Knowing Our Past Gives Me Better Information to Serve You

WILLIAM BARTON House circa 1765 - located at the crest of Barton Hill

William Barton was the Founder of the Chatham Bell Industry. From has hands and apprenticeships, no less than 37 other bell maker companies were formed and operated in the East Hampton Society area.

Understanding the past can often prevent you from making an incorrect decision about your future - especially when buying or selling your most valuable asset - your home!

I have the knowledge of our Community's past and the proven experience and ability to serve your current Real Estate needs - whether you are marketing an antique or historic home or a house constructed last week.

Please remember, I'm never too busy for your referral at Prudential Connecticut Reality. I'm always available to take your call and can be reached at (860) 918-4400.

Disaster - The High School Consumed in Flames

Have you ever had the experience of being woken from a sound sleep, being incoherent or not grasping what someone is telling or asking you? To this day, that is what I remember about the night of March 27, 1962.

Around midnight, I was woken by my father who informed me the High School (our current Center School) was burning! I probably made (know I did make) some inappropriate comment and continued to doze. As the reality finally sunk in, I sat up with a start and looked out the window. We lived on the top of Barton Hill and my bedroom overlooked the Village Center. Flames had enveloped the entire downtown illuminating the night sky. Normally at that hour it would have been pitch blackness. That night however, the Congregational Church glowed yellow as the flames danced higher than the perch of that pointed steeple spire.

The blaze as reported in the Middletown Press showing the second story engulfed in flames.

Near total destruction to 16 classrooms – the entire Bevin Boulevard wing –totaling $600,000, occurred. The auditorium/gymnasium and the portion known as the old Center Grammar School was saved. A couple days later, some of us were allowed into the school to retrieve books if our lockers had been on the first floor of the burnt wing. It was an amazing outpouring by members of all the classes. Then grades 8 – 12 attended the high school. A huge percentage volunteered to assist in whatever cleanup we could, salvaging books and organizing them to be redistributed. School was cancelled for a week as the Board of Education, School Officials, Town Selectmen and numerous organizations such as the American Legion, the Library Board and Congregational Church all pitched in.









Immediately, those portions of the Bevin Boulevard wing salvageable were cleared, cleaned and made ready, as normalcy, or the closest we could get to it, set in.

Gold in Cobalt Hills

There’s gold in them there hills! With the market price at record highs near $1,200 an ounce and Good Ole Tom and the new businesses of the decade telling us to bring our old jewelry to harvest excess cash, it reminded me of Chatham’s gold, or more precisely, Cobalt. Named for the ore mined there along the creek east and south of Great Hill, it was also the site of gold mining in Colonial times. Although the lure of gold attracted not the throngs California in 1849 or Alaska in 1896 did, there was enough interest by Governor Jonathan Winthrop (1651, 1659-76) of his belief of mines and minerals in Middletown. This area was granted in the formation of Middletown and designated East Middletown or the area east of the Connecticut River. Winthrop, so convinced of their (the minerals) value as to think seriously of setting up works for improving them is evident from the grant made to him after the initial settlement of Middletown.



By resolution of the Middletown Selectmen, “The inhabitants of Middletown for the encouragement of the designs of our much honored governor, Mr. John Winthrop, for the discovery of mines and minerals and for the setting up of such works as shall be needful for the improvement of them, do hereby grant unto our said much honored governor any profitable mines or minerals that he shall find or discover upon any common land with the bounds of our town and such woodland as may be convenient for the use of the same, to the value of 500 to 1,000 acres, as it may lie so that it be not nearer than two or three miles from the present dwelling houses of the Town, and as the Town shall judge to be lest prejudicial to themselves for their necessary firewood, provided the Town shall have free liberty of commonage, as far as our Town bounds go, until the improvers shall see good to impropriate the same with inclosures – provided further that said governor, and such as may be co-improvers with him, will set up the works to improve such mines and minerals as he shall find, within these 5 years and let us know whether he doth accepts of this our grant with two years; and so be it to him and his heirs and associates from the time of setting up such works, else at two or fives years, and to be in liberty of the Town to grant the same to any other. May 23, 1661.”

President Stiles of Yale College wrote, “1787, Jan.1, Mr. Erkenlen’s (developer of Cobalt mine) visited me, full of his Cobalt mine and China voyage. He some years ago bought the Governor’s Ring, as it is called, or a mountain in the N.W. corner of East Haddam (Middle Haddam), comprehending about 800 acres, or about a square mile area. Here he finds plenty of Cobalt, which he manufactures into smalt with which is made the beautiful blue on China ware, etc.” “Gov. Trumbull has often told me that this was the place to which Gov. Winthrop of N. London used to resort with his servant, and after spending three weeks in the woods of this mountain, in roasting ores and assaying metals and casting gold rings, he use to return home to New London with plenty of gold. Hence this is called the Gov. Winthrop ring to this day.

From correspondence of the governor with learned men in England, it is possible that some knowledge of this locality crossed the Atlantic in his time (Winthrop’s). Be this as it may, no considerable efforts appear to have been made to find gold or any other mineral in this hill, for about a century after this grant was made. But about 1762, Dr. John Sebastian Stepancey, a German, employed a number of men, and made a horizontal opening into the hill in search of hid treasures. He continued his exertions but a short time. About 1770 he renewed them, in connection with tow other Germans, John Knool and Gominus Erkelens; but at length it appears that he made over the management of the concern to his associates, reserving to himself only a portion of the profits, and there was an agreement that what metals and minerals were sent to Great Britain should be consigned to Knool’s friends, and those sent to Holland to Erkelens’.

Geologists and Professors from UCONN actually did some experimental mining in the late 1980s recovering a reasonable (maybe an ounce or two) of gold, but determined there was insufficient quanity to ever make mining a commercially viable enterprise.

The Moodus Noises

The horrendous and tragic explosion at the Kleen Energy Plant in Middletown Sunday February 7th touched us all. Our deepest sympathy goes out to the families of those men who lost their lives and for a speedy recover to the many injured. And we can all be thankful and appreciative at the splendid and dedicated emergency response personnel – fire, police and medical – and the emergency crisis team at Middlesex Hospital and throughout our State for their swift and prepared action.

Each of us will retain our own memories of the blast and I’m sure they will become a topic of conversation, probably not on the same scale as where were you or what we you doing when you heard John F. Kennedy had been shot, but important in a local sense. As for me, I was engrossed in Pastor Shelly Timber’s sermon at Haddam Neck Covenant Church. The Church, located on Haddam Neck Road high over the Connecticut River Valley is just a few short miles away from the River Road site. With a momentary lull in the sermon, I and others winced, looking out the windows and speculating as to what might have occurred. To my wife Debbie and me, the blast reminded us of a natural phenomenon periodically experienced in our town - the Moodus Noises!

Long before colonial times, the rumblings emanating in the area where East Hampton, East Haddam and Haddam converge at the Salmon River, probably put the same fright into the populous that the gas explosion caused, albeit without the same loss of life or property damage. Named “Matchitmoodus” by our Native American predecessors, the rumblings surely caused them to ruminate on what they perceived as the voice of the supernatural. Literally translated as “Place of Bad Noises,” the area was supposedly the dwelling place of Hobomoko, their sinister god who was forever plaguing mankind and spoke to them in tones of thunder. Today, geologists explain precisely what occurs. As rock solid as this New England area is, we sit on a geological fault line. As such, periodic shifting of the earth’s crust results in small, but at times loud, tremors that have been thought to amplify from a local cave on the hillside to the east of the Cave Hill Camp.

The last significant shake occurred in the mid 1980s where numerous residents reported picture frames falling off the walls.

I also find that my great, great grandfather, Francis W. Markham (b. 1836 in East Hampton) had studied the “Moodus Noises” since he was a young boy and had been quoted in an article on “Volcanic and Seismic Disturbances in Southern Connecticut,” which appeared in the Connecticut Magazine Vol. IX, pp. 68-74 in the 1890s. He says of the “Moodus Noises”:
“It has long been a belief of my own, which has come to me after some years of study, that the famous ‘Moodus Noises’ was a result of, and connected with, the great volcanic eruptions and seismic disturbances in ancient days. Not a few people in our State today will pronounce these noises to be a myth; a tradition which has no foundation in fact, but simply a superstition of the fathers. Such persons are wholly wrong. The did exist and are matters of record in history, and many now living can testify to having passed through experiences with them……”
“I may be pardoned from mentioning I was about eight years old, when living in southern Chatham, East Hampton Society. It was a black, stormy night in January. My father and mother [Hiram and Laura Markham] were making an evening call on a neighbor and the boy was alone with his grandmother. Early in the evening, without a moment’s warning, there came what seemed to be a tremendous rattle of stones on the southern wall and roof of the house [this is the same house sited in my previous blog article located at 95 Young Street]. Chairs and other furniture were dancing about; dishes were tossed up and down. Every instant those stones were expected to break through. Consternation prevailed and the frightened lad sought the protecting arms of his paternal relative. She, good lady, did not say a word, but her face whitened, lips tightened and she was frightened, as well as myself. The discharge lasted only for a minute or two and suddenly ceased. After only a small space of time the battery opened again, but now it was not so loud, so fierce in its attack and soon died away altogether. The next hour we spent together was a miserable one, expecting at any minute a reappearance of the apparent deluge of stones. One central idea in a boy’s brain remains at the present, and that was the end of the world was at hand.”
“Soon after nine father and mother came home, and the still agitated old lady questioned her son, ‘Did you hear those dreadful noises an hour ago?’ ‘Certainly mother.’ ‘And what were they?’ ‘Why, don’t you know?’ ‘Those were the Moodus noises.’ Immediately gentle peace descended and rested upon that disturbed household.”

Francis Wells and Mary Elizabeth Ackley Markham at the celebration of their 50th Wedding Anniversary on February 14, 1908, at their home at 95 Young Street.

Walk for Sunshine Kids

Many thanks to this wonderful group of friends who graciously donated to sponsor me on the Sunshine Kids walk .

Linda Denton Arlene Thompson Maryanne Costerella
Larry Byron Chris Brown Joan Colaccino
Marcia Vecca Claire Kavanagh Dr. Bo Subbarao

My Prudential colleagues joining on the walk raised over $600 today are pictured as we begin the walk on the Air Line Trail - a walking and bicycling trail beginning at Cranberry Bog in East Hampton.

Carl Guild, Tammy Jones, Lori Ducat, Renee Dumaine, Susan Canedy, and Dean Markham.

The stalwarts walking for Sunshine Kids.

Susan Canedy, Office Mgr., Renee Dumaine, Tammy Jones, Lori Ducat (hidden) and Carl Guild.

As you can see, I wanted to trudge on, but I was outvoted as we reached the half-way point.

Carl Guild, Renee Dumaine, Tammy Jones (leading) Susan Canedy and Lori Ducat. (When you are taking the pictures, you don't have to be in them.)

All in all, a beautiful day that will put smiles on the faces of some beautiful kids.

Thank you!