Benjamin Hawley, son of Samuel, Sen, was born in 1695, according to his grave-stone, and died May 8, 1767, in his 73d year, according to the same authority. He married, in 1724, Mary, daughter of Capt Joseph and Mary (Curtis) Nichols. This Mary (Curtis) Nichols, as widow of Capt Joseph, married Henry Hawley, Sen (5070), but she was buried with her first husband in Unity burying-ground in Trumbull, CT.
Soon after they were married, Benjamin Hawley
and his wife started on a journey into the wilderness, on horseback, he in the saddle and she on a pillion behind him. Near the close of the day the wife insisted that they must be at the end of the land, and that she would go no further, and there they ended the day’s journey. Hence the place where they located was called “Land’s End,” and this name continued about one hundred years; then when the railroad was built the place was named Hawleyville, for Benjamin’s descendants still lived there; and the school district is still called Land’s End district, in Newtown, CT. The locality was about twenty-five miles frrom where Benjamin and his wife started on their journey, and over thirty from Stratford.
In 1708, Samuel Hawley, his brother John and thirty-four others became the patentees of the township of Newtown, CT, and settlers first located there in 1713, and only a few were actual settlers when Benjamin Hawley and his wife went a day’s journey to locate in that township, a considerable of the land was still owned by his father Samuel Hawley, and as it proved they did go almost to the western extremity of the township, or the “end of the land.” The descendants of Benjamin Hawley still reside in that place, and that Branch of the family have scattered less than any other Branch of the first Joseph Hawley’s descendants, except those of Ebenezer of Simsbury and Jehiel of Durham, of whom but little is known.
The Hawley Record, compiled and published by Elias Sill Hawley, 1890
Genealogical Note #25, page 456
