Chapter I - The Colour of History

When Marsha and I bought our house on the corner of Brimfield Road and Folly Brook Boulevard in Wethersfield we had neither the time nor the inclination to pay attention to the history of either our new abode or the area in which it resides. There was after all no "Battle of Brimfield Road", or any other textbook-worthy event in the past life of our new neighborhood.






















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Now, as members of Wethersfield Historical Society, we have come to believe that the history of our house and its surrounding neighborhood is, in its own way, as much a part of the story of our town as the 1781 meeting between General George Washington and General Comte de Rochambeau, or the great flood of 1936.

No house is typical of all others. No neighborhood is representative. In Wethersfield, as in all others towns, each home and every locality is its own unique tale, filled with its own singular collection of characters, and its own distinct set of happenings. The interweaving of all these individual narratives is the story of a town. The history of our home at 284 Brimfield Road is a part of the history of Wethersfield.

Doctor Samuel Johnson (essayist, poet, biographer, lexicographer and a critic of English Literature) said, "We must consider how very little history there is; I mean real authentick history. That certain Kings reigned, and certain battles were fought, we can depend on as true; but all the colouring, all the philosophy of history is conjecture."

In that spirit here is what I have found and what I have conjectured about the history of my homestead and its immediately surrounding area.

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