Lines family in Woodbridge

Lines Road in Woodbridge where it intersects with Pease Road, was the location of ‘Stillwood’ — the home of John Marshall Lines — a grand old house built on land handed down over generations from one of the original European settlers in this remote area of the New Haven Colony.

John Marshall Line’s 5th great-grandfather Ralph Lines was one of the first settlers of the land now known as Woodbridge, arriving in the early 1660s with his wife Alice. According to page 181 of The Descendants of Thomas Dickerman:

"[Yale] President Stiles says that Stephen Goodyear, "a rich settler bought of the town [of New Haven] a tract of a thousand or twelve hundred acres of land in the fertile valley to the westward of West Rock and planted on it his farmer Richard Sperry, which farm Richard Sperry afterwards became possessed of, and it was known as Sperry's Farm. On this tract Mr. Goodyear built Sperry a house ; and in the woods about a mile south-west stood the house of Ralph Lines. These were the only two houses in 1661 between West Rock and Hudson River, except a few at Derby. All was an immense wilderness."

The children of Ralph and Alice included:

1. Samuel Lines, born 1649, married Mary Thompson (daughter of John Thompson and Ellen Harrison)
2. Ralph Lines, Jr, born 1652, married Abiah Bassett (daughter of William Bassett and Hannah Dickerman) — this is John Marshall Line’s branch of the family
3. Joseph Lines, born 1657, married Abigail Johnson (daughter of William ‘Wingle’ Johnson and Sarah Hall)
4. Hannah Lines, married John Merriman (son of Nathaniel Merriman and Abigail Olney)
5. Benjamin Lines, born 1659, married Anna Wilmot (daughter of William Wilmot and Sarah Thomas)