Monday, February 24, 2014

Two Bits about Woodbridge CT

It happens from time to time that while looking for something else I find interesting little bits about something entirely different, cleverly disguised in the tables of contents in the plain text format at Google Books as: THE TOWN OF woonnRmuE.  in: The History of New Haven County, Connecticut, Volume 2  edited by John L. Rockey, W. W. Preston, 1892 
"Though the Judges' cave on West Rock is just without the limits of the town, still there are several locations which have a historic interest as places to which the regicides fled, or where they secreted themselves, and were aided by the early settlers of Woodbridge. There are several places which bear names evidently derived from their having been the residence of the exiles, such as the “Lodge," the “Harbor," the “Spring," " Hatchet's Harbor," and others. Of these places the Lodge was probably the one most frequented by them. This was in the northwest part of the town. Reverend I. P. Warren, in his history of the three judges, thus speaks of it: “Here by the side of a ledge of rocks, some 20 feet high was built a cabin of stone, 9 by 10 feet in dimension and covered over by trunks and leaves of trees. From the top of the ledge is a fine view of the city and Long Island sound, with the intervening villages and scattered farms and dwellings. A little spring of clear water issues from the crevices of a rock a few rods distant." “This," says President Stiles, at one time president of Yale College, “ was undoubtedly their great and principal lodge." The “Harbor" was about three quarters of a mile above Halsted Bishop's, on the stream across which the New Haven Water Company have built their large dam. Another hiding place was with Mr. Richard Sperry, the ancestor of the Sperrys, once so numerous on the flat known as “Sperry's Farm." It is evident that to Woodbridge and its inhabitants, as much as to any other place or people, the regicides owed their escape from the emissaries of Charles the Second, who had come over from England to apprehend them..."
If someone's detective work led them to believe this was the "twenty feet high" "stone cabin" described above as The Lodge, I would seek a second opinion of a second detective:
"Stephen Peck Perkins learned the mason's trade and became a prominent contractor in the city. He was a skillful and thorough, workman. There was never a question but that work entrusted to him would be done well. He retired from business and built an elegant villa in his native town near the old homestead of his childhood..." 
The old Peck homestead of his childhood?
Note Peck Hill Road in the distance...

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