[13] Winthrop’s “Journal,” vol. i., 171.
[14] Possibly some of the Dorchester emigrants, including Henry Wolcott, William Phelps, and others, may have passed a little south of this line. Dr. McClure’s MSS., in the possession of the Connecticut Historical Society: “In a conversation with the late aged and respectable Capt. Sabin of Pomfret, Ct., he related to me the following discovery, viz.: About forty years ago he felled a large and ancient yoke about the north line of Pomfret adjoining Woodstock. On cutting within some inches of the heart of the tree it was seen to have been cut and chipped with some short tool like an axe. Rightly judging that at the time when it must have been done the Indians so far inland were destitute and ignorant of the use of iron tools, he counted the number of the annual circular rings from the said marks to the bark of the tree, and found that there were as many rings as the years which had intervened from the migration of the Dorchester party to that time. Hence ‘the probability that they had journeyed along the north border of Pomfret, and as they traveled by a compass, the conjecture is corroborated by that course being nearly in a direct line from Boston to the place of their settlement on the Connecticut River.’”—Stiles’ “History of Ancient Windsor,” p. 26.
[15] “Memorial Hist. of Boston,” vol. i., 263.
[16] “Historical Collections of the Indians in New England. By Daniel Gookin, Gentleman, Printed from the original manuscript, 1792.” See “Collections Mass. Hist. Soc.,” vol. i., First Series, pp. 190-192.
[17] Wabbaquasset, or Woodstock.
[18] Dudley.
[19] 1674.
[20] Black James was a distinguished Indian. He met Eliot again in Cambridge in June of 1681, where a meeting of the claimants of the Nipmuck country was held. The village and much of the land of the town of Dudley was known years after the settlement of Woodstock as “The Land of Black James and Company.”—Ammidown’s “Historical Collections,” vol. i., 406, 461.
[21] Named after “Wabbaquasset Hall,” built in the spring or summer of 1686.
[22] Palfrey’s “History of New England,” vol. iii., 159.