Alexander Hamilton noted in his Itinerarium that “In the government of Rhode Island and Providence you may travell without molestation upon Sunday, which you cannot do in Connecticut or Massachusetts without a pass, because here they are not agreed what day of the week the sabbath is to be kept.” (Hamilton, Saturday August 25, 1744)  I thought of this as I made my way to New London on the first day of walking in Connecticut. As I cross the bridge at Old Mystic and cross from Stonington into Groton, I also reflect on a quote in a book I read the day before in the Westerly Public Library where hopeful Massachusetts claimants to the territory of the Narragansett Indians lamented living next door to the Rhode Island Colony which, in their view, was inhabited by “people of such corrupt principalls and practices.” (1). Connecticut too claimed the territory now called Washington County in Rhode Island, and the leaders of both the Massachusetts and Connecticut colonies hoped for the demise of the “heretical” colony of Rhode Island and the Providence Plantations, whose founder Roger Williams had fled there after his calls for a “wall of separation” between the government and the church in order to purify it from corruption. 

        In fact each of the colonies through which I have passed were settled by people intent upon correcting perceived problems with the Church of England, some advocating separation, others advocating purification from within. In eighteenth-century New England these differences, which to the modern eye seem abstruse and insignificant, were extremely important, hence the foundation of four separate colonies in New England in the early seventeenth century.  Hamilton spends a great deal of time in his journals discussing the doctrinal disputes and religious practices of the people he meets, and this was a full century after the foundation of Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. To Hamilton, Connecticut was the most zealous of all the colonies.

        But woe betide any group who rejected Christianity altogether, as did many of the Pequot Indians whose territory once encompassed the area through which I am walking today from the Pawcatuck River to the Thames River. Despite their differences, the colonies were united in their belief “that they and the Pequot stood in for none less than God and Satan respectively,”  and a war against Satan would serve “to remind all English that the differences which divided them were ephemeral compared with the ties that bound them and promised to clear away the murkiness that had lately obscured their sense of divine mission.” (2)  This belief in a “Just Warre” justified the surprise attack made upon the Pequot village just south of this spot on the Mystic River on the morning of May 26, 1637. Most of the Pequot men were away at the time, and the sleeping women, children, and elderly were burned to death as they slept or killed as they tried to escape the fire set by Captain John Mason and his soldiers. Estimates of the dead vary between 300 and 700. Many of the remaining Pequot who were not at the Mystic River settlement were captured and killed or sold into slavery. The Pequot tribe was officially dissolved in 1638, and their lands seized by the Connecticut Colony. All in the name of God.

*****

        I spent my early childhood in Bermuda, the home of my ancestors on my mother’s side. Growing up we often heard tales of the “Mohawks” who lived primarily on the remote island of St. David’s. As kids we all believed that the people on St David’s Island were the descendants of Mohawk Indians who were brought to the island in the early days of settlement. At Saltus Grammar School we had one student in our class, Lyndon, who was much taller than the rest of us, and had reddish hair, an angular face, and fair features despite the fact that he also clearly was of African heritage. He was from St. David’s Island and we all took his physical appearance as proof somehow that he was a “Mohawk,” and we called him such, if not to his face (he was quite a big boy and could have beaten any one of us up with ease).

       I had not thought about this for decades until I began to research the Pequot Indians for this portion of my trip along the post road. I discovered, much to my surprise, that many of the few remaining Pequots left after the conclusion of hostilities were sold into slavery and sent to Bermuda. In 2002, a “reconnection” meeting was held in Bermuda on St. David’s Island where the remaining descendants of the Pequot living in Rhode Island and Connecticut traveled to meet their fellow Pequot descendants in Bermuda. We were wrong about the tribe, but the stories passed down to us about people from St. David’s Island being descended from Indians were true!  

*****

        Today the Pequot are probably best known for their casino, Foxwoods, seven miles north of Old Mystic in Ledyard. Among the few surviving Pequot in the area following the Pequot War was Robin Cassacinamon, the leader of a remnant group of Pequot called the Naumeags who lived on the present site of New London. John Winthrop Jr. relates in his diary how in November 1645 while “looking for a suitable spot for a colony...a meeting having been arranged with Robin who had served before...I crossed the River Mistick accompanied hither by Robin and his brother, who then returned to Naumeag.” (Winthrop November 27, 1645.) According to the website of the Mashantucket Pequot Museum, Robin Cassacinamon negotiated in 1666 to have three thousand acres returned to the Pequot north of Mystic in what is now Ledyard.  Over the course of two centuries the land of the reservation was slowly reduced, often illegally, until by the twentieth century only thirty to forty Pequot were left on the remaining 213 acres of the Mashantucket reservation at the headwaters of the Mystic River. Many of the Pequot living there had left the reservation, either for work, or to settle in upstate New York as part of a Christian-Indian Revival group that attracted many Indians in the Northeast in the early nineteenth century. By the 1970s only two Pequot remained on the reservation, and the state of Connecticut proposed creating a state park with the land, but a call was made for Indians to return to their tribal lands as part of the cultural revival that was one of the outcomes of the 1960s Civil Rights movement. Many returned and filed claims to regain their land. In an effort to establish some income to keep people on the land the Pequot were successful in gaining the right to run a bingo hall which eventually morphed into one of the largest casino complexes in the world.

        Southeastern Connecticut, which had been an economically depressed area for several decades had a resurgence as a result of the success of the casino, as many jobs were created in the area. Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your opinion of gambling, the recent economic downturn coupled with the expansion of gambling online and other nearby casinos in the northeast, has resulted in layoffs at Foxwoods for the first time.  Even gambling, which many lawmakers see as the solution to all problems, is not recession proof. 

*****

        I can only imagine what John Winthrop Jr., the son of the leader of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, would say if he were alive. Founder of the Saybrook Colony at the mouth of the Connecticut River in 1635, Winthrop and his fellow settlers were even more zealous in their religious beliefs than the residents of the Massachusetts Bay Colony from where they had come and surely thought gambling the work of the devil.  On the other hand, Winthrop was not opposed to making money and  had commercial interests in Massachusetts and in Connecticut, where he eventually settled for good in 1650. He established iron works in Braintree and Saugus, Massachusetts, owned mines in central Massachusetts, had interests in fur-trading in what is now Springfield, Massachusetts, and had a monopoly on the production of cornmeal at his grist mill in New London, the town he founded in 1646.  Winthrop first settled Saybrook at the mouth of the Connecticut River to thwart Dutch efforts to settle what would become Connecticut. The Saybrook Colony merged a few years later with the Connecticut Colony which had been founded up the river at Hartford. Winthrop shuttled back and forth between Massachusetts and Connecticut for years and returned in 1645 with the idea of founding a settlement on the Pequot lands which had been taken over after the war. Hence his statement above about “looking for a suitable spot for a colony.” He chose the west bank of the Thames River at Naumeag, which was renamed New London in 1646. Winthrop eventually became Governor of Connecticut for the last ten years of his life.  Thus by the 1650s the coastal areas of southeastern Connecticut had become English settlements, the Pequot had been moved inland, and this area was no longer Indian territory. And Winthrop was a very wealthy man. Apparently you can serve two masters.

*****

        In Stonington, finding the post road was not so difficult-- I had a choice of two roads and an abundance of evidence suggested to me that one, the Pequot Trail, was the way to go. As I enter Groton, however, things are not so clear.  Once I pass through the  quaint and picturesque village of Old Mystic I am confronted with a conundrum: Pequot Trail is no more and I reach the intersection with Route 184, also called the Gold Star Highway. The problem is that, as I turn left and start to head down this road, it is apparent to me that this cannot possibly be the old road. It is too straight and wide, and it seems to head straight uphill with no curves at all, which is very uncharacteristic of the old roads I have followed but IS characteristic of turnpikes, something I had a lot of experience with in Massachusetts but have not encountered since then.  A brief glance at a map shows me that this road as it heads northeast of this intersection is called the New London Turnpike, confirming my suspicion that this is some sort of early nineteenth-century road improvement project. The question is how much of the original road is left. A few yards down the Gold Star Highway a road branches to the right off the main road. I follow this road, called Welles Road, hoping that some evidence will be found to convince me that I am not just wandering down a rural road with no connection to the post road. Almost immediately I find a cemetery with gravestones from the eighteenth century. The road itself winds gently down a hill and the meanders back up to meet Gold Star Highway, and I pass a pretty eighteenth-century house, another piece of evidence. I cross over the highway, continuing on Packer Road and find another old cemetery dating from 1739 right away. Ten minutes further along on Packer Road I come to an area called Burnett’s Corner and my decision to walk this road is validated--this village contains several structures dating back to the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including the Hotel Pequot from 1840, which is described on a plaque as an old stagecoach stop on, you guessed it, the Old Post Road.

        I decide, as I continue through Burnett’s Corner, that I am the world’s foremost expert at sniffing out the Post Road. I suppose I am the only person fool enough to try to find it so my competition is practically nonexistent. Still, it is fun to suppose that you are the best on the entire planet at something, and I flatter myself with that thought as I wander along this meandering road through the woods, gathering more evidence that I am on the oldest road that passed through southeastern Connecticut, very likely the road Winthrop took from Naumeag to Pawcatuck in 1645 with Robin Cassacinamon.

        Then I make an error by choosing a right instead of a left at a fork in the road and am forced back onto Gold Star Highway for about ten minutes. Rather than retracing my steps, I wander down the highway a few yards then turn left to rejoin the old road at Rogers Road which winds slowly up a steep hill, whereas Gold Star Highway heads straight up and over the same hill, which is not at all what the old roads do in my experience.  I pass beautiful farmland, orchards mainly, precisely what Winthrop was told by Robin: “ where Robin told me there was fruit-bearing land without rocks, arable with a goodly number of planting fields.”  I rejoin Gold Star Highway after a couple of miles (this time there really is no choice), but I can see from the map that in a few yards I can turn off onto Candlewood Road on the right, which turns out to be a historic district, so more points in favor of my hypothesis, which is now becoming fact rather than fantasy.  I pass through the hamlet of Center Groton and reach a junction with North Road. Just to the left a few yards away is busy Gold Star Highway and a small commercial district, but what really catches my eye is a stone marker on the opposite side of North Street tucked away behind a Tim Horton’s Restaurant (part of the secret Canadian Invasion Plot).  I cross North Road and take a look at the marker which confirms for me what I have known for a while: “Dedicated in honor of the bicentennial of George Washington marking the Old Post Road traveled by him in 1756.” Time for lunch.

*****

        A sign for a shopping center on nearby Gold Star Highway advertises a pizza place called Gus’s so I head over there and order an eggplant parmesan “grinder.” I haven’t eaten since breakfast six hours ago so I am starving. I get into a conversation with the friendly manager. So far so good, Italian pizza house, a manager named Sonny. Except this guy is clearly not of Italian origin. I inquire discreetly about his accent, a mix of New York and what sounds South Asian, and he tells me he moved to the US 14 years ago when he was a teenager from a village near Delhi. He works for a relative who owns the place, who also immigrated from Delhi. The entire staff is Indian except for one guy from Mexico. He asks how my grinder is and I tell him it tastes great; the eggplant is thinly sliced, not too heavily breaded, the tomato sauce is slightly spicy and garlicky as it should be, the sub roll is fresh. In other words, it tastes like an eggplant parmesan grinder should taste. Suni (the way he spells his name) likes the US, doesn’t go back much to India except to see his family now and again, and is pretty happy working in Gus’s Pizza, which is pretty clear because he is friendly to everybody and clearly has regulars he knows well. His main complaint is that it is hard to find American-born kids to work in his restaurant, especially as waitresses. He says he would prefer to have some local kids work there, but it is hard to get reliable ones so at the end of the day he brings in people from his hometown in Haryana  to do the job. Maybe the anti-immigrant ranters should eat a couple of meals in Gus’s to see who makes this country work.

*****

        I finish up my late lunch and head back out on the road. The character of Gold Star Highway has changed, and it is now more of a local road with gas stations, laundromats, pharmacies, and pizza joints lining the street, more traffic lights, and slower traffic. There are also sidewalks, so I can walk comfortably. With the exception of one or two small detours on short spurs that quickly reconnect with the main road I stay on Gold Star Highway for the next couple of miles. Then the highway becomes a four-lane divided highway, and a sign directs pedestrians and bike traffic off the main highway onto Tollgate Road, which the sign says is the way to the Gold Star Memorial Bridge over the Thames River to New London.  I follow this road for a mile or so until I reach a major junction. Here Route 12, Route 184, and Interstate 95 all meet. Route 12 heads into Groton, while Route 184 and I95 both lead traffic over the bridge. I want to reach the Groton side of the River Thames as the early travelers would have taken a ferry slightly south of the bridge to reach New London, so I make a detour of two or three miles to wander down to the river and then back up to this area to cross the bridge to New London. I walk down busy Route 12, crossing Gold Star Highway and then crossing under I95 until I reach an intersection with a short road called King’s Highway, which is clearly a vestige of the old road that has been mostly obliterated in this area by the Interstate and bridge development. I turn right on King’s Highway, which briefly becomes Bridge Street, then Broad Street, exactly the kind of name I would expect for a street that leads to the river.  I follow Broad through a nineteent- century neighborhood called the Groton Bank Historic District down to the river’s edge. It is stunning how little the town of Groton has taken advantage of its ample waterfront. There is fencing blocking access virtually the whole way down Thames Street and a series of run-down buildings lining the river.  I take a picture of the river and head back up the hill to return to the area where I can access the bridge, which is done by following a small almost hidden pathway that loops under the bridge then up until I reach the sidewalk that runs alongside the busy highway over the bridge. The views from the bridge, built in 1943 and expanded in the 1960s, up and down the river are spectacular, even if seen through safety bars and accompanied by the roar of cars speeding across Connecticut. It is about a mile and half to get up on to, cross over, and get off of the bridge.  From the New London side of the bridge I descend onto Williams Street, then follow State Pier Road under the bridge, passing an old mill building incongruously sitting UNDER the bridge. I pass a small park, cross an overpass, descend onto a sidewalk that passes through a housing project onto Eugene O’Neill Drive which I follow into New London Center. I reach State Street, turn left and follow it down to the River, crossing the railroad tracks. I look back across the river and reflect that I have reached the end of my first day walking in Connecticut. I walked over twenty miles today from Pawacatuck on the Rhode Island border to reach this spot. Time to take a break and rest up for the remaining 160 miles to New York.