Thank you Booman, for leading us on this trail on the Christmas Eve Run. I was inspired to post the first stanza from the poem “Connecticut”, which is printed at the beginning of the only known (by me) book on the history of Menunkatuck (the Native American name for the lands of Guliford and Madison). This stanza was written by an early inhabitant of Guilford, and Guilford’s most revered (?) poet, Fitz-Greene Halleck:

Still her gray rocks tower above the sea
That crouches at their feet, a conquered wave;
‘Tis a rough land of earth, and stone, and tree,
Where breathes no castled lord or cabined slave;
Where thoughts, and tongues, and hands, are bold and free,
And friends will find a welcome, foes a grave;
And where none kneel, save when to heaven they pray,
Nor even then, unless in their own way.