Frank Farnsworth Starr, Various Ancestral Lines of James Goodwin and Lucy (Morgan) Goodwin of Hartford, Connecticut (1915), vol. 2

A compiled genealogy that transcribes the records it cites: the Connecticut colony records, Stratford land records and Fairfield probate. Read in the archive.org full text for research/mcmillan/Fairchild_Raymond_Woodworth.md (October 2026).

Moses Wheeler of Stratford. First found in a New Haven tax list “supposedly of the year 1643,” with £50 estate and two “Persons numbered.” On 18 May 1648 the General Court recorded: “The motion made by Mr. Ludlowe, concerneing Moses Wheeler for the keepeing the Ferry att Stratford, is referred to such as shall keepe the next Courte att Fayerfield” (Col. Rec. Conn. 1:163). On 12 Apr 1659 “Moses Wheeler, Ferryman” bought of the Indians a tract at Pagassett (Derby) for “five pownd and one Girdell.” The town’s lease of 18 Nov 1670 (Stratford Land Records I, new p. 453) to “Moses Wheeler, ‘Ship Carpenter’” of “ye ferry over ye River called pag[as]sett River commonly called Strattford ferry,” for twenty-one years at six pence a year: he was “to Carry and fetch ouer all passongers, horses, cattell and things passable there: and to keep in repayr two Boats ye one to be called ye house boat, ye other to be called ye sciffe,” for no more than “two pence p passonage, and four pence a horse or beast: allways (provided) all inhabitants of strattford … shall and May be ferryed … one half penny p person, and two pence p horse or beast,” and no “Cannoo or boat” was to carry passengers to hinder the ferry. His letter of Dec 1673 to his “Loveing Neighbors of Strattford,” over the land above Pagasett: “I doe hereby disire you yt you medle not wth my land.” He gave his son Moses a house and land “Out of tender loue and affection” (26 Nov 1674), the Indian purchase to his sons Samuel and Moses and son-in-law Joseph Walker (22 Apr 1686), and on 6 Jan 1690 assigned the ferry lease to his son Samuel.

His will, 19 Feb 1689/90 (Fairfield Probate Records 1689-1701, p. 170), “being Aged and weake of body but in my Right understanding”: the house, lot and stock to his son Samuel, “to strengthen him to maintain my wife and my selfe comfortably during life”; “I give to my Daughter Miriam To pewter dishes”; “I give to my son Moses his wife, the great pewter platter”; “I give to my daughter Mary a brasse kettle holding ten or twelve Galons more or lesse. The abridgment of the martyr booke, and Mr Brookes his devices of sathan”; “to Elizabeth ye wife of my son Saml the great Kettle”; “to Mr Israell Chauncy Twenty shill. In silver.” Overseers Mr. Joseph Hawly and Mr. Israel Chauncy. Inventory 1 Mar 1697/8: 128 acres at White Hills and ten sheep. His gravestone, pictured in Orcutt’s History of Stratford (p. 236), “gives the date of his death as January 15, 1698, at the advanced age of one hundred years.” In January 1712/13 the estate was still unsettled, “and Nathan Wheeler and Samuel Fairchild were appointed administrators”; at the distribution of 14 Apr 1719 single shares went “To Moses Wheeler, to Mistress Mary (Yeal?), to heirs of Mistress Elizabeth Walker deceased, and to the heirs of Miriam Groome deceased.” Of his wife: Orcutt “states that his wife’s name was Miriam and that she was a sister of Joseph Hawley … This may be correct, but the compiler of this article has thus far failed to find any evidence on the subject.”

Children (from the Stratford land records): Elizabeth 6 Aug 1642 (m. Samuel Blakeman, then Jacob Walker); Miriam 28 Mar 1647 (m. James Blakeman, then Edward Groome); Samuel 28 Apr 1649; Moses 5 July 1651; “Mary Sept. 13, 1655; mar. 1, ___ Fairchild. 2, Dec. 5, 1705, Benjamin Beach of Stratford, Conn. 3, Yeal (?)”; Joanna 5 Mar 1658/9.