I was working on an article about Haydenville, which was a small milling settlement two miles south of the village. The area is marked by the intersection of Route 38, South Street, and Hayden Road. Anyhow, it would be impossible to write an article about Haydenville without investigating the Hayden family for which it was named. Fortunately there is a Hayden family genealogy titled “Records of the Connecticut line of the Hayden family, 1888” available on Google Books that takes the family way back from 1888. Very nice. So all we have to do is fill in some gaps working forward.

Of course, the purpose of this PBFT project is to make connections, so where was the link between the Hayden’s and the Port Byron / Mentz community? Well I see that Martin Hayden married Clarissa Wethey, and that Hester Hayden married Jehial Weston. Both the Wethey and Weston names go way back, so let’s find the links.

Martin Hayden was the oldest child of William Hayden and Julia Botsford. Interestingly, William was the son of Aaron Hayden and Sarah Rice, and I had written an article back in 2009 that mentioned how the Rice family had the first mill at Haydenville. When Hayden first moved to what would become Haydenville, he operated a pail factory. This was the business that Brigham Young worked at before moving to the village. After the pail factory burned, Hayden bought out Rice’s woolen mill and expanded it. The business was in operation up to 1890. Martin married Clarissa Wethey in 1843, and as we have the Wethey family in the PBFT, this allowed me to spend a happy evening adding the Hayden family.

Martin’s sister Hester married Jehial Weston. At first I thought this would take me to the telephone company Weston’s, but this branch of the Weston tree were farmers in Montezuma. Many are buried in the Mentz Church Cemetery. But if we jump back a generation to find Jehial’s parents, we find Nathan Weston and Chloe Dart, and among their many children was Wallace Weston, who was the father of Charles W Weston, the telephone company guy. His son C. Theodore ran the company for many years.