Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Links, Mostly

    Some interesting links -some photos, some videos. From someone I've just recently become acquainted with at "Ever Widening Circle," to someone I've known from high school days with some total strangers as well (unless the Tom McLaughlin photos I've come by are from the guy who played Billy Jack whom I know from watching his movies).
   Coni (Allen) Dubois is a descendant of people who lived at the Barkhamsted Lighthouse Settlement pictured below and has been researching her Native American heritage for 20 years...
Her main site is http://conidubois.wordpress.com/ with links to her YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/Conidubois/videos

"Sachem’s Grave" is quite interesting, a stone pile with a significant quartz stone included in it:
Another is of a stone mortar at, as Coni writes, 'the Barkhamsted Lighthouse Settlement on Ragged Mountain - Barkhamsted CT. - Ken Feder is showing me where the signs will be put and why they chose these locations." It's a video taken by Coni Dubois: http://youtu.be/RbAsUFCk150
7/3/2011 - At the Barkhamsted Lighthouse Settlement on Ragged Mountain - Barkhamsted CT. is another video taken by Coni Dubois in which Ken Feder talks about a rockshelter or "Indian Cave."

http://youtu.be/XLMcM518H4I


    Often accompanied by my long time friend Frank Rinaldi, Charlie Crowell has not only researched and written much about the history of my hometown, but has also turned some of those old stories into videos, such as the Joseph Scott Indian Abduction: "Joseph Scott was abducted by a band of Indians in either 1707 or very early 1708 from a field in the Waterville section of Waterbury CT. The natives got Scott across the Naugatuck River and they started climbing the rocky area in Watertown known as the West Branch Rocks, now part of the Mattatuck State Forest. Scott started yelling for help and the Indians cut his tongue out. He bled to death at the spot seen in this video.. 
     The Indians disappeared into the wilderness leaving Scott's body exposed. Tradition tells us animals began feeding on it and by the time other settlers found it, it was in bad shape. They decided to cover the remains with a mound of rocks and for the last 300+ years, Joseph Scott has been lying our in the woods in his lonely grave." ~ http://youtu.be/-8uqzXUhsi8
      I'll include another two from the same area, one I've never been to and one that I have:
        "Abandoned Home Site c 1760 Mattatuck Forest Watertown,CT
       A WATERTOWN GIANT LIVED HERE - This old foundation is hidden in the Mattatuck State Forest in Watertown off Thomaston Road. The house that stood here belonged to Ebenezer Richards, "a man of giant proportions" as explained in this 1896 book excerpt:

"For some reason Ebenezer Richards chose the place for a house site. There is little now to indicate that the locality was ever inhabited. Nature has grown her trees all over the clearing that Ebenezer must have made, and has reared one (tree) in the lonely cellar, the walls of which remain. Richards was born in 1731 and died in 1801. He was a man of giant proportions and when he died it was found that the only way in which the body, when prepared for burial, could be removed from the house was by taking the casings from the doors."

From "The Town and City of Waterbury, Connecticut" (1896) by Joseph Anderson

      Anderson seems to have had Richard's date of birth wrong. It looks like he was born on March 16, 1732 (in Waterbury). He died on January 12, 1801. age 68. His parents were: Father: Thomas Richards b: 17 OCT 1699 in Newark, Essex County, New Jersey - Mother: Susanna Turner b: 10 DEC 1699 in Hartford, Hartford 

      How to Find the Leatherman's Cave in Watertown, CT:

        "A lot of people have gone hiking, looking for the Leatherman's Cave in Watertown and have been unsuccessful in their search. So, here's a video that might help. This is the easiest route to the cave which is located off Thomaston Road in a wooded area owned by the State of Connecticut just up the hill and across the street from Black Rock State Park."

Video by Charlie Crowell: http://youtu.be/RtG_QKB9ePU

Here's the strangers part:
Indian Walls - Narragansett Tribal Stonemasons in New England
       "Stories in Stone" is a film about the Narragansett Tribal stonemasons who, over the last four hundred years, have built many stonewalls that wind picturesquely through the woods of southern New England. Stories in Stones is a story of love; for place, heritage and family and a tale that demonstrates how a craft, utilized initially at the point of European contact, has served as a strategy for resiliency and resistance. Filmmakers Lilach Dekel and Marc Levitt weave a story that is at once poetic and inspirational..." ~ http://youtu.be/2PoqvvqH3AY



Abandoned stone wall in a forest in Bridge Creek Conservation area in Cape Cod. Barnstable, Massachusetts, February 28, 2004



“Albany, Maine stone wall I (Tom McLaughlin writes)
found in an abandoned neighborhood last spring.”

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