Abraham Andruss Sr.
Abraham Andruss was a son of Thomas Andrews, who moved from Hartford to Bankside in Fairfield, Connecticut. Thomas had four sons, John, Abraham, Jeremiah and Thomas, and six daughters, and his will was dated 1662. One of those daughters, Rebecca, married Samuel Benedict of Norwalk in 1678 and went with him to the founding of Danbury. Henry Bronson, the historian of Waterbury, notes that "the name is usually spelled Andrews, though rarely or never on our record." The town clerks wrote Andruss.
In 1674 thirty men signed articles to plant a new town at Mattatuck, on the Naugatuck River. It became Waterbury. Abraham Andruss was one of the thirty. He held an 80 pound propriety, the share in the town's land by which each settler's later divisions were measured, and he was among the earliest to settle there. His name is on all the lists of the early divisions of fence. In 1680 he was granted land on condition that he build "a hous or set up a tan yard," so he was probably a tanner.
By 1672 he had married Rebecca, said by Bronson to be a daughter of John Carrington, another original proprietor. Their first child was born on 16 December 1672. Seven more followed: Mary in 1674/5, Hannah in 1678, Abraham in 1680, Sarah on 16 March 1683/4, Rachel in 1686, John in 1688 and Thomas in 1694.
He and Timothy Stanley were the first townsmen, or selectmen, of Waterbury, spoken of as holding the office in 1681. He held it again in 1690, 1692, 1706, 1707, 1711 and 1716. He was town surveyor in 1700 and afterwards. In May 1712 he sat as the town's deputy to the General Court.
In old age he handed everything to his youngest son. On 4 January 1717/18 he gave Thomas his team, his tools and all his Waterbury land, half at once and half at his death, in return for Thomas's keeping him and his wife for the rest of their lives. In 1729, when the new meeting house was seated, "Goodman Andruss and his wife" were placed in the seat next the pulpit, on the west side, opposite the minister, "this high position being due to their age and worth." He died soon after, before the December of that year. He was the last of the original thirty subscribers who had settled in Waterbury to die. His inventory was taken in December 1731 and came to 36 pounds 15 shillings. His land was already Thomas's.
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Cite: Heirology, "Abraham Andruss Sr. (d. 1729)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/abraham-andruss-sr-1729-7e3807.