HISTORY OF ORANGE
the ground now covered by the front of the present Town Hall, which was built in the winter and spring of 1879. The old Academy building was sold to Leverett B. Treat, who moved it down back of the house now owned by Elbert Scobie, where it was later destroyed by fire. John Bryan and his son, Richard, owned the property adjoining the southern end of the Green. On the east side of the Green, John Bryan kept a small store. However, in 1838, Richard Bryan lost this property through bankruptcy, and it was sold at auction to Samuel Johnson. In 1841, Mr. Johnson sold the property to the North Milford Ecclesiastical Society, on which land the parsonage was built.
The Orange Church parsonage was bought under a cooperative plan. The property might be sold and the proceeds used for the support of the gospel; but if the property was used for any other purpose, it should revert to the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.
Samuel Treat owned much of the land on the hilltop north of the Green, where the church now stands, but he lived in what was in later years called Platt Valley, south of the house of the late Wellington M. Andrew. Calvin, son of Samuel Treat, settled in Ohio. It is related that twice he walked back and forth from Ohio, with an axe on his shoulder. On his first arrival there, he obtained a lively pair of oxen, hired a strong Negro, and together they smashed down the groves of black walnut they found there, and hauled the wood and timbers into heaps, for burning. This was to prepare the ground for wheat, which Mr. Treat made his chief crop for many years.
After the present church was built in Orange, the old meeting house was sold to Rev. Erastus Scranton for $101, and he had it moved across the street from its original location, to a place between the present Town Hall and the home of Benjamin T. Clark, and converted it into a dwelling. It was later destroyed by fire.
In 1851, Benjamin T. Clark sold a small strip of land, just west of the church, to nine persons, with the under-
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