Finding History Underfoot And In The Stones

By Kendra Bobowick

His fingers traced history in grooves of stone. Town historian Dan Cruson noted features of glacial rock strewn on the forest floor. “Look at the scour. It’s beautiful.” Larger stones caught in glacial ice would grind and drag along other stones’ surfaces, leaving lines that could easily be mistaken for cracks. “The ice held pebbles and larger stones, like sandpaper,” he began. The scour acted like an arrow pointing the way.

Kneeling to touch the craggy surface, he said, “[The glacier] was probably headed toward Lake Zoar.” Through a gap in the trees near the lower Paugussett State Forest a bright flash shimmered on the horizon. “Is that Lake Zoar?” Sunlight bounced off water in the distance.

Passing beneath cedar and over stones to the base of a low hill, he soon climbed to look over a shallow valley. “Is there a stream down there?” he asked. From beyond fallen trees surrounding a vernal pool came the early spring shrieking of peepers.

An abrupt drop from a cliff top to a stream brought him along paths through the woods, beneath overhanging hemlock and as the brush underfoot tugged at his pant legs, he arrived at a rise where the ledge poked through the moss. A square pile of lichen-covered stacked stones of an old foundation crept into view. Adding clues that both people and nature had left behind, he looked at the stone construction, forgotten and worn utensils, a discarded coffee pot, bed frame, cast iron stove panels, collapsed beams and debris. The foundation was late 19th Century, he surmised, or around 1900 at the latest. Who might have lived in the dwelling on a rise and in proximity to Great Quarter Road?

He noted the “swale between bedrock,” which was “probably the natural approach” to the foundation. Imagining people who may have trudged their way up the rise to the dwelling that sits at a high point in the forest, he retraced their long-ago footsteps: “They may have taken advantage of the natural feature.” Recalling the late 1800s resident Elisha Lattin who lived less than a mile from that point in the woods, Mr Cruson considered the foundation’s placement. “Like Lattin, [the homeowner] had an eye for what he wanted to see out the front door.” Skirting land crisscrossed by stonewalls where open farming and cattle pastures once divided what is now a forest floor, the view would have looked out on a patchwork of agricultural fields.

Picking through remnants that fell when walls eventually crumbled or tree limbs may have crashed through a roof, Mr Cruson stood inside the foundation pointing to a kitchen, or living room for unknown inhabitants.

“It’s a post and beam style structure in a beautiful location,” he added. Glancing again at the stones outlining rooms, he said, “It’s an L-shape with a porch maybe.” Areas of the foundation wall had slumped and crumbled. “It could have been demise after abandonment. Once water gets in a hole in the roof …”

Finding Shelter

Leaving the site he again heard peepers singing and growing louder as he came down a hill toward pooling groundwater that filled the forest in early spring. Walking a ridgeline spotted with stones with slight valleys on either side, Mr Cruson took a path downward and suddenly glanced to his right at a large outcropping that jutted 20 feet overhead. “Don’t tell anyone where this is,” he warned, pointing to the smooth stone face overhanging a concave strip of shelter beneath. “It’s a classic Indian rock shelter.” During inclement weather it offered protection. “The drip line was far enough away that they could build a fire and be snug and warm.”

Maybe 4,000 or 5,000 years ago people built fires there on that spot during a heavy rain.

Soon he was in the car and headed to the next site.

A brief walk down a path brought Mr Cruson to another rudimentary foundation. “Huh, now that’s antiquated,” he said. Rounder, more loosely stacked stone indicated what might have been an outbuilding or barn. Had people lived inside the stone footprint, or just stored their tools or sheltered and fed cattle? Mr Cruson estimated that the foundation once supported an outbuilding, but not a living space. “I see no signs of domestic trash,” he noted.

The foundation also did not offer any hints of a fireplace foundation within its walls. The foundation was partially dug into a sloping stretch of ground, which would have been typical to bring cattle in one side and muck manure out the other. “It’s a standard pattern and this follows that pattern.” Confirming his thoughts that the stones did not hold up living space, he said, “This probably was an outbuilding; a lot were never put on the old maps. Without artifacts and lack of any utensils, the absence of glass, there is no indication of anyone living here.”

Looking For Lattin

Stepping into a clearing, Mr Cruson took another path through the woods in search of long-ago resident Elisha Lattin’s dwelling. “Now, let’s find the old guy’s house,” he said, eventually arriving at an eroding old stone foundation. The farmland-turned-forest dwelling and its lone inhabitant are a mystery Mr Cruson hopes to solve. He believes the crumbling field stones dislodged in places by the roots of a mature tree, a nearby foundation for what may have been an outbuilding, a random stack of stones possibly piled in place of convenience or to put them out of the way, and an old well had once been home to Mr Lattin. “According to the rumor I am trying to substantiate, he was supposed to have died in a fire when the house burned,” Mr Cruson explained.

He may have died in 1858. His home is not marked on the next set of maps for Newtown dated 1867. “That fits, but is a bit of a mystery about what happened.” Approaching the former “humble farmer’s” home — a place sparingly bookmarked as part of the past — he stepped inside the foundation and probed a place he guessed a fireplace may have been, and hopes to return and dig deeper for signs of charcoal.

He has one reference from a story told by George Washington Bradley who recalls at the age of 6 or 7, walking with Mr Lattin’s granddaughter Florence Lattin, 15. He witnessed the 1833 meteor shower while walking with Florence to her grandfather’s house.

In the woods retracing those centuries-old steps, Mr Cruson said, “Cast yourself back to the 1830s; this hasn’t changed much, and imagine seeing the sky falling. This is the route he would have taken.” Mr Cruson would later explain that no record of Florence Lattin exists in birth or death certificates. Did a young Mr Bradley invent Mr Lattin’s granddaughter? he asked.

Looking around at lengthening shadows and fading light, he said, “So, this is Elisha Lattin’s. I don’t know what it is about this place …” Probably a humble resident and farmer, Mr Lattin may not have owned much more than a house that once rested on the now-slumping stone foundation and fields bordering the Paugussett State Forest where it abuts town property. Trails stretching into the woods extend from the end of Stonebridge Road and find a stonewall bordering a cleared swath of forest. The path crosses Ivy Brook, turns, and leads deeper into the woods where eventually the boggy, rocky ground is difficult to travel across.

Forming An Attachment

Mr Lattin’s foundation sits on a rise. Continuing to nudge the leaves and debris clogging the foundation, Mr Cruson said that a fire would have “capped” the property at 1858. “Everything here is from before then — it’s a nice antebellum pre-Civil War house.” As he moved across the craggy terrain pointing out other evidence of man’s hands at work moving earth and stone in the vicinity, Mr Cruson confessed, “I don’t know what it is, I can’t explain my attachment to the place.”

Did he sympathize with Mr Lattin’s unfortunate death or with his secluded life at a home still remote, undeveloped, and distant today? Does the unknown intrigue him? Who was Elisha Lattin? Did he have a granddaughter? Pointing out a jumble of stones protecting the opening for a well, he remarked, “It’s isolated.” The road — really a cleared swath through the woods bordered by a stone wall — leads eventually to Great Quarter Road, and at the time would have likely continued to the Housatonic River before it was dammed to form Lake Zoar. Any riverbank destinations are “underwater now.”

Circling back to the old foundation he said again, “I don’t know what it is about this place …” Wondering who Elisha might have been, he said, “He was probably just a hardscrabble farmer, but the mystery grows and the aura about him seems to increase.” With only a scant description from Mr Bradley’s tale of a walk with Florence, the girl describes her grandfather as, “The old gray-haired man with a tin lantern.”