The Most Ancient Towne

Kit's heart sank.  This was Wethersfield!  Just a narrow sandy stretch of shoreline, a few piles sunk in the river with rough planking for a platform.  Out of the mist jutted a row of cavernous wooden structures that must be warehouses, and beyond that the dense, dripping green of fields and woods. 

 
 Thank you, public television!

When I traced how I found out about a recent destination, the source was a program aired on Connecticut Public Television sometime late last year.  I somewhat flippantly thought to myself, 'Thanks, PBS!' but then I considered that "Rick Steves Europe," not to mention "Doc Martin" and all of the thousand British crime shows we watch, air only on PBS stations.  So, in all sincerity, thank you, public television.  And if you're in a position to do so, please support your local station(s) so they can keep providing educational, informational, entertaining content.

I heard about Wethersfield, Connecticut, because of its cemetery.  My aunts saw a program about it in the fall or winter and visited in December, sending me a few photos of graves there.  With the weather finally nice, I decided to drive down on a Sunday afternoon.  I invited the aunts to meet me there, and they agreed, though I showed up earlier for two reasons: it's a shorter drive for me, since the town is not far at all from Hartford, and I wanted ample time to explore the cemetery without having to worry about them waiting for me.

At least it looked solid and respectable, compared to the cabins they had passed.  Two and a half stories it stood, gracefully proportioned, with leaded glass windows and clapboards weathered to a silvery gray.

I didn't do much reading-up before I went, but I'm glad I at least looked at the Historic Wethersfield website, because it clued me in to an important thing.  On Broad Street, near the cemetery and a block or two from Main Street, there is a house called the Buttolph-Williams House.  It looks fairly unremarkable, just three stories of dark-weathered wood and a few windows, but it was the inspiration for the family home in Elizabeth George Speare's The Witch of Blackbird Pond.  It's been so long since I read it that I hadn't realized that the book was set in colonial Wethersfield, so it was fun to go see the town and those buildings and homes that likely would have been around at the time Kit lived there.  (This write-up was delayed by the fact that it was harder than it ought to have been to procure a copy of the book to see how Kit described the town.)

The long rows of onions looked endless, their sharp green shoots already half hidden by encroaching weeds.

Considered one of Connecticut's very first towns, Wethersfield was also the home to Silas Deane, a diplomat during the Revolution, and Washington and Rochambeau met up there to plan the battle of Yorktown (which did not happen at the Yorktown in New York, as we thought, but at the one in Virginia).  With all of this history and culture, it's no surprise that the town's emblem is a red onion.  Apparently the Wethersfield red was for many years an integral part of the local economy.

The town also has the Grand High DMV of Connecticut (a.k.a. the department's state headquarters).  It is very much the most stately DMV building I've ever seen.

As promised, the cemetery had a bunch of colonial graves.  It was also interesting to see the newer markers near some graves noting in which wars the deceased had fought, because they were not limited to the Revolution; they included the War of 1812, the Civil War, and such lesser-known conflicts as Queen Anne's War and King George War, parts of larger European conflicts carried out in their colonies.  Other somewhat unusual bits of note: the grave of a Mr. Boyssou de Monplaisir of Guadaloupe, the names Salmon North and Zechariah Bunce, and the number of skulls that look like concerned lightbulbs.

It's fun to drive or walk around the historic neighborhoods and admire the 18th- and 19th-century houses.  Though this bed and breakfast isn't that historic, it is really beautiful.  Wethersfield was quaint and perfect for a pleasant Sunday afternoon out.