Stamford was settled on the Rippowam River in 1641 by a faction of discontented settlers of the town of Wethersfield, Connecticut who, taking the counsel of John Davenport of New Haven, took up an offer to settle the area recently purchased by the New Haven Colony “in its zeal to maintain an equal footing with the Connecticut Colony.” (1) The inhabitants of the region at the time were Indians belonging to the Lenape (or Delaware) language group, which was spoken from roughly the Hudson River to the Delaware River and thus encompassed the area which today consists of southern New York, New Jersey, eastern Pennsylvania, and Delaware. The Lenape language group was distinct from those spoken by the Indians of the rest of southern New England, such as the Pequot, Mohegan, Quiripi,  Massachusett, and Narragansett.  All the languages spoken by Indians living on the northeastern coast of North America (from Labrador south to Virginia) however, were part of the Eastern Algonquian subgroup of the Algonquian language family, which is reputed to have been the most widely spoken language group in North America. 

        As the boundary between two major Algonquian language groups, what is today Stamford and the adjacent town of Greenwich, which together make up the western half of that small piece of Connecticut that juts into New York State, marked the end of what we think of today as New England even in pre-Columbian times.  Language barriers, however, are not rigid for the most part, and there was significant intercourse (literally and figuratively) between the various groups of people in the Hudson River area around what is today Metropolitan New York, just as today Greenwich and Stamford are technically part of Connecticut and New England though the orientation of most residents of these towns is toward New York City.  This New York-New England duality goes back to the original settlement of Stamford; the territorial extent of the Stamford settlement was a subject of dispute for a long time, and the area that is today Greenwich was swapped back and forth between the New Haven Colony, the Connecticut  Colony, and New York on a couple of occasions, as I shall discuss later.

        Regardless of what language the native inhabitants spoke, they were not held in high esteem by the early historian of the town of Stamford, Elijah Baldwin Huntington, who writes of “the few brawny redmen with their ‘dusky mates’ and bright-eyed little ones” living in a “wigwam as rude in its structure and finish as the untutored savage who had built it.”  Writing in 1868 of the settlement of Stamford by Englishmen, Huntington is proud that “the old forests and all the profitless savagery of Indian life soon gave way, and farms and schools, industry and thrift, civilization and religion, homes of comfort and of elegance attested the presence of the more intelligent, and permanent race.”(2)  I don’t want to beat a dead horse (see my last entry) but with advertising like that, I am not surprised William F. Buckley proudly called Stamford his home.  Huntington also shows that the eradication of any places of aboriginal or historical interest in Stamford has been a long-standing tendency; even the historian of the town was uninterested in the early inhabitants.  But I am sure I could find (and have found) language like Huntington’s in most early local histories of New England towns.  On the other hand the Ku Klux Klan had one of their most active communities in Connecticut in Stamford and held one of the largest meetings in the state in 1924. (3)

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            The Rippowam River is today a quarter of a mile west of the center of Stamford.  Main Street heads west and becomes a sort of “restaurant row” for a block or so adjacent to Columbus Park, before reaching the four-lane divided highway that is Washington Boulevard, another ugly street which clearly was shoved through the center of what must have once been a neighborhood.  Today it is a windswept expanse of traffic and not much else. On the other side of Washington Boulevard there are a few more stores on the south side of Main Street but the north side is empty, and the area feels forlorn and somewhat desolate.  At the end of the block is a monstrosity that appears to be a housing project. Just beyond is the river and the (now) pedestrian bridge that crosses over it.  This wrought iron bridge was built in 1888 and is on the National Register of Historic Places for its distinctive truss design, although it is in rough shape at the moment, with portions closed off with chain-link fencing and is obviously unsafe for automobile traffic.  Apparently locals call it the “Ruined Bridge,” as this photoessay illustrates. This theme is becoming exceedingly tiresome--time to get out of Stamford.

        West Stamford across the river is the “bad” part of town, according to most sources I have examined, and it is true when I look at a crime map of Stamford that a disproportionate amount of crime does occur west of the Rippowam River. (4) It is also home to a population that is almost 60% Hispanic and 33% black, while only 7% of the residents of the area around Stillwater Avenue, the route the old road follows, are white non-Hispanic, according to the United States Census Bureau.  The area was an Italian-American neighborhood until recently, and there are still signs of the presence of Italians here as I pass a restaurant called Pellicci’s (apparently dating to 1947) into which many from the crowd of mourners dressed in black who are leaving the Laceranza Funeral Home are entering.  The parking lot is full of large dark sedans favored by older Italian men, but apart from this almost elegiac scene, the surrounding area has all the hallmarks of a less well-to-do neighborhood: a liquor store on the corner with some very strange (and presumably inebriated) characters out front engaging in an escalating war of words, small tiendas with signs in Spanish, and one or two Mexican restaurants that look promising but it is still early in the morning. Some young men a little further up the hill are engaging in what appears to be the type of dubious hand-shaking transaction that is all too common in some neighborhoods near me in Boston.  A stony-faced gentleman does not return my greeting as we pass on the street.  This is not my favorite part of the walk, and with the sidewalks almost completely iced over, it becomes even less pleasant as I am forced to walk in the street for the next few blocks, trying to avoid getting hit by the traffic traveling much too rapidly up this narrow and winding street.

         The old road took a funny dip after crossing the Rippowam River, which can be seen on the Colles map as well as on a map of the town from 1837 by Richard Holley that I have reproduced below.  This curve came about most likely to avoid the steep part of the hill that Stillwater Avenue climbs on its way west out of the Rippowam River valley.  To follow this route today I turn left on West Main Street after crossing the bridge over the Rippowam River until I reach the junction with US1.  Here Stillwater Avenue heads northwest uphill and  away from US1, then turns sharply left and continues uphill for a while until it reaches a plateau behind the Stamford Hospital.   Once I reach the top of the hill the neighborhood becomes much nicer as I pass a large park near West Avenue, where a small section of the sidewalk has been plowed after last night’s snowfall, which amounted to about six inches of light and fluffy snow, but nevertheless makes the walking difficult. But most sections of the sidewalk along Stillwater Avenue are uncleared, and I am obliged to spend most of today on the edge of the street, sharing the road with traffic. After another half a mile I turn left off of Stillwater Avenue and onto Palmer’s Hill Road. This road heads up a very large hill and there are no sidewalks at all, but the traffic is lighter on this nicer street which is lined with increasingly expensive looking houses as I near the Greenwich line.

*****

              After walking two miles from Stamford center, I reach the Greenwich line at 9:23 a.m. on a bright and sunny but cold January morning, and I enter the last of the twenty-four towns along the Connecticut coast through which I have walked while following the old road to New York from Boston. The old Post Road travels a little over six miles through the town of Greenwich before it crosses the Byram River and heads into New York State.  Greenwich is a well-known town, specifically for being one of the wealthiest, if not the wealthiest town, in the United States.(5)  My initial impression is that it seems like a nice town, but I have seen fancier houses in my own neighborhood.  Maybe this is the poor part of Greenwich, where only people worth less than a million dollars live.

        Greenwich has had border disputes with both Stamford and New York State. It has at various times been under the jurisdiction of both the New York and the New Haven Colonies.  The border between Stamford and Greenwich today follows Havenmeyer Lane, which is roughly at mile 40 on Colles’s map.  Near here, on what is today Palmer Hill Road, was a tavern run by Messenger Palmer, which is shown on Colles’s map, one of three in the last six miles to New York.  Unfortunately for Mr. Palmer, it is nowhere mentioned in any of the almanacs of the day, skipped over in favor of Knap’s Tavern, which is listed as 7 miles from Stamford, in Horseneck. Nor do any of my fellow travelers mention Palmer’s place, preferring other taverns in Horseneck, if they stopped at all.   In fact, the name Greenwich is never mentioned in any of the almanacs nor, curiously,  is it invoked by any of the travelers whose diaries I have examined.  

        The solution to this conundrum is pretty straightforward once the history of the settlement of Greenwich is explained, but the story of the evolution of the present town of Greenwich is a little complicated.  The original settlement in the area that is today the town of Greenwich took place in what is now the Borough of Old Greenwich, which is near the Stamford line, south of US1 (called Putnam Avenue in Greenwich) and Interstate 95. This land was purchased in 1640, by Daniel Patrick and Robert Feaks, acting as agents for the New Haven Colony. The neighboring town of Stamford was not settled until 1641-2 so the fledgling colony of Greenwich was quite isolated from the New Haven Colony and, fearing their newly acquired land might be retaken by increasingly agitated Indians, the founders pledged allegiance to the Dutch government at New Amsterdam in 1642.  After a series of spats the English and the Dutch settled the boundary between their respective territories roughly at the Byram River, where the New York-Connecticut border is today. Technically this brought the residents of Greenwich, still primarily settled on land west of the Mianus River adjacent to the now settled town of Stamford, back under the jurisdiction of the New Haven Colony.  The residents of Greenwich tried to maintain their independence from the New Haven Colony but were ultimately incorporated into the town of Stamford in 1656.  In 1665 the Connecticut Colony officially merged with the New Haven Colony, and Greenwich successfully petitioned to regain its independence from Stamford. 

        The area west of the Mianus River, which was known as Horseneck (perhaps a name derived from the shape of the peninsula), was only purchased from the Indians in 1672 and subsequently settled.  In 1673 the western border of Greenwich was duly extended by the Connecticut legislature to the New York border at the Byram River. The settlement at Horseneck grew rapidly, even acquiring its own minister and church in 1705, and the hilly area west of the Mianus River is today what we know as the Borough of Greenwich. A third area of settlement known as Cos Cob grew up between the two above settlements, and as Rachel Carley puts it in Building Greenwich “ by 1690 the contiguous but separate communities of Cos Cob, Greenwich Towne and Horseneck were all distinct enough to be differentiated by these names.” (7)  Only in 1854 did the town authorities finally recognize the obvious, that the center of commercial and civic life had long ago shifted from the remote Greenwich Towne to the neighborhood of Horseneck, through which the Post Road passed, by changing the name of Horseneck to the Borough of Greenwich.

        The old post road, or “Country Road,” through what is today Greenwich originally passed well to the north of Old Greenwich in order to cross the Mianus River at a narrow fording place at what is today Palmer Hill Road east of the Mianus River, and then followed Valley Road down the west bank of the Mianus River.  When Valley Road meets East Putnam Avenue the original road then rejoins US1 (Putnam Avenue), which is essentially the route it takes to the New York border, passing through the settlement of Horseneck, today’s Borough of Greenwich.  Hence, the travelers of old did not pass through the village of Greenwich, but rather through the village of Horseneck, which was technically part of the town of Greenwich but was not referred to as Greenwich by the travelers passing through, in much the same way Hamilton refers to passing through the village of Saugatuck which is now Westport. I hope that makes everything clear!

*****

            The only legacy of the Palmer Tavern is the name of the section of the old “Country Road” or King’s Highway or Old Post Road that starts in Stamford and ends at the Mianus River.  Interestingly, for some reason the section of the road in Stamford is called Palmer’s Hill Road while the part in Greenwich is referred to as Palmer Hill Road.  The bridge across the river here was first built in 1688, along with a mill, and was rebuilt in 1788, after a second bridge from 1754 “together with the mill, was carried away by a freshet in 1787, and the town re-granted to the then owners of the mill the right to rebuild the same as follows: ‘Whereas the application hath been made to the selectmen of said Greenwich by William, John, Samuel, and Daniel Titus...they will erect a good and sufficient horse bridge across the river and keep it in good repair.’ ”(8)  This bridge is clearly shown on Colles’s map (see previous entry) in very large letters as “Titus Bridge” midway between mile 39 and 40.  Mead refers to the original bridge as being at Dumpling Pond, now North Mianus. Today there is a North Mianus School at 309 Palmer Hill Road and a Dumpling Pond Wine and Liquor Store at 340 Palmer Hill Road, adjacent to the lovely bridge that today crosses the Mianus, which dates from 1907.

        The two mile walk from the Stamford border to East Putnam Avenue (US1), where the old road becomes one with the former Connecticut Turnpike, passes through a lovely and peaceful neighborhood.  It is a bright sunny day, and the snow reflects the sunlight, giving everything a brilliant color and clarity.  As Palmer Hill Road descends sharply to reach the Mianus River I can see the landscape ahead of me and it seems very hilly, and I recall the words of J.P. Brissot de Warville, who passed through here in August, 1788, and said of the road from Fairfield “at Fairfield finished the agreeable part of out journey.  From this town to Rye, thirty-three miles, we had to struggle against rocks and precipices.” (9)  Having read many accounts of the steep and rough road ahead, by all accounts the absolute worst part of the entire road from Boston to New York,  I look forward to seeing the modern version of the road through Horseneck.

        For the moment, however, the road down to the Mianus River is pleasant.  Across the bridge I join Valley Road, which follows the western bank of the river. The river, which is frozen over, is wide and almost looks like a large pond; both of these facts are probably explained by the presence of  a dam to the south which prevents the tides from reaching this point as they once did.  The next mile and a quarter is spent mostly on the edge of a moderately busy road that twists and turns south over a couple of surprisingly steep hills adjacent to the river, which nonetheless provide great views over the river valley.  As I get closer to East Putnam Road sidewalks reappear, and I pass through a neighborhood of modest homes.

        The appearance of a Dunkin Donuts confirms that I have once again made my way back to US1, now in the neighborhood of Cos Cob. US1 is called Putnam Avenue in Greenwich.  From the junction with Valley Road, Putnam Avenue heads east to cross the Mianus River some distance further south from the original crossing point, a result of the construction of the Connecticut Turnpike, built in the first decade of the nineteenth century.  The distance on the direct route from Stamford Center to this point on US1 is 3.4 miles, a mile shorter than the original route: here is a case where the Turnpike clearly made sense.  The Connecticut Turnpike Corporation took control of the original King’s Highway, or Country Road as the newly independent Americans preferred to call it, from this point west to the New York border.  Thus today the original road, the Connecticut Turnpike, and US1 are all the same road for the final four miles of Connecticut. 

        James Birket is the only traveler to mention specifically stopping the night in Greenwich, and that was only because “before we got there we had Exceeding heavy rain, [it] was quite dark, and [it was a ] Most Intollerable bad road.” (10) Birket was forced to stop in what is today Cos Cob (named for the seawall, or “cob” built by John Coe in the 1640s), where he “lodged at One Mead’s an ill-natured old fellow and would scarce give us lodging tho’ we were under the above hardships & his One Eyed wife little better than himself & wanted a barefooted fellow who we afterwards understood to be her son to sleep with one of us but we one & all refused the favour & where he went I Know not neither do I care.” My guess is that he did not like the place!  Mead’s tavern is shown on Colles’s map of 1789 a little past Strickland Brook between mile 37 and 38.  According to the historian of Greenwich, Spencer Mead (a descendant of the illustrious, if sometimes “ill-natured” Meads of Greenwich), a tavern was established by Ebenezer Mead as early as 1696. In 1754 a Jabez Mead held the license and in 1779, General Tryon arrived at Henry Mead’s tavern to dine, fresh from having burned the surrounding countryside, when a musket ball flew through the tavern nearly striking him and causing him to leave without finishing his dinner. (11)  General Tryon will return to our narrative in the final chapter which will see me reach the end of my travels in the state of Connecticut. Stay tuned for the exciting conclusion, which involves high speed chases, violence, and lots of sex (okay, well maybe not the sex part, but I am trying to make it a “must read”).  For now I stop for a library break in Cos Cob before heading up those big hills on the way to New York.