Barkhamsted




Barkhamsted Lighthouse


Barkhamsted Lighthouse - Freedom Trail Site
Photo by Carol A. Hanny
Barkhamsted Lighthouse
Lighthouse Archaeological Site
People's State Forest
Freedom Trail Site
East River Road
GPS  N 41 56 19  /  W 73 0 01

"At this site was a village made up of Native Americans, African Americans, and whites who in their time were considered outcasts.  The village was established
ca. 1740 by Molly Barber, a white woman from Wethersfield, Connecticut, and her husband, James Chaugham, a Narragansett Indian from Block Island in Long
Island Sound.  They moved to the northwestern Connecticut wilderness to escape the wrath of Molly Barber's father.  The community was abandoned around 1860
after nearly 120 years of occupation.  Today, as an archaeological site inside People's State Forest, it commemorates people who lived on the margins of society.
They were ordinary individuals who created an extraordinary multicultural community.  The site is listed on the National Register of Historic Places." 
(Connecticut Freedom Trail flyer)

There is also a mortar bowl similar to one in Sharon, Connecticut.
And there is a cemetery on the hillside above.

There is a poem by Lewis Sprague Mills that mentions it.
"...Was a rugged group of cabins,
Dwelt in by a people blended
Partly white and partly Indian,
Partly from the early settlers,
And vagabonds of travel..."

Also on the Connecticut Trust for Historic Preservation map, from Historic Sites in the Settlement of African-Americans in Connecticut.

"Barkhamsted Lighthouse Village.  It was an 18th and 19th century settlement of outcast that included white, blacks, and Indians.  The name came from
the stagecoach drivers who used to see hearth fires through the forest on the way to New York."

"From the Mountain County Herald...1854... (used by Mills)...reporter who actually visited the occupied site.."of every possible size, and shade of color -
from that of the thick-lipped curly pated African..."  (Feder  1994:  41-42)
(paraphrased) - Issac Jacklin bought land on Ragged Mountain from Samuel Chaugham...husband of his daughter, Mercy Chaughum.  (Feder  1994:  83-83)

According to Walt Landgraf, Jacklin family were blacks.

Census records identify the Jacklin family as being black;  his father's name was Freeman, a common name given to freed slaves... Isaac was the grandson of the freed
slave Robert Jacklin.

"The village, legend tells, was a magnet for various dispossessed Indians, whites, and freed black slaves.  (Feder  1990:  66)


Lamont's Christmas Tree Plantation
aka Oscar Tiffany place, aka Lamont

GPS  N 41 58 116  /  W 72 59 889

"Lamont's Tree Plantation - Located at the site of one of Barkhamsted's earliest houses, which saw use as an inn on the route from the Salisbury Iron Works
towards Granby ... The house, known 50 years ago as the Oscar Tiffany place, was bought in 1952 by Thomas and Marguerite Lamont.   Legend has it that the house was
also a stop on the Underground Railroad.  A new house, built after the fire, now occupies the old site... situated near the Hartland line, about a mile east of
Riverton."  (Wheeler and Hiltoon   1975:  235)


Antislavery Society
Nelson Gilbert, Secretary
April 1837
Number of members - 50
(Strother  1962:  213)


Interesting article - Bulletin of the Archaeological Society of Connecticut.
Negrotown:  An Archaeology of African Agency From Colonial Connecticut
by Ryan W. Hewey and Warren R. Perry
Number 71  2009