Ye Olde Town Pound

If you've been reading this blog for a while, you may remember when I learned about Sabbath Day Houses. This circular stone wall in Sterling also fits into the category of "crazy things you never knew Colonial New Englanders did, that actually seen rather ingenious upon reflection." This is, or was, a town pound.

Pounds were once a common feature of New England towns. Their purpose was containing stray livestock - cows, sheep, pigs, etc. - which had wandered from their owners' property. Rogue animals would be corralled into the pound and kept there, overseen by a Pound Keeper, until their owners came to retrieve them - for a fee. Yup, your goat could be impounded.

This is not the only remaining town pound in Connecticut, but it is the only one I've seen. The others I've heard of are in Hebron, Goshen, Eastford, and Lebanon, although Connecticut being what it is, I wouldn't be surprised if there were many more. There are also roads named Town Pound or Old Town Pound in Hampton, Hartland, and likely other towns. (The only other pound I've seen is in Glocester, Rhode Island. That pound is more of a triangular shape, and dates from 1749; the town claims it is "the oldest pound in America.") There are others in Rhode Island, as well as in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Maine, and Vermont.

If you know of another local town pound, please let me know in the comments. I might have to do a full Connecticut town pound round-up someday.

5 Connecticut Mill Towns Worth Visiting

FORMER WILLIMANTIC LINEN COMPANY/AMERICAN THREAD COMPANY BUILDING

Many small (and not so small) Connecticut towns once revolved around their mills. I'm referring not to the humble grist mills of the early English settlers, but to the stone and brick behemoths of the Industrial Revolution. Though the industries that brought them to life have mostly moved away now, these imposing buildings still dominate a landscape that ranges from urban to rural. They have been called Connecticut’s cathedrals.

There are many worthy mill towns to choose from, and it was difficult to pick just five. Rest assured that on any aimless drive through the Nutmeg State, especially its eastern half, you're very likely to encounter a mill building, whether crumbling or newly restored, standing beside the rushing river that once powered its machines. It's also probable that you'll see, whether you recognize them or not, the houses that were the bosses' stately mansions and the rows of cottages where workers lived. I picked these five towns because each has a distinct atmosphere and shows off its historic mills in a different way. And, they are all located close enough to one another that it would be easy to combine them into a self-guided, mill-themed tour, to be done in one jam-packed day or stretched out over a week.

Willimantic (The Museum)

Willimantic, which feels like a funky little college town, is probably best known for its frog bridge. As you cross it, you notice that the famous frogs are posed atop spools of thread - that's because this place, nicknamed Thread City, was once home to multiple cotton mills, including the American Thread Company, at one time the state's largest employer. The Windham Textile and History Museum - also called the Mill Museum - offers a glimpse into the world of a 19^th century mill village. Inside former American Thread Company buildings, original machinery and re-created living quarters recall the lives of mill managers as well as immigrant workers, who came here from all over Europe and beyond. Exhibits explore various aspects of the textile industry in Connecticut and America. While you're there, don't miss Windham Mills State Heritage Park.

Apart from its industrial history, there's usually something going on in Willimantic, from Victorian house tours to street festivals. And there's always something interesting to see. Add the Connecticut Eastern Railroad Museum to your itinerary, stroll down the colorful Main Street and stop at some stores and restaurants, or peruse willimanticdowntown.org for more ideas.

Putnam (The Trail)

Putnam is an old-fashioned small town that's increasingly becoming known as an antiques and arts destination with an ever-expanding list of new restaurants. It also has two lovely short walking trails, one focused on the mills that once harnessed the power of the Quinebaug River and the other dedicated to that river and its impressive falls. The River Mills Heritage Trail winds for just over a mile past six historic mill buildings, where workers transformed yarn into cotton cloth. Some of these buildings have been, or are being, restored and re-purposed. The River Trail, two miles long, provides a different vantage point for viewing the town, the Quinebaug, and the waterfalls. The two connecting trails are clearly marked, but this (PDF) map, also available at many downtown merchants, shows the details.

Downtown Putnam is small and very walkable, with plenty of free parking. You can't miss the large antiques stores that dominate the area, but there are some sweet smaller shops and art galleries here too. There's also the Bradley Playhouse, and a cute little farmers' market on Saturdays. Though it's still somewhat of a bare-bones site, discoverputnam.com will give you an idea of your options. And from Putnam, the relatively bustling center of Connecticut's Quiet Corner, it's just a short (and stunning) drive to the even quieter towns like Woodstock and Pomfret.

Plainfield (The Historic Districts)

Plainfield might sound agricultural and look unassuming, but this town once clanged with the sounds of heavy machinery from the mill villages that now anchor separate historic districts here. The Lawton Mills, Central Village, and Wauregan Historic Districts all preserve a slice of 19th and 20th century industrial life, complete with imposing mill buildings and their accompanying housing. In Lawton Mills, Railroad Avenue will take you to what feels like a town paused in time. In Central Village, the brick Plainfield Woolen Company Mill (listed separately on the National Register of Historic Places) stands proudly on Main Street. In Wauregan, further north, you'll find the old mill  by following Wauregan Road towards Chestnut Street.

These historic districts are not tourist attractions, but neighborhoods where regular people sill live and work. Although there are signs indicating their locations, you have to do some research on your own to know which streets to look for and which buildings to note. If you're into that kind of thing, the National Register of Historic Places registration and nomination forms for Lawton Mills, Central Village, and Wauregan will tell you everything you need to know. You won't regret taking the time; with a little imagination, Plainfield - the most off-the-beaten-path of the five towns listed here - might provide the best idea of what it was truly like when New England buzzed with looms and spindles.

Coventry (The Ruins)

Coventry, better known as the birthplace of Nathan Hale and host of Connecticut’s largest farmers’ market, has preserved what remains of its old mills in a unique and understated fashion. Find Mill Brook Park and the Mill Brook Park Trail, located right behind Main Street. Here, a little trail (if it can even be called that) meanders through peaceful woods and wetlands. Markers inform visitors about the eerie ruins of the former shoddy mill and the stone arches that were once part of a center of industry along the brook. The site of the dam, along with a few remaining buildings and brick chimneys, might help you imagine the shoddy mill, silk mills, and many other mills and factories that were once here. Or, you might find it almost impossible to picture this spot as anything but rural and serene.

While in Coventry, you can tour the Nathan Hale Homestead and experience the Coventry Farmers' Market, or follow a historic walking tour. Browse the antique stores on Main Street, or stop at the Visitors' Center at 1195 Main Street for more ideas.

Manchester (The Restoration)

Some of Connecticut’s old mills (including a few in Manchester) are gloriously dilapidated. (The old American Writing Paper Company building is one.) But many others have been preserved for their historic value and/or converted to condos, offices, or modern factories. Perhaps the best place to see both types of preservation is in Manchester. This town, home of the nation’s oldest woolen mill (they made the wool for the suit George Washington wore to his inauguration) has transformed vast complexes that once produced silk and paper into rental apartments and historic sites. The Manchester Historical Society has information about the Cheney Brothers National Historic Landmark District, in which you can find the Cheney Brothers silk mill buildings, now apartments with names like Lofts at the Mills, Ribbon Mill Apartments, Clocktower Mill Apartments, Velvet Mill, and Dye House. The district also encompasses several Cheney family mansions and hundreds of houses, plus facilities like schools and churches, that were constructed for use by the employees of the Cheney mills and their families. The Historical Society conducts walking tours, or you can explore the 175 acre district on your own. A few minutes away, the Hilliard Mills complex (that's the manufacturer of President Washington's suit) now houses businesses, and the old Adams Mill is home to a restaurant and banquet hall. To get a different sort of look at Manchester's mills (including the one in my American Writing Paper Company link), some are visible from the hiking trails along the Hockanum River.

Manchester - sometimes called Silk City - has a nice main street for wandering. The Manchester Historical Society lists other local museums and places of interest. And don't leave without going to the amazing Wickham Park (yes, I once wrote a blog post about Wickham Park. It's mostly pictures.) 


If you've read this far and still want more historic mill villages to visit in eastern Connecticut, check out Stafford Springs (in the town of Stafford), North Grosvenordale (in Thompson), Rockville (in Vernon), and Taftvile (in Norwich.)

And if you have your own favorite, please leave it in the comments!

Eastford | Nathaniel Lyon

Civil War monuments are common in Connecticut. Often they are simple obelisks on town greens or lone soldiers standing on pedestals. Sometimes they are grand, like the Soldiers' and Sailors' Memorial Arch in Hartford. But for true Civil War sites, you have to go further south.

Or so you'd think. In fact, there are places in Connecticut that connect more directly to events of the Civil War. One such site is the empty and eerie John Brown Birthplace in Torrington.

Another is this rough-hewn chimney in Eastford, which is all that remains of the birthplace of General Nathaniel Lyon, the first Union general to die in the Civil War. Lyon was born in Ashford in 1818 (the chimney is now in the town of Eastford, which broke off from Ashford in 1847) and killed in the Battle of Wilson's Creek in Missouri in 1861.

Lyon was, to put it mildly, an unusual and complicated guy.* He is not, perhaps, the very model of the ideal Union general Connecticut would choose to claim as its own. Born into a family populated with military heroes and notorious nonconformists, he had a (literally) violent temper and frequently questionable judgement. Many of his military actions were (again, to put it mildly) controversial, and he was quick to express his sometimes uninformed opinions. Yet, he was a vehement opponent of slavery. He consumed large quantities of candy and was known for eating mustard "slather[ed] ... on thick slices of bread, even in the midst of battle."** He died while leading a counter-charge at 9:30 in the morning (having already been wounded in the leg and head and having one horse shot from underneath him) from a bullet to the heart. He once told an aide who apologized for finding him a sleeping place on uncomfortable stony ground, "I'm quite alright. Back in Connecticut, where I come from, I was born and bred among rocks."

The fireplace and chimney (notice the small square oven in the side) stands at the center of a grassy circle, ringed by a dirt road, near ancient-looking stone walls and dark woods. On the map, this is called Nathaniel Lyon Memorial State Park. It is a small part of the Natchaug State Forest, which spreads across parts of Eastford, Chaplin, Hampton, and beyond.

Nearby, on General Lyon Road, there is a small cemetery. Here, in his family's plot, Nathaniel Lyon is buried. There is a marble monument to him, marked with the names of battles he fought in and topped with a dove. Somehow, it seems not as fitting a remembrance as the imposing chimney that has survived for centuries and looks as if it will stand through many more.

*For a biography, try Damned Yankee: The Life of General Nathaniel Lyon, by Christopher Phillips.

**OK, this comes from Wikipedia, so who knows if it's true. But I hope so much that it's true.

A Connecticut Road Trip | Route 169

ROAD SIGNS, ROUTE 169

If you, like me, occasionally open the Twitter app and scroll a bit before becoming despondent at the state of the world and quickly opening Instagram to stare at photos of kittens instead, you may have become dimly aware of a recent WalletHub article titled 2015's Best and Worst States for Summer Road Trips.

The piece, which enjoyed a flurry of  re-tweets and was cited in a bunch of local news reports, ranks US states from 1 to 50 for their supposed road-trip-ability. It is hilarious, as you might expect from travel advice dispensed by a personal finance writer. But the part that particularly amused me was the (entirely expected and entirely inaccurate) assertion that of all the 50 states, Connecticut is the worst for exploring by car.

To refute that silly claim (not that it needs to be refuted), I thought I'd write a little post about one of my favorite Connecticut drives, Route 169. This National Scenic Byway is only 32 miles long, but it winds through some of the prettiest of the state's countryside - an area the Federal Highway Administration calls "one of the last unspoiled areas in the northeastern United States."

As you travel from Lisbon to Woodstock, you will see: centuries-old stone walls crossing green fields that rise and dip like waves; Colonial-era houses and red barns; time-worn headstones in historic cemeteries; horses grazing behind wooden fences; agricultural fairgrounds; antique stores filled with tempting odds and ends; farms and farm stands offering fresh eggs, honey, vegetables, fruit, flowers, and maple syrup; small towns barely changed from when they were settled in the 17th century, except for the addition of cute coffee shops and highly acclaimed restaurants; local museums, historical societies, and carefully preserved buildings; and, of course, that two-lane road, stretching out ahead of you like an invitation.

You can see much more than that, of course; it only depends on how much time you have. Plus, there's no rule that says you have to stay on 169. Turn off on any of the other numbered routes you encounter, and you'll find even more sights to make you LOL at the idea that anyone thinks Connecticut is not road-trip worthy.

AMERICANA, ROUTE 169

SCRANTON'S SHOPS, WOODSTOCK

TYPICAL QUIET CORNER VIEW, POMFRET

CEMETERY, LISBON

ROAD SIGN, CANTERBURY

SILO, POMFRET

OLD GAS STATION, BROOKLYN

LAPSLEY ORCHARDS, POMFRET

ANTIQUE STORE, BROOKLYN

ROADSIDE FLOWERS, POMFRET

COW, WOODSTOCK (THERE ARE REAL COWS TO BE SEEN TOO)

GRANGE HALL, WOODSTOCK

ROAD SIGN, WOODSTOCK

OLD POST OFFICE, WOODSTOCK

If you want more about Route 169, here are some additional resources:

A map of the route from byways.org.

A partial list of attractions from Mystic Country.

An itinerary (fall foliage themed) from ctvisit.com. 

A recommendation from Yankee Magazine.

Some history from kurumi.com. 

And here are some earlier Size of Connecticut posts about just a fraction of what you can see and do along the way:

Historic Synagogue, Lisbon.

Prudence Crandall Museum, Canterbury.

Town Center, Brooklyn.

Putnam Elms and Old Trinity Church, Brooklyn.

Pomfret Station, Pomfret.

Abington Social Library, Pomfret.

Three historic libraries, Woodstock.

Roseland Cottage, Woodstock.

Mrs. Bridge's Pantry, Woodstock.

One-room schoolhouse, Woodstock.

Woodstock Fair, Woodstock.

If you want to add something else on to a drive on Route 169, consider these two former mill towns: Norwich, at the southern end, has museums, parks, and an eclectic city feel, and Putnam, at the northern end, has shopping, dining, and a classic small-town atmosphere.

Putnam Elms & Old Trinity Church

On Church Street in Brooklyn, you will find Old Trinity Church.

In the cemetery behind the building, old graves stand in rows and even older trees grow wherever they like.

Old Trinity Church was built by Godfrey Malbone, Jr., son of Rhode Island Anglican and merchant/slave trader Godfrey Malbone, Sr., whose Newport house has its own Wikipedia entry complete with a funny anecdote about dining with George Washington. The elder Malbone left his 3,240 acres in Brooklyn, which was then still part of Pomfret, to his two sons.

Godfrey Malbone Sr. is buried under his church pew in Newport. Godfrey Malbone Jr. was perhaps less intense about religion; he constructed Old Trinity Church in 1771 primarily to avoid paying his share of taxes to fund a new Congregational church in Brooklyn. Under the laws of the time, if he could build an Anglican church before the Congregationalist meetinghouse was completed, Malbone's money could go towards his own church instead.

Confused? Me too.

The headstones in the cemetery read like an encyclopedia of Connecticut places and names. Many of the names are tied to Brooklyn and to Church Street, like Malbone, unsurprisingly, and Putnam.  (I'll get to the Putnams in a minute.)

Some say Old Trinity Church is haunted by apparitions and writings scrawled in blood.

Perhaps not, but the area is rural-quiet, the churchyard gate is cobwebbed and rusted, and tiny bright green caterpillars dangle impertinently from the leaves, as if no one has ever disturbed them.

This was once Connecticut's second largest slave plantation.

It was Godfrey Malbone, Jr. who, in 1791, sold some land and a house down the road from the church to Daniel Putnam, son of General Israel Putnam. That house became the estate known as Putnam Elms.

Set back from the street and up a gentle slope, the house manages to be magazine-perfect while also looking like many houses of different styles chopped up and nailed together.

Which it is. The structure expanded as the family grew. Daniel Putnam and his wife Catharine had eight children in the house; later a son-in-law and his family, then that son-in-law's son and his family, moved in, and new sections were built as time went on.

The Putnams and Malbones could have been the Brooklyn version of the Hatfields and McCoys. Israel Putnam had supported the tax that spurred Godfrey Malbone, Jr. into building his church, not to mention that Putnam was a Revolutionary War hero and Malbone a Loyalist. But the families intermarried and lived together and alongside each other, entirely peacefully it seems.

Putnam Elms was owned - and almost continually lived in - by family members until 1938. Since then it has been maintained by the nonprofit Colonel Daniel Putnam Association.

It is open to the public on certain days, for tours and events.

But if you prefer solitude and quiet, then go when it's closed. Wander the grounds like a time-traveling trespasser, and learn the place's history from the stone walls and trees.

Main Street, Willimantic

Willimantic has always tried to evade easy categorization.

Born as a small village on the Willimantic River in the early 19th century, it became a borough of Windham in 1833, then a city in 1893. In 1983 the city consolidated with the town of Windham, and Willimantic became a village - or one of four sections of the town - once again.

Downtown Willimantic feels like your typical well-worn college town, except where it doesn't.

Some parts of it are classic New England.

Some parts are reminiscent of Connecticut's other small, scrappy cities: New London, Norwich, and the like, with their mural walls and vibrant little centers that fade out into sleepy industrial areas and suburban-looking streets. (Willimantic's nickname, Thread City, also seems to recognize how city-like the place remains.)

Thread City's history is as Connecticut as it gets: prosperity, carried in on the waterfalls that powered the mills, then decline, as America's need for thread could be satisfied more cheaply elsewhere.


The void left by the mills is being filled in a typically Connecticut way too.

Now instead of spools of thread, Willimantic turns out art, culture, and history, and stands as a sort of quirky palimpsest that lures visitors across its bridges and around its corners where unpredictable oddities seem to hide.

And then, of course, there are the frogs.

Cottage Living

In 1846, Henry and Lucy Bowen added a dash of Loud to the Quiet Corner when they built their summer house, a bright pink Gothic Revival "cottage" across from the green in Woodstock. Henry, a successful New York-based businessman, had grown up in this sedate and rural Connecticut town.

The northeastern part of the state was more connected to the world back then, with trains running up and down frequently from New York and Boston. The Bowens were connected too; four United States presidents (Grant, Harrison, Hayes, and McKinley) were just a few of the politicians, dignitaries, and literary stars to visit the house.

The interior of Roseland Cottage is as ostentatious as you might predict from the outside. The wall coverings alone make you wonder why we think of the Victorians as straight-laced, conservative people, and that's before you get to the indoor bowling alley - which just happens to be the oldest surviving one in America. Though the thought of a leisurely outdoor stroll is not as appealing with the last of the spring snow lurking on the grounds, the boxwood parterre gardens are one of the cottage's most loved features.

Roseland looks gigantic when you first encounter it, but it begins to seem quite dinky when you realize that the Bowens had ten children. (Imagine putting all of them, plus luggage for a summer away, on that train.) Lucy died of complications from childbirth in 1863, and the couple's youngest son died not long after. Henry married Ellen Holt (who came from Pomfret) two years later and they had another child. Eventually there were seventeen grandchildren, and the family continued to expand Roseland Cottage and purchase additional property nearby so they could spend summers together.

Historic New England, which purchased Roseland Cottage from the family in 1970, offers tours of the property. Special events are held here, like concerts and tea parties and the Roseland Cottage Fine Arts and Crafts Festival, though they will probably never surpass Henry Bowen's Fourth of July celebrations, which got so massive that he had to buy a 60-acre plot of land to host them. (This is now Roseland Park, maintained by the Town of Woodstock.) 

If you don't have time for a tour or a garden party, just drive up Route 169 and admire the building sometimes called "the Pink House." You can't miss it.

Shhhh...

I lived in Putnam for a year, so I tend to think I know the Quiet Corner fairly well.

But again and again, I'm proven wrong.

On a recent drive through Woodstock, I found three historic libraries - and three whole sections of town - that had entirely eluded me before that crisp fall day.

The North Woodstock Library building was originally a schoolhouse.

The May Memorial Library in East Woodstock is across the street from the East Woodstock Common, a miniature town green with a gazebo. It's also just around the corner from this adorable post office.

The West Woodstock Library is connected to the restored 1820 John F. Williams Law Office.

The Library was founded in 1806, and the Law Office housed its collection in the 1930s and 1940s.

There's more about Woodstock's libraries here.

And, I finally created a "Libraries" tag, so every post I've written about a Connecticut library can be found here.

Go West

Don't worry, this is not another post about fall in New England. I'm simply using this classic Colonial, complete with pumpkins, American flag, and changing leaves, as an introduction to one of the stranger moments in Connecticut history.

The 18th Century can seem like a simple time, an era of symmetrical windows and Redcoats in a row. But that image leaves out the Pennamites and the Iroquois. It forgets King Charles II's abysmal grasp of geography. And it can't explain how a slice of northeastern Pennsylvania briefly became part of Litchfield County.

This house, located in Windham and built some time around 1705-1715, belonged to Eliphalet Dyer. Dyer was a lawyer, a Yale graduate, a Connecticut judge and legislator, a militia officer in the French and Indian War, and a delegate to the Continental Congress. But as far as this post is concerned, those parts of his resume doesn't matter. What's relevant here is that Dyer was a founder of the Susquehanna Company.

The Susquehanna Company was a group of Connecticut men who banded together in 1753 to settle and develop Pennsylvania's Wyoming Valley. The land, they believed, was pretty much theirs already; it had been granted to the Connecticut Colony in the Charter of 1662, which essentially defined Connecticut's shape as what you would get if you took a map of today's Nutmeg State and extended its northern and southern borders westward to the Pacific Ocean. But there was a problem. The cartographically challenged King Charles had also granted that piece of Pennsylvania to William Penn in 1681. And of course, as always, there were various Indian tribes living there already; in the late 1700s, the most powerful of these were the nations that comprised the Iroquois confederacy.

The Connecticutians' plan was to split the Valley into five townships, with each township providing land for 40 settlers and their families. (Digression: If each settler had a wife and 2.5 children, that would be 180 people living in a town roughly the size of New London. If each couple had five children, that would provide each township with 280 residents. If a "family" included a couple, their five children, both sets of their parents, and a spinster aunt with a cat, their town welcome sign would read Pop: 480. Not counting cats. In any case, these people were not big on population density, which is why they wanted to get out of Connecticut in the first place: too many people, not enough farmland.)

The initial Yankee foray into northeastern Pennsylvania began in 1762. There were conflicts from the start, and one particularly violent clash sent them back to Connecticut for several years. But when they returned in greater numbers in 1769, and built the townships of Pittston, Plymouth, Wilkes-Barre, Nanticoke (later Hanover) and Forty Fort (later Kingston) the first Yankee-Pennamite War - or Pennamite-Yankee War, if you prefer - was on. (Pennamite was the name given to Pennsylvanian settlers who, like the Connecticut settlers, believed that their royal charter and their purchase of land in the wild Wyoming Valley from Iroquois representatives gave them the right to settle there.)

Connecticut won this first round, and it was during the ensuing period that their bit of Pennsylvania frontier actually became a Litchfield County town. It was called Westmoreland, and it sent representatives to the Connecticut legislature. It soon morphed into a separate Connecticut county, also called Westmoreland.

While all this was happening, a little tiff called the Revolutionary War was breaking out. So before the Second Yankee-Pennamite War could happen, the Yankees and Pennamites had to team up and fight the British! Actually that's not really what happened. This gets complicated, but the short version is that the enemy of one's enemy is often one's friend, so in 1778 the Connecticut settlers, defended by a few Yankee officers on leave from their positions in the American army, were attacked by Tory troops, their Indian allies, and a few Pennamites.

This was the Battle of Wyoming, in which the outnumbered Yankees were outsmarted and defeated by the Loyalist-led troops in a half-hour of combat that was eclipsed in popular memory by the massacre and flight that followed. (If that sounds vaguely similar to the Battle of Groton Heights, it is - the Loyalists were even led by a man from southeastern Connecticut.) The battle was romanticized in the poem Gertrude of Wyoming, which places flamingos in the Pennsylvania skies and may have inspired the naming of a certain western state. Today, there is a granite monument at the gravesite of the massacre's victims in Wyoming, PA. (This is about three hours and twenty minutes from Hartford, if anyone else was wondering.)

To make a long and tragic story short, once the Revolution was over the Yankees and Pennamites picked up where they had left off. Since their disputed land was now part of the United States of America, it was up to Congress to sort them out. In 1784 it was decided that the Wyoming Valley would be part of Pennsylvania, but there were still questions about the ownership of the homes and farmland there. Pennsylvania's government ordered the Connecticutians to give up their claims and get out, sending rangers to forcibly remove them. Second Yankee-Pennamite War, anyone?

Obviously, Connecticut and Pennsylvania are not still fighting today, so something must have eventually happened to stop this. In 1786, a compromise was made that let the Yankees keep their Wyoming Valley land and become citizens of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania. Connecticut finally gave up all claims to land in the region in 1799.

Eliphalet Dyer, I should note, was not actually among the Wyoming Valley settlers. He had helped to initiate and promote the Susquehanna Company's venture, even traveling to England at one point to attempt to secure British support. But when not traveling in service to his state or country, he chose to live in Windham, because Connecticut is better. Just kidding, Pennsylvania, just kidding...

Delaware, Nanticok