Windham County

Thus in ten years the Roxbury colony was comfortably established, but clouds were gathering. The long-continued war between France and England incited their Indian allies to shocking atrocities. New England was exposed to constant alarm and assault from the fierce Mohawks and restless Canadian Indians. An isolated, frontier town like Woodstock was especially exposed, and […]

Apart from this incident nothing is known of the aboriginal inhabitants of Woodstock, until the Indian converts of John Eliot found their way there. Two of these youths, trained at Natic in a school of virtue and piety, inspired by the teachings and example of the reverend apostle, sought to carry ” good tidings ”

Nothing worthy of the name of village existed in Thompson during the last century. Four or five houses and a blacksmith shop had been built upon Thompson hill, in the vicinity of the meeting house; the meeting house, as in many hill towns, building up a village instead of the village building the meeting house.

In 1833 the growth of the village seemed to indicate that the condition of things might be improved by incorporation as a borough. A petition to the legislature was accordingly presented, which contained the signatures of the business men of the place. It was sent to the legislature at their session at Hartford, in May,

Town offices in 1861, at the breaking out of the war of the rebellion, were: Ezra C. May, clerk, registrar and treasurer; Samuel M. Fenner, Asa Goodell, Hezekiah Bishop, selectmen; George N. Lyman, S. W. Bugbee, collectors; Nathan E. Morse, constable; R. S. Mathewson, H. S. Perry, Oliver Marcy, Elias Child, 2d, Baldwin Vinton, Carlo

Perhaps the most serious inconvenience resulting from the unorganized condition of the future Thompson was inability to provide suitable roads. To make a good road in its hard and rockbound soil was a very difficult enterprise, requiring the authority of selectmen or suitable officers. Lacking such authority, the settlers simply “trod out ” their own

Revolt from Massachusetts was soon followed by a protracted ecclesiastic conflict, resulting likewise in secession and separation. Both controversies sprung from the same germ-the inherent antagonism between the two colonies. Those citizens who favored Massachusetts government and ideas adhered faithfully to the Cambridge platform and principles, upon which the first church in Woodstock was founded,

At the town meeting in 1807, John McClellan, Esq., served as moderator. Jedidiah Morse still retained the position of town clerk and treasurer; selectmen, John McClellan, Captains Luther Baldwin, William May and Jedidiah Kimball, and Deacon Stephen Johnson; constables, David Frizzell, Parker Morse, Amasa Lyon; grand jurors, Henry Welles, Thomas Corbin, Captain Asa Child, Darius

In 1731 the new county movement carried the day, and Woodstock, with many northward towns, was incorporated into Wore tester county. This distant frontier town furnished the leading officers. Already colonel of the regiment, John Chandler, Sr., was now made judge of probate and chief justice of the court of common pleas. John Chandler, Jr.,