Connecticut western news., 1914-09-03

ably tho nearest road ended From here they took the Indian trail known as the Weataug path, which ran from Bantam to Salisbury and crossed this town about where the road runs that it has been proposed to call Indian Lane, and climbed the hill near the old road north of the Burnham place and passed on north-westward to Lime Rock. Near this trail a good part of the early settlers located, the first minister Rev. Solomon Palmer at the Burnham place; the Aliens, Johnsons and Rogerses not far to the north; Eastman and Hollo- way, believe, not much further away at the center, where they built the church and laid out green. The stockade erected for security in case of danger was near this path, few rods northeast of the Burnhnm house. From its immediate neighborhood the first road voted by the proprietors was built-the road to LitchfieldA-which ran eastward from near where Roger Ives lives, then turned south and descended by. an easy grade past where the pest-house was later built for small pox patients, ran west of the house of George Hotchkiss, where his garden is, down Todd's hill to East Street, thence on mp Great Hill by sleeper course than at present and down through East Cornwall to Milton, which was then called Blue Swamp. The second road branched off from this at the crossroads above the Cornwall cemetery, and pass ing the Robert Baldwin house climbed the hill to where Dr. Foote has built new house and continued westward to Dean's corner, near Henry Reeds, so far almost exactly on a line through the middle of the town, and went through Popple swamp, down Beers hill and so southward to Kent.
 It was northward from Kent that the second route of the early settlers ran, and as Kent was hardly year in advance of this town the nearest road to the south probably endod somewhere in New Milford. As there had been quite deal of passing between Kent and New Milford by the Indians with in few years of the settlement of this town there probably was well estab- lished trail that the settlers followed. It is said that at first, even before any permanent resident located in the town, cattle used to be driven up along the river valley for summer pasture. Chidester's ferry, (just above what uesd to be called Lewis hridgel at Cornwall Bridge was very early estab- lished and the settlers of Sharon, ayear behind this town, went to their future homes by the way of either the ferry or ford at that place, probably passing through Cornwall by the Litchfeld road to the corner above the Cornwall oeme- tery aud then by the Kent road to Cornwall Bridge, for five-sixths of the purchasers were from the eastern part of the state.
 The first recorded birth in Cornwall was that of David, son of Joshua Jewell, who lived where Mir Calhoun does and paid the largest tax on the first known list The earliest death was probably that of the child that perished of cold and hunger. For the first score of years the burial ground was south of the road from the Center toward Dibble Hill, where a few rough unlettered stones remain neglected in pine thicket to show where the rude fore fathers of the township sleep, though the selectmen have been repeatedly instructed by vote of the town to fence and clear it. Few of the names of the first settlers are now borne by any residents of the town.