There are nineteen gravestones with the surname Weed.  But beyond the Cemetery, the lives of the Mathers and the Weeds often intersected.

A deed in the Homestead archives tells us that in 1802, Deacon Joseph Mather sold an acre of salt meadow to John Weed Jr. (1766-1832) for the sum of twenty pounds New York money.

On September 2, 1787, John’s cousin, Nathan Weed Jr. (1760-1819) wed Mary Scofield in a ceremony performed by Rev. Moses Mather.  In 1813, Nathan underwrote the publication of Moses Mather’s A Systematic View of Divinity, now considered the first book published in Stamford Connecticut.  (See the blog: A rare book and the legacy of Moses Mather)                          

The progenitor of the Weeds in America was Jonas Weed who emigrated in 1630 and came to Stamford in 1642.  John and Nathan were grandsons of Captain Nathaniel Weed (1695-1750).

Of note, in 1824 Deacon Joseph Mather’s granddaughter, Esther Richards, married an Ebenezer Weed.   Ebenezer’s parents, James and Lydia Slason, were married in 1787 by Rev. Moses Mather.  Interestingly, neither Esther or Ebenezer is buried in the Mather Cemetery but rather in the Andreas-Hoyt graveyard on Middlesex Road.

In 1880, Nathan Weed Jr.’s son, Joseph Weed, published a slim volume honoring

his father, “Recollections of A Good Man, Nathan Weed. Of Stamford Connecticut.”

He writes, “Being a warm personal friend and great admirer of his pastor, Rev. Moses Mather, D. D., in 1813, long after the death of the good Doctor, he (Nathan Weed) published, mainly at his own expense, a religious work written by his loved pastor and friend, entitled, A View of Divinity, which he greatly admired, and believed calculated to do good…”

In the archives we have an invitation to a 50^th Wedding Anniversary celebration for that same Joseph Weed and his wife Jane Tweedy.   The invitation was sent to Stephen’s father, Joseph Wakeman Mather, who like Joseph Weed, lived in San Francisco in 1885.  Did Stephen’s father attend?  We do not know, but we do know that from the beginning of the nineteenth century to its end, these two Connecticut families were connected by land, by marriage, and by faith.